Monday, March 16, 2009

Couponing Tips

My Coupon Tips:

1. Use coupons with sales for more savings and stock up when you can.

2. Kroger doubles coupons up to $0.50. Some stores are different, check with your local store.

3. Don't be brand loyal. If you usually buy Crest toothpaste, but Colgate is on sale and you have a coupon, be willing to use Colgate to save even more.

4. You don't have to clip all your coupons each week. I did that for a while. I felt like all I was doing is clipping and filing coupons. It didn't seem worth my time. Now I have an expanding file that holds each weeks coupon inserts. You can clip the coupons you plan to use and then keep the rest in a file just in case you need them. There is an alphabetical list of unexpired coupons with which week they came on the internet. If you need a coupon, you can look there to see if there was one in a recent insert.

5. Buy at CVS and Walgreens. CVS offers Extra Care Bucks (ECBs) on certain items. You can use these ECBs on future purchases. Walgreens offers rebates on certain items which you can enter online and have loaded to a Walgreens gift card. Walgreens also has Register Rewards (RR). You can use these on future purchases. There is guides to CVS HERE and to Walgreens HERE.

6. Use manufacturer coupons along with store coupons. CVS, Walgreens and Target often have coupons that can be used at the same time a manufacturer coupon is used. This is called "stacking" coupons.

7. Look online at blogs to find good deals along with coupons you can use. I have a list of blogs I where I regularly find deal. I try to look at these before I make my list.


Blogs where I find deals:
  1. BeCentsAble
  2. Coupon Cravings
  3. Deal Seeking Mom
  4. i heart cvs
  5. i heart wags
  6. Money Saving Mom
  7. Stretching a Buck
  8. The "Cent"sible Sawyer
  9. The Thrifty Mama
  10. I also look at the forum at Hot Coupon World

Where to get coupons:

1. Buy a Sunday paper or get a newspaper subscription (you can get a Sunday only subscription). Larger city newspapers usually have more coupons. I get the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

2. Print coupons from the internet. There are several places to print coupons. You can use coupons.com, redplum.com, shortcuts.com, and smartsource.com. There is also a list of printable manufacturer's coupons at slickdeals.net. Sometimes if you got to a product site, there is a coupon you can print. For example, at dove.com you can click on the offers and then coupons at the top. You will find a page that has $1.50 off Dove Cream Oil Body Wash and $3.50 off Dove SkinVitalizer.

3. You can order coupons from the internet. I sometimes order coupons from ebay.com and thecouponmaster.com. There are other websites to order coupons also.

4. Look for the blinkie machines that dispense coupons at the grocery store.

5. Look for coupons stuck to a product you are buying.

6. Magazines often have coupons.

7. Request free samples, many times there are coupons along with the sample.

1 comment:

Becky said...

This is incredibly helpful information, Amy! For those of us who are not pros at the whole coupon thing, this is a great place to start!