I’ve always wondered how coupons worked. I’ve tried to ‘do’ coupons before, but they never had anything I needed & I always ended up just buying the store brand because it was cheaper anyway. I don’t even remember how I looked into it again, but I did… and now I’m hooked, because I know how they work!!
My new found love is kind of nerdy, but when you pretty much pay pennies for needed items you don’t feel so nerdy! 🙂
This is what I’ve been doing: You’re supposed to subscribe to 4-6 Sunday newspaper subscriptions, but I haven’t done that yet. I wanted to make sure I could do it and stick with it so we’ve just been getting the coupons from Jared’s grandma’s newspaper. So every Sunday I cut out all the coupons. I also print coupons from smart source, red plum, and coupons. Every morning I go through swagbucks to these blogs: Money Saving Mom, Deal Seeking Mom, Hip2Save, and Krazy Coupon Lady. These sites are wonderful to me. They tell me the weekly sales at certain stores to use my coupons more efficiently!
For example: We got all this at Target for $2.66. The hungry hungry hippos game was $5.24 and we had a $5 off coupon, the cream cheese was buy two get 1$ off plus they were already on sale for $1.19, making them .69 each. The stove top was on sale plus we used a .50 off coupon. (The Target brand spaghetti sauce was regular priced, we just needed it that night.)
Then this trip we got all this for $5 @ CVS! (THIS WEEK, so if you are interested go look at the sites I posted) The Tone body wash ended up being free, the Always we got for #1.50 each, then the Pantene we got for $1 each.
We’ve had a few shopping trips like this & I walk away very pleased!! The key for me has been to keep all coupons because you never know what will be on sale and what you could score for FREE. And also, when something is a great price, STOCK UP so that the next time you NEED something you have it and you don’t have to go pay full-overprice for it. 🙂 Of course, I don’t have 4-6 subscriptions to the paper so I haven’t quite ‘stocked up’ yet. I’m still learning and don’t want to make a bad call about a price of something just yet.
Also on these sites I’ve been signing up for samples. It takes some places 2-3 weeks/4-6 weeks for things to come so I’m just regularly signing up for samples and things just start coming and now I’m getting something in the mail like every day. 🙂
Here is what I’ve gotten for free so far:
Jared bought me the trading card sheet things to keep my coupons organized in a binder. 🙂 It’s sooo pretty!!! (The coupons on the outside are the ones I’m using right then) I told Jared, you can’t make us money, at least I can save us some. =)
They are organized by type on each page.
My list in the back of what is actually considered a deal.
Now if only we could pay bills like this. 😛 Hmm…