So many people ask me how to coupon, and I can think of no better way than to tell you what I do every week. It isn't hard and usually takes me an average of about 5 hours a week from start to finish. There are some rules to know which I will post later that you will need to know, but for now here are the steps I go through every week to save big on my grocery bill.
1. Buying Your Coupons
In Louisville our Sunday papers cost anywhere from $1.00-$1.75. I just discovered this week that you can purchase them for $1 at the Dollar General where everything is a dollar. Go figure. There are also plenty of ways to find coupons without buying the Sunday paper. There are dozens of websites where you can print out coupons, or you can load e-coupons to your store loyalty card for paper-free couponing. In my experience the Sunday paper offers the biggest, and most consistent savings.
2. Clipping and Organizing Your Coupons
Separate your newspapers from the inserts that include coupons. It is a good idea to also keep the weekly store ads because these can also contain valuable coupons. Choose one kind of insert (for example, the P&G or the Red Plum insert) and and separate the individual pages and cut the pages together. That way if you have multiple newspapers you only have to cut each type of insert once. This will save your fingers from hurting later!
There are several ways to organize coupons, but for the sake of simplicity I will just tell you about the method I use today. I got a trapper Keeper style binder (one that zips closed) and then purchased baseball card holders. These can be found at Walmart for a few dollars a pack. Then the clipped coupons go into the slots of the baseball card holders. I have two different sections in my binder, food and non-food, both are organized by letter. In my mother's binder she has her coupons all together then organized by letter, not organized by category. Neither one of us actually takes the time to truly alphabetize our coupons because we both think that it is too time intensive to be productive. If you want to alphabetize your coupons or no, arrange them into food and non-food sections or keep all types of coupons together is completely up to you. The most important thing is to keep it simple so you can easily find your coupons when you need to use them.
3. Finding the Deals
If you are a do-it-yourself type of person here is where you can pull out a pen and paper and look over all of the ads and go through and find what you have coupons you have to match sale items, then calculate the price of each item after coupons to see if it is a good price. I am not that person. I like it when other smart people do all the hard work for me and have it laid out in an orderly fashion It makes it easy to scan through all of the sale items and see what I want to buy.
There are dozens and dozens of websites that lay out all of this information for you. We call this information an Ad Matchup. I will list my favorite sites that I use, but here is one very important thing you have to know. Whatever website you look over your ad matchups every week should be free.
Do not pay for this information! There are so many free websites out there, do not waste your money going to a website that requires you to pay for free information. That being said, here are the websites I use:
- Deal Seeking Mom - this is the website I use every week. It is very rare that I use any other sites for my ad matchups. I love the format it is very easy to read and uncluttered. They also have a Facebook page where they post all of their deals. If you Like them you will have all the deals in your news feed.
- Stockpiling Moms - I love this website because she always has the matchups listed earlier than everyone else.
- A Full Cup - this site is the only other site I have used recently. I do not use their ad matchups because I do not like the layout as much as Deal Seeking Mom, but the information is just as accurate. I do love their forums where I have connected with other couponing ladies. :)
