Thursday, February 2, 2012

Couponing


I have taken up couponing. I have wanted to for a while, but didn't know where to start. I found some awesome websites that post weekly deals and other information that helps me save money. My favorite site is http://freebies2deals.com

A couple of weeks ago I ordered two newspapers. I've also been printing out some coupons online. I've found some good ones on coupons.com. My first few weeks I saved about $30. Not too bad right? For a family of 6 that can add up to $1500 a year. This week I saved $50. That savings isn't all in coupons, it's store discounts too. I do a lot of my shopping at Smiths. In addition to the good deals, I'm also using my rewards points for fuel discounts. More ways to save!

I've learned that a successful shopping trip requires a lot of planning. So here's what I've done. Sometime after getting the paper on Sunday I cut out all coupons. Sometime after that I organize them into my binder. After the weekly Smith's ad comes out, I match up the weekly deals to the coupons I have. I've also learned to take my binder to the store in case I come across an unadvertised deal. It's come in handy a few times.

Here's a few of my favorite deals: Smiths was marking down their packaged Pepperoni. It was marked down to $.69 I had a coupon for $1.00 off two. This made each package $.19 Score. I had several coupons, so I stocked up. Now we can make out own pizza anytime we want for the next few years :)

Another deal was Trident gum. The coupon was for a $1.00 off three packs. Smiths had the big packs on sale for $.69 each. I had three coupons, so I got 9packs for $.36 each. Fun right?

I'm still learning, but I love saving money. My next step is upgrading my binder. You're supposed to have a zipped binder with baseball card plastic sleeves to organize it. When I got started, I didn't have that available, so I made my own. I thought it would work just fine-until today. I got to the store ready to shop-only to find my baby had fallen asleep. I carefully lift her out of her carseat and grab my binder. I grabbed it upside down. All of my coupons go flying. It was a wet windy morning, so half of the coupons are stuck to the ground, half are blowing across the parking lot. Ugh. I put Baby M back in her chair and went running after all my hard work. (I had literally spend at least an hour planning out this shopping trip and getting the coupons ready) Now it was just a jumbled mess. I made the most of it though and still saved a bunch.

Here's to saving more money in 2012!

1 comment:

Amy C. said...

Good for you. It seems like more and more people are jumping on that coupon train. I better too!