Coupons in 30- A Busy Mom's Guide to Beginning Couponing

Hi everyone! Since I've had so many requests, by friends (and strangers at the store), I'm posting just one or two "How-To" blogs on beginning couponing and organization. There are just a few steadfast RULES that every good couponer uses and the rest is up to you and how much time you want to dedicate weekly. I titled this "Coupons in 30" because 30 minutes is the most time I spend on couponing each week. Any more than that and I'd end up buying things I won't use, don't need, or are beyond my budget.




 

How I started...
In January, 2011, my mom had emergency heart surgery and during that surgery she had a stroke. These issues led to my mom needing 24/7 care and I had no choice but to quit my job as a teacher during Spring Break, as she was leaving in-patient rehab and needed to stay with me. Even though my husband's salary was sufficient enough for the family, I wanted to contribute, especially since we now had another mouth to feed.
I started reading up on couponing and my sister Andrea helped me learn a lot of the tricks I'll show on this blog.
One warning- If you are expecting to save hundreds of dollars each time like those people on the TLC show, you're going to need to dedicate your LIFE (and the lives of your children and spouses!) to digging in dumpsters, collecting coupons from neighbors, and bothering co-workers. Their secret is that they get coupons from everyone and their uncle. More coupons = more savings. It seems that easy, but there are catches to this, and I'll tell you what they are in this blog.

Let's start with a few things you'll need...
Organizational Binder/Folder/etc.
There are websites that will try to sell you a pre-made binder for upwards of $50. DON'T FALL FOR IT. I went through three different organizing binders before I was comfortable with what I use now. Everyone is different. My sister uses an accordian-type wallet-size organizer similar to a recipe box.
I use a 3-ring binder containing baseball card inserts I bought at Hobby Lobby. (I searched everywhere and HL was the only place I found them other than online.) Reinforce the outside seams of the binder with duct tape. If you don't, you'll go through one binder per month.
You'll need to decide how you want to organize your coupons within the binder. I do it by "genre" of food: desserts, frozen foods, refrigerated section, etc. The more you coupon, the more of a pattern you'll see in what coupons are offered. For example, rather than have a "bathroom" section, I have individual pages for razors, soap/body wash, lotions, hair products, and make up. This is because these catagories offer so many coupons that if you had to go through 6 pages of coupons to find your Suave Lotion coupon, you'd waste time. For the tabs, I just bought the sticky tabs that are sold everywhere.
Here are my catagories (I'll explain the Target section in a bit):
Page 1- Cash register items: gum, etc.
Page 2- Target combos (again, I'll explain later)
P 3-4- Target from makeup section through paper products (this is based on how my Target is designed)
p 5-6 - Target food
P 7-8- Target clothes, toys, and misc items
P 9 Fruit and Veggies (the rest of the book is organized by how my grocery store is laid out)
P 10 Bread
P 11 Cheese
P 12 Meats (deli meats, hot dogs, etc)
P 13-14 Desserts and Baking/Cooking items like oil, spices
P 15 Cereal
P 16 Cereal bars
P 17-18 Snacks, juice
P 19 Crackers
P 20 Sides, etc (tortillas, rice, etc)
P 21-22 Sauces and Soups
P 23-24 Chips, candy and soda
P 25 Ice cream
P 26-27 Frozen Foods
P 28 Pizza
P 29-30 Refrigerated Section
P 31-32 Paper products
P 33 Baby products
P 34-36 Kitchen items (dish soap, cleaners, air fresheners, etc)
P 37-38 Laundry soap
P 39 Shower products (soap, face cleanser, deodorant)
P 40 Lotion
P 41-42 Hair products
P 43 Razors
P 44-45 Teeth items
P 46-47 Make up
P 48 Pet food/treats
P 49 Medical items
P 50 Office Supplies

In the front pocket of the binder, I keep envelopes with the names of the grocery stores I go to, plus Walgreens and CVS. It's easier to pull out coupons at home when I'm looking at the ads and this way I don't buy anything that is NOT from a coupon in the envelop. I also use this pocket to put my coupons as I'm shopping. Here's a (bad) photo:

Ok, now on to some rules.
1. Don't buy something that you can't or won't ever use unless that item is free. I'll never use 30 tubes of toothpaste, but if they're free, I'll donate them to the homeless shelter.
2. Even if you have a fantastic coupon or deal, do not buy the product if it's still more expensive than any other brand or generic. I met a young woman today who was getting into coupons and she was excited because she had a coupon for "Save 1.50 off two Tide detergents". I showed her that using the coupon, she'd spend $18.50 on 2 Tides, when she can get 2 Gains - same size - for $14. Think about how much you'll SPEND, not how much you'll SAVE. (Trust me, your husband won't care that you saved $40 if he sees that you spent $200.)
3. Know each store's policy. Many stores only allow 3 of the same coupons to be used in one register transaction. For example, if you have 5 of the same coupons for Pop Tarts, you can only use 3 coupons each time. This means that you'll have to do two separate transactions where you'll buy 3 pop tarts first, and then 2 pop tarts in the second round. The whole idea of separate transactions is where I draw the line for myself. This is what the people on the TV shows do. They get 100 of the same coupon, but then have to divide them up into separate transactions.
Also, shop at stores that double or triple coupons. Fry's and Safeway (in Arizona) make every coupon $1. So if I have a 25c coupon, it's worth $1. And pay attention to expiration dates. Go though your binder weekly and throw out the expired coupons before adding the new ones.
4. Where do you get coupons??? This is one of my favorite questions people ask me when I have my binder. Obviously, I get some from the Sunday paper. One hint to this is that 99cent stores often have Sunday papers after Monday, for 99c rather than $2.50 or whatever yours costs. This is one opportunity to stock up on coupons. Another "duh" is asking everyone you know to save coupons or start a trade. My sister and I give each other the coupons we don't use each week.
HOWEVER...I also print my own coupons from coupons.com , redplum.com, and Target.com
Both of these sites only allow a certain number of each coupon to be printed from each printer. Bonus points for those of you with multiple printers at work or at home. BUT, know that some stores will not accept coupons printed in black and white. Also, you can't just photocopy them, since each has its own barcode. There are lots of websites that have coupons for their own products, like Kellogs, but you have to register and that's another place I draw the line...too much time for me. When I started couponing, I signed up for a paid couponing-education site where they tell you what store to use each coupon at each week, but that was annoying so I stopped.
Here's something you must know: There are two kinds of coupons - Manufacturer coupons and Store coupons. This is why I love Safeway and Target. They put out their own store coupons and you can use BOTH a manufacturer and a store coupon on the same item, which leads me to.......
5. This is THE most important RULE. This is what I call a "double threat". This is how I save the most money. First of all, any time you can piggy back savings will become super exciting for you :) For example, using a coupon on top of an item that's on sale or clearance. But if you can find an item that's on sale/clearance, PLUS use a store coupon, PLUS use a manufacturer coupon, you can get the item for a fraction of the original price.
For example - Today I bought some Venus razors. There's NO WAY I'd ever pay $9.69 per pack. Today at Target, they had them on sale for $8. I had a Target coupon for $3 off and a Manufacturer coupon for $4 off...this made the originally $9.69 razors $1. I had three coupon combos so I got 3 packs for $3 total. I would never have bought Venus brand, since Target brand is about $5 for the same product, but the coupons made it close to free.
Another example- At Safeway (grocery store), they had FiberOne bars originally $3.69, on sale for $1.99 each, but you have to buy 4. I had 4 coupons for "50c off one", which doubled up to $1, so they ended up being $1 each.
Last example- At Target, I love their clearance sections. They're found on the inside endcaps of each section. My mom needed some new clothing, so I ended up getting her (from the clearance section) 3 skirts, two sweaters, and one shirt, for $16. This was because I had a Target coupon for "$5 off woman's clothing purchase over $20".
My purchase at Target tonight would have been around $300 if I'd have bought everything full-price. But because everything I bought was on sale, plus I had Target coupons AND manufacturer coupons my $108 was brought down to just over $16. In addition to coupons, I used a 5% off coupon I had from filling 5 prescriptions at Target. Between my kids, husband, mom, and myself, we get about 20 meds filled each month. This means that every month, we get four 5% coupons in the mail. 5% doesn't seem like a lot, but on $100 (which is what many moms spend at Target each time), you save $5.
Target coupons are the reason I have a separate section in my binder for Target. The first page is for Target combos, which means, when I get a Target coupon that I also have a regular coupon for, I pair them up in the binder so that when I go to Target, I know what products to look for and see what kind of deal I can get using my combos (I often wait until the products go on sale for extra savings.)
One other trick I have, that is another kind of combo, is the "Buy One Get One Free" deal. At Fry's, they always have vitamins Buy 1, get 1 Free. I can use two coupons in this scenario.
Example: Fish Oil is $8.99. So with the Buy 1, Get 1, you pay $8.99 for two. I use two $3 off coupons, which brings the price down to $2.99 for TWO bottles of fish oil. And with the Buy 1, Get 1 deal, you can mix and match items, so I could get fish oil and vitamin E if I wanted to.
Here are some examples of Coupon Combo-ing:

 

These combos are great examples of how I save the most (with the addition of my 5% coupon). HOWEVER, the second example in the photo is NOT a good deal. Let's say Claritin is $15. Using these two coupons would bring the price down to $8. Sounds good, but the Target brand of the same product is $7. So in this case, buying generic is still a better deal.

The top coupons for NatureMade...I'm holding onto them because sometimes Target has Buy 1 Get 1 free or 50% off. If, by the time these coupons expire, the vitamins are still full-price, I may or may not buy them. It all depends on what I will SPEND, rather than what I will SAVE.



Side note on combining coupons: You can also combine coupons at places like CVS and Walgreens, but I don't write about that here because I find their prices to be too high in the first place to spend my time looking. I've shopped at many different stores and I know that their prices just don't compete.

6. Invest in an Entertainment book. These are about $35 and they are Bible-sized books of coupons for restaurants, car rentals, hotels, stores, etc. Last weekend my family went to the World Wildlife Zoo and Aquarium. Tickets are $29 and $14. We used two Buy 1, Get 1 free tickets from the book. HOWEVER, when you do this, the cheaper ticket will be counted as free. So, to maximize our savings, my husband bought 2 adult tickets, using one coupon, and saved $29. Then I bought 2 kids tickets, saving $14. Total savings was $43...that trip paid for the book! In addition, the book had a coupon for the restaurant inside the zoo, so we saved an additional $10 while eating lunch.
Entertainment.com ----Apollo HS friends, we used to sell these in choir and called them "Happenings" books. I highly recommend you buy one of these books if you plan on going on a road trip (there are tons of fast food coupons).
7. A few little "extra" notes here- Don't worry about frantically searching through your coupons every time you shop. The more you organize your coupons and shop, the more you'll know what a good price is, and what coupons you have in your binder. Another note...just because a coupon says "Use at Walmart" does not necessarily mean you can't use it at other stores. It just means that Walmart helped pay for the coupon and want your business. If the coupon says "Manufatcturer Coupon" on the top, you can use it anywhere. The same applies to coupons that come out of the register recipt machine.  Also- the Walmart price match idea is great, but they don't double coupons, so if you want the product for the same price as Frys, go to Frys and get an even better deal because you can double your coupon.  Lastly- You know how you used to use your parents' washer and dryer in college? Ask them if they mind if you print off some coupons while you're visiting. It's an extra printer to print from, AND you'll make them proud that their child is saving money ;)

These are all the tips and tricks I have for now. I think that's more than enough to get you all started. Please share this page with your friends and email me (mn2azgirl@yahoo.com) or message me on facebook with any questions or additions. I'll post updates as I think of more.

 

 

I Just Thought This Was Cool

Week Two: The flower edition

My youngest son is going to Hawaii today for 8 days (with his dad and some family friends.)  Being a teacher, I have been teaching him all about Hawaii for a month.  He pointed out that his two favorite flowers in Hawaii are Birds of Paradise and Hibiscus.Being that I'll miss him terribly, and I have nothing else to do, garden-wise, I decided to see if my pink thumb also worked with flowers (I've NEVER been able to successfully grow flowers.)  Surprisingly, both plants were available at Home Depot.  I purchased two Birds of Paradise - one black/white and one orange/white, and five hibiscus.  This way, when my son returns, he'll have a Hawaiian surprise waiting for him.
Digging the holes in AZ soil was the most difficult.  It was much easier when I wet the soil down.  I filled the large holes with a 50/50 mix of Miracle Grow soil and manure.  All hibiscus and one Bird of Paradise are in the front of the house with northern exposure.  The other BOP is in back under a large shade tree with lots of sun exposure.  I topped off each plant with a 4-6" layer of compost mulch.

Week 2 - Getting out of hand

On Day 9 I went looking for ladybugs.  I'd found aphids among my plants and wanted them GONE.  Typical nurseries and Home Depot didn't have any this time of year, so I thought I'd try Whole Foods.  Instead of grabbing the dang ladybugs and leaving like I should have, I roamed the gardening section for way too long.  I purchased a bottle of "Extreme Juice", which is concentrated veggie food, and a copy of Extreme Gardening: How to Grow Organic in the Hostile Deserts by Dave Owens, the "Garden Guy" from TV.  It's also a great book because it gives every detail for planting all different sorts of food.  I also grabbed a sprouting pot  http://www.amazon.com/Handy-Pantry-Sprouting-Jar-Lid/dp/B000EDN8JI/ref=sr_1_13?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1319829618&sr=1-13  
I had seen my sister making her own alfalfa sprouts and thought I'd try it.  It's very easy, actually my 7-year-old son ended up doing all the work.  In four days we had fresh sprouts that taste much better than store sprouts.  I'm making my second batch today.
Last night we let the ladybugs go.  I told my son to tip the container sideways so only half would get out and we could save the other half for another night.  He "accidentally" dumped all 1500 ladybugs out and they got to work.
This morning, I have only seen 5 ladybugs :(
To catch up on what is growing, by today, Day 13, all of the seeds have come up.  The beans look the best at about 3" high.  I thinned them today and felt genuine remorse for starting their life and then quickly taking it away. I soon got the idea to transplant some of them to a large pot, but they're not doing too well a few hours later. 
I read in the book mentioned above how herbs can keep bugs away.  Yesterday my mom and I planted (in 6 pots) basil, chamomile, lavender and cilantro.  We placed the pots around the garden to keep the pests away, so we'll see about that...

Week 1 - Waiting sucks, why not Compost!?

I learned very quickly that planting a vegetable garden is like a bad one-night stand.  You get so excited about what you're doing, then you do it, then it's over and you're left wondering "Did I do everything right?  Is it going to like me as much as I like it?" and then the next few days, "I need to check on it once more before I go to bed."  And the waiting continues.  During this period of waiting, I added to my journal a list of estimated harvest dates for everything I planted.  I added this list to the list of estimated germination dates for my seeds (which, I must say, are overachievers.  All of my seeds sprouted 1-3 days ahead of schedule.)I ordered, received, and began reading a book which was recommended from one of the gardening sites.  The book is called Fresh Food from Small Spaces by R.J. Ruppenthal and it is AMAZING.  It is geared toward people with city apartments or small backyards.  The author covers everything from inexpensive gardening to keeping chickens and bees to making your own yogurt and sprouts to composting.  This composting thing really had me intrigued.  My husband (again, the one who takes immediate action), ordered a compost bin from the city for $5. It showed up a few days later and that became my new project...for a day or two.
I used this site to help me set up the bin:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_do_you_set_up_a_compost_bin_for_your_garden
We chose to put the bin next to the garden, hoping that it wouldn't smell and bother the neighbors.  Since we started working on it after the sun went down one night, we didn't notice that we'd placed it on a fire ant hill.  Bad mistake if you need to get to the bin each day but we just kept going. 
We started filling the bottom with sticks and twigs to help with aeration.  My two sons (14 and 7) were a big help.  Then we pruned a few trees and bushes and added the branches, some fallen oranges from our trees, and chicken poop (DO NOT ADD DOG OR CAT FECES).  Then a layer of dead leaves and newspaper, another layer of kitchen scraps and green yard waste, then topped it off with hay from the chicken coop, which was doubly good because it had chicken poop in it.  We finished off with a bucket of water over the top to get it going. 
After some later research, I read that red wiggler worms are great for breaking down the compost, so I ordered some from this site:
http://www.unclejimswormfarm.com/
They haven't arrived yet, so I'll update on this later. 
I also found a product called Compost Maker by Bonide.  The guy at the nursery said it helps speed up the compost time AND it's safe with worms.  It's made of ocean kelp, fish and alfalfa meals.  I sprinkled some on my compost but I'm not sure I'll know if it's working or not.  I think I'll stick to my worms once they arrive.
It's not sexy, but it's a hard worker!

Day 0-1 -Planning the garden inside and out

My husband Mike and I thought long and hard about where to place the raised garden. It needed good sun, but not too much since our AZ sun can do a lot of damage. We knew it would have to be raised for a few reasons: 1. our soil is part clay, part sand, part dead dirt (meaning, it's so compact that bugs and vitamins don't even try to get in there), and roots. We knew that good soil is the first part of gardening that you MUST get right. 2. Our chickens. I knew if the garden was on the ground, they'd peck at the leaves and probably eat the seeds. 3. The best place in the yard was in an area where we have bricks placed on the ground. It used to be the ground of an old shed until we took it out.

From just my own knowledge, I knew I could do "square foot gardening", which means that you separate your garden into square feet sections and plant a different vegetable in each. This allows you to have a large variety of foods, rather than, say, a whole garden of corn. I also knew that I tend to bite off more than I can chew when I'm spontaneous, so we scaled back and decided on roughly 8'x8' total. With the brick size, that would leave me with about 7'x7' of soil space.

On October 15th we purchased 84 blocks at Home Depot for less than $2 each and placed them in three rows, making it roughly 20" tall. We filled it with a 40/40/20 mix of Miracle Grow garden soil, packaged manure, and compost mulch (all from Home Depot). Mike added some small 10" fencing to make it a bit taller to make sure the chickens couldn't get in. Then I sectioned off one-foot squares using twine that I attached to the small fence pieces at each side, making 36 squares total.

Mike wasn't sure (and neither was I!) if I planned to plant seeds or transplants, so he bought a few transplants at Home Depot for me to start out.

I researched online before I did ANYTHING, from what soil to use, to bugs. to seeds. A few helpful cites for me learn about general gardening were:

http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/garden/mg/vegetable/index.html

http://www.phxgardening.com/grow-vegetables.html

http://www.gardenguy.com/learn/articles/index.html

http://frugaldad.com/2008/03/03/how-to-build-a-square-foot-garden/

The obvious first step was to figure out what foods should be and can be planted in October in Arizona. I used this as a guide:

http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/garden/az1005.pdf

I decided on (I'll list the exact brands in a separate post):

Tomatoes (1 transplant and two varieties of seeds)

Green Bean seeds

Red and green pepper transplants

Peas (2 transplants and one kind of seed)

Cucumber transplants

Broccoli seeds

Basil transplants (good for pest control)

Oregano transplants (also good for pests)

Zucchini squash transplant

onion seeds (not ideal, but I couldn't find any bulbs)

carrot seeds

cantaloupe seeds (this was a favor for my son Jack who loves melon)

Romaine lettuce transplants

Spinach transplants and seeds

The second step was plan out the placement of veggies. I needed to make sure that next door neighbor veggies would play nicely together. I had a feeling that some could harm the development of others if placed together, so I researched and found my saving grace:

http://www.vegetable-gardening-online.com/

This site has pre-made layouts or templates for you to make your own. I like it because it shows you how many of each veggie can fit into a square foot section. That way you know how many squares you want to use per vegetable. For example, we love carrots, so I planned to use 3 squares for carrots. I also knew I needed to leave at least one square open for our sprinkler.

I used a pre-made layout and tweaked it to accommodate my chosen veggies. Here's my final layout plan:

Let me go over my codes...In each box, I wrote the vegetable on the top, then I plotted out how many would fit in each square and drew as circles. On the bottom left corner, I noted "T" if I planted a transplant, S1 if it was a seed I planted in week 1, or S2 if it was a week 2 seed. I wanted to experiment with timing, which is why I planted a few seeds a week apart.

*Side note: It was 90-100 degrees for the first 8 days or so. I planted my first veggies on Oct. 16th.

On the bottom right corner, I wrote the estimated number of days until harvest, according to multiple sites and the back of seed packets. I have a detailed journal, and in there I wrote the estimated dates for which I could expect seeds to germinate (show their tips). I do all of this to make sure I'm doing things right and so that I know if something's wrong. I know it's very detailed, but it didn't take more than 10 minutes to write and I like knowing everything I can about my new project.

On planting day, I made sure I had my layout map handy and planted as the packages said. Some seeds only need to be planted 1/4" deep, so I found it easiest to sprinkle the seeds on top of the soil and then just "fluff" the soil around a bit. I also added a wire accordion-style partition between my tomatoes and peas for them to grab onto (something I didn't know until my husband pointed out!)

The last step was to set up the water timer. Mike set it to go on at 5am for 10 minutes each day. It's important to know which crops need daily watering and which need less. I'll catch you up on that in another post.

Here's the final product:

Before we begin...

I guess I should introduce myself! I'm Kirsten. I'm originally from Minnesota and moved to Arizona in 2002. My father grew up on a farm, and my maternal grandmother's family owned a potato farm. One would assume that the spawn of such successful farmers would be born with a green thumb in her mouth, right? Well, this experiment will prove or disprove those assumptions.

Growing up in Minnesota, my dad always had a large 20'x20' vegetable garden. I will try to utilize what little I remember from helping him pull carrots and gaze ignorantly at the mass of rhubarb that no one seemed to acknowledge. Years later, my mom turned the garden into a flower garden, complete with block paths and way too many shiny chotchkes.

My whole family has slowly, one-by-one, migrated to Arizona. I know that gardening will be 100 times more challenging here, with the extreme heat, absence of rain, dust storms, dead soil, and my backyard chickens.

Speaking of my girls...they are the reason for my gardening desires. We decided on a whim to get chicks one day in 2009. With my husband being so handy, he whipped up a coop, nesting boxes, and a run in one day. That's how we do things around here: I get a crazy idea, Mike makes it happen, and we live happily ever after!

I love LOVE having chickens; They're fun, awesome pets. We currently have three: Piggy, Amelia Cluckhart, and Bella Swan. We've had two fatalities in two years due to excessive heat, but otherwise the hens are healthy and each produce one egg each day, as long as it's not too hot out. We love just watching them roam the yard and eat "stuff". I'll blog about them as I go.

For the past two years, I have loved getting fresh, organic eggs every day. They taste so much better than eggs from the store, and I control what the hens eat - organic feed and yard bugs. No chemicals, no additives, no preservatives. I wanted to go a step further with this food thing.

One day a few weeks ago, I told my husband that I wanted to start an organic vegetable garden. Remember, I had NO knowledge of planting, fertilizing, or harvesting. Within 24 hours my husband made a raised garden pop up in our back yard. And 24 hours after that, our first vegetables were in the ground.

I have kept meticulous records from Day 0 (the day he set everything up), so my goal is to help others who also want to get into gardening with little to no experience. I'm always open to comments, suggestions or questions, so type away : )