Couponing 101: Who and How?
There are some common misconceptions that couponing is something that only done by cheap people, misers, or old people. Don’t let any sort of stigma associated with coupon stop you from saving money. At the end of the day, your bottom line is what is important and reducing costs is not only smart, but it can be fun too. Couponing is done not only by stay at home mom’s either. Businessmen, professionals, and lots of people like are out there collecting coupons to get huge savings on their receipts too.
Quite a few people out there are saving on average about $70 to $100 each and every week on their grocery bills. If you have seen the show “Extreme couponing” you know that part of some strategies involve couponers stockpiling their freezers and pantries a month or more at a time without having any sort of negative impact on the family budget. In one neat instance we’ve seen a new mom use coupons to stockpile fourteen months worth of diapers for her new baby daughter. Fourteen months. That’s a lot of diapers!
When used intelligently used you’ll find people using coupons to purchase things that were going to buy regardless, something simple even like a box of cereal. These sort of people are making one trip to do all of their grocery shopping and they certainly do not spend more than they need to or engage in any kind of impulse buying that would make them go out of their budget. If you are anything like me, you love to have some extra breathing room in the family budget, so here are some more basic couponing tips that might be useful for you.
One thing to keep in mind is that to become a true couponer you do have to do a little bit of homework. It wouldn’t make sense to try and wait until you are at the store to start planning your coupon purchases, especially if you have kids at the store with you! Coupons will often appear in sales ads, classifieds, newspapers, and at the grocery store itself. There are quite a few websites like EBay and other sites dedicated to couponing that coupons may be bought or found for free. Sometimes you only need to pay a handling charge for some online coupons.
Here are a few tips to help you on your next couponing venture:
File and Organize
Keeping your coupons organize is critical to your couponing success. It’s also easy and simple and can be done in the luxury of your home even while watching TV. It might be a worthwhile investment to buy a three ring binder with an assortment of plastic pullouts where your new coupons can subsequently be filed away into. Organize them in a way that makes sense to you and that they are easy to locate, you may consider using dividers that can help you sort them by type or by expiration date.
Match Your Grocery List to Your Coupons
Now that your coupons are nice and organized, you can proceed to plan out your next grocery purchasing adventure. Smart shoppers like you know to create a grocery list in advance and plan meals that can be matched up with the coupons they have available. Also you need to do now is slash the item off the grocery list and keep your relevant coupons available and ready to hand them over to your cashier at the cash register.
Match Products to Your Coupons
Now that your food is covered, it is probably a good idea to figure out what sort of products you need or want around the house. Coupons are not just for groceries. They can be used on items that make your house smell good like Glade and Airwick products, cleaners such as Windex and Scrubbing Bubbles, and more. Consider everything from hygiene products, lotion, razors, trash bags, paper products, and more. Most all of these items may have a great coupon waiting for you to use.
Understand Your Coupons
Most of the time you can only use one coupon per prodct purchase. All that this means is that once you have used a coupon for an item, you probably cannot use the same coupon for another item. For instance $1/1 means that you can save one dollar on that particular item. There is some other coupon terminology you should be aware of however. There are also coupon blinkies (the coupon dispensers you find in store), FAR (Free After Rebated), DD (Do Not Double), IVC (Instance Value Coupon), B2GO (Buy two, get one free), and MIR (Mail-In Rebate). Take the time to analyze your coupons for their specific terms.