Pantry: Free Toilet Paper Again!

How to Coupon Effectively: An Overview

My friend Renea says i should put this on my blog, and she's pretty wise, so here it is :)

Get your papers for $1 at Dollar Tree and at Deal$. I've learned everything from my friends and from www.couponmom.com. Here are the major tips:

First of all: go to couponmom and read the "getting started" (or something similar) section. it's got all the basics.
go to www.taylortownpreview.com and sign up for their newsletter. you'll get an e-mail (usually on thursday) with the upcoming coupons, so you can decide ahead of time how many papers you'll want and whether you'll want to purchase extra q's.
when you buy papers, always buy in multiples of 2, so you're set for the BOGO sales.
if there are only a few stock-up items for you in the paper, sometimes it's better to just buy 2 or 4 papers, then get larger amounts of your specific item q's from clippers on taylortown preview (although i don't understand how to pay them yet), ebay (the good ones sell out QUICKLY), or www.thecouponclippers.com. if you're checking on ebay, look at the expiration dates and the values. often different areas get different values. ex: we got .40/2 q's for pizza rolls in this week's paper, but i was able to purchase .35/1 q's from ebay. those will double to .70/1, making each box only cost .30 when they go on sale for $1!!
Meijer lets you "stack" manufacturer q's with their store ("Mealbox") q's. that's how i got select harvest soups for .25 this week: they were on sale for $1.25; the paper had .50/2 q's that doubled to $1/2, and there was a mealbox printable for $1/2. my daughter's favorite food in the WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD is chicken noodle soup!!! she was one happy girl :)
If you have a super target near you, i hear they always have great deals with store printables, particularly on produce (often free, which nobody else ever has!), but i don't have one so don't really know.

My favorite resource sites, besides the ones above, are

www.hotcouponworld.com (awfully busy screen for me, but my whiz friend swears by it, plus it has a mealbox coupon generator)

and www.bargainbriana.com (she only hits the highlights of the sales, but lives in indiana so usually matches what we've got; plus she covers meijer whereas couponmom doesn't have indiana's meijer listed and the other states get different sales than we do.)

The art of matching sale prices with coupons is just "beginner level"; there's a whole next layer of printables, CVS/Walgreens (free toothbrushes, razors, etc. but requires diligent effort), Catalinas (i guess that's the brand name for those q's that print at the register based on what you buy), and k-mart's monthly double-coupons-up-to-$2 (killer deals but lots of fine print which changes monthly). I don't usually mess with those on purpose (although sometimes i luck into the Cats) because they're just too complex for this phase of my life, but i really should because people end up with tons of free stuff that way!!

You will definitely want to find an organization system that works easily. i made a coupon binder; there are lots of (believe it or not!) videos on youtube about making them!! mine is organized alphabetically by category (baking, bars, bread, cereal, etc.) and probably still have the list of categories that i got from someone else & adapted; e-mail me if you want me to look for it for ya. Other people file alphabetically by brand name, or if they only shop at one store will correspond their categories in order with the aisles in the store (if i were a one-store gal, that's what i'd do!)

SAVINGS RECORD

January

Week 1
SPENT $120.20
SAVED $89.98

Week 2
SPENT $120.63
SAVED $239.55

Week 3
SPENT $68.80
SAVED $216.43

Week 4
SPENT $61.20
SAVED $209.25

Week 5
SPENT $78.48
SAVED $135.02

Week 6
SPENT $ 58.55
SAVED $ 38.00

Week 7
SPENT $ 21.12
SAVED $ 65.90

Week 8
SPENT $111.99
SAVED $ 140.64

Week 9
SPENT $ 30.80
SAVED $ 115.29

Week 10
SPENT $73.50
SAVED $85.40

Week 11
SPENT $31.56
SAVED $17.29

Week 12
SPENT $142.10
SAVED $85.26

Week 13
SPENT $124.14
SAVED $194.14

Week 14
SPENT $6.64
SAVED $18
(i actually spent WAY more than this, throwing good money after bad, trying to get rid of an incorrigible UTI. it's finally gone!!)

Week 15

SPENT $247.11

SAVED $488.90

whoa that's a lot!! couldn't pass up the opp to get several months' worth of cheese & whole grain crackers though.. $5 in cheese and triscuits were substantial snacks for 5 hungry kids and an adult tonight!! so much so that a very lite dinner sufficed!

Week 16
SPENT 101.96
SAVED 88.07

running total:
$1398.78 spent
$87.42 /wk avg spent.
$2227.12 saved
139.20/wk avg saved.