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.