Couponing

Ok, here are the basics of my couponing.  This is just the basics, I'll expand on everything later when I have more time and as questions come up.

The most important part about couponing is to remember not to buy things you will never use. Always ask yourself a few questions before clipping a coupon. Do you already use the product? Would you be willing to try it if you get a decent price? Would you try it if you could get it for free or close to free? If you wouldn't use it, but can get it for free, would you donate it?  If you answer yes to any of these, I would clip the coupon. The key is to stockpile coupons. If you don't clip that toothpaste coupon because you don't need toothpaste right now, you may miss the chance to get full size tubes of Colgate and Aquafresh toothpaste for $0.25 each like I did not too long ago at Cub and Walmart. (BTW, I bought 6 tubes.) However, if you don't like a product or can't use it, buying it and having it sit on a shelf isn't ever a good deal.

TYPES OF COUPONS
There are 2 types of coupons; manufacturer coupons and store coupons.  It is very important to read the coupons carefully so you know the difference since some stores allow you to use a store coupon and a manufacturer coupon on the same item.  A lot of times stores are sneaky and put their logo on a manufacturer coupon, leading people to believe that it's only valid at that store. If the coupon states "manufacturer coupon" it is valid at any store that accepts coupons. Every coupon has an expiration date. Make sure you keep track of expiraton dates so there aren't any surprises at the checkout. Military personnel and their families are allowed to use coupons on military bases for a period of time after they expire so that's a good place to send your expired coupons.

WHERE TO FIND COUPONS
I buy the Sunday paper.  Actually, I buy the Saturday/Early Sunday Star Tribune.  It has the same coupons as the Sunday paper and costs $0.75 less!  Before I buy anything, I go to  Sunday Coupon Preview to check out the coupons that are going to be in the paper.  This site usually has the list of coupons up early Saturday morning so it works perfect to check it out before buying the Saturday Star Tribune. There are 3 main types of coupon inserts that you'll see in the paper. Red Plum mainly has grocery coupons with some household coupons, SmartSource is the same.  These 2 are the ones you'll see one or both of in almost every sunday paper. Then there's P&G Savers.  That's where you'll find the good coupons for awesome name brand household and personal items. It's printed once a month and I usually buy a couple papers when I know that insert is in there. That's where I got the $10 off coupons that allowed me to get awesome Gilette power razors for $1.25 each!

Print them online. There are a ton of sites out there that allow you to print coupons for free. My favorite is Target coupons.  That's where you find Target store coupons that you can use along with a manufacturer coupon on the same item to save tons of money.  You can also print coupons at Red Plum, Smart Source, and the ever popular Coupons.com.  These sites will allow you to print some of the same grocery and household coupons that are in the sunday paper. There are a lot more sites out there but these are a few that I've tried.

HOW TO ORGANIZE YOUR COUPONS
There are basically 3 ways to organize coupons. There's a coupon holder (an accordion style small file made specifically for coupons), a note card box, and a 3 ring binder (my preferred method). I have tried all three types and have decided that a binder works best for me. I didn't like the coupon holder because I felt like there wasn't enough room and I hated having to flip through all the household coupons to find that one paper towel coupon. The note card box I didin't like either. I felt that unless you have your box completely full, the coupons fell down or slid around. It worked better than the smaller holder because you can make your own dividers, but I still didn' like having to flup through all the coupons to find just one. Then I tried the binder and loved it. I like having all my coupons easily accessible and having room for all of them.

Here's how I set up my binder. I have page dividers for each category of coupon. They are: Target (because they have their own store coupons), household, personal, medications, kids, condiments, canned items, boxed items, cereal (you'll find a ton of breakfast coupons always), meat, chicken/fish, dairy, bread, frozen goods, snacks, and misc. I use baseball card dividers to hold the coupons and I label each pocket with a different type of item. For example, under household, the first page is dividers is labeled: tp, paper towels, hand soap, dish soap, plastic begs, plastic containers, spray and wash, laundry soap, and dryer sheets. You can write on the plastic pockets with permanent marker and use an alcohol wipe later to erase the marker. It works great!

I started out having a couple pages in the front of every section where I'd put the coupons that were going to expire in the next few weeks. I abandoned that after a few months becuase it was just too hard to keep up. I now keep all the coupons together in the categories and go through my binder once a month and get rid of the coupons that are expired. Makes life a ton easier.