Coupons

Something I learned about coupons...

I've never been one to use coupons. It was always my opinion that going through all the coupons you get and clipping four 25 cent coupons for your entire grocery order was just not worth it. But, I have been converted. Its been a slow process. My friend taught me a months ago how to use coupons the best and I thought about it for a long time and then finally this month jumped on the bandwagon. I will now share my coupon wisdom with all who read.

The coupons only work for me because of a free site called www.couponmom.com. You have to register but all it involves is giving your email address and creating a password and I've never gotten any spam (that I'm aware of) from the site.

Once you are registered there is a feature where you can go to your state and pick the stores they've already figured out coupons for. In my state there are 2 stores that work. They also have national stores like Walmart, Walgreens, Target, Rite Aid, etc.

So here's how it works. The couponmom people figure out what coupons you should use, when you should use them and where you should use them. It matches store sales with your coupons (from the sunday paper) and gives you the most sale for your coupon.

Here is a real example that I did a few weeks ago:

Safeway had Betty Crocker Icing on sale Buy 2 get 3 free. The total came to 4$. So that would be $4/5 icings before coupons. I had a 50cent off coupon. Safeway doubles manufacturers coupons so that made it $3/5 icings. Then (and how would I have ever known this) the icing containers had 20 cent coupons on them that you could take off at the register. Remember that Safeway doubles so that totals $2 off (.20XdoubledX5icings) So in the end I spent $1 for 5 icing containers.

If you you read that and think its too confusing to figure it all out (which I do) but couponmom does all the work for you. You just look at their list, organize it the way you want (I always organize it by most % saved per item) and then go from there.

Some of you may say why would you need 5 containers of icing but I do have 2 kids and I am trying to have some food storage and you never know when you have to make cupcakes and .20 cents a container is cheaper than making it your own.

There are numerous times that you end up getting items for free with all the different discounts.

The one thing to think about when doing coupons is what kind of food do you buy. I don't buy a lot of prepackaged food. I dont' buy sugar cereal (If I had gotten coupons in January I could get sugar cereal for $1/box this week) so I probably don't save as much as a family that buys more of that type of product but where I do always save is on cleaning supplies and toiletries.

And that is all.