Follow Coupon Websites
The only site I currently follow is Money Saving Mom. She lists weekly deals for CVS, Walgreens, Rite-Aid, Wam-Mart, and Target. Her deals include coupon match-ups from Sunday inserts. She also posts links for freebies and sample requests. I've gotten lots of stuff in the mail through this--deodorant, soap/shampoo, lotion, snacks, even a tiny roll of toilet paper that motivated Jazz to use the potty. What I really like about the samples is that they often come with high value coupons that I can use later. She also has a series of posts about frugal living and some basic DIY links, like how to make your own laundry detergent. My advice in finding a coupon website is to find one that lists deals for the store(s) you already shop. I need to find one for Randall's match-ups; folks in AZ should look for Safeway and Kroger/Fry's.
Learn Coupon Policies
One thing I have done is looked into coupon policies for the stores around me. I have pretty limited grocery options here, unfortunately. My choices are H.E.B., which does not double coupons and seems to have high regular prices, so I don't shop there; Wal-Mart, which does not double coupons but has the lowest regular prices; and Randall's, which has high regular prices but triples manufacturer's coupons up to 39 cents and doubles manufacturer's coupons that are 40 cents to 50 cents. In fact, Randall's has the best coupon policy in this area. They publish their own coupons in the Sunday paper, and they allow you to stack coupons--you can use one store coupon and one manufacturer's coupon on a single item. They will also let you use an e-coupon (one you find online and load onto your shopper loyalty card) for the same item. This combo has let me get several items for free or even a few cents over. I have made my peace with getting paid to take home groceries!
Target also allows you to stack store and manufacturer coupons. Their website has a selection of printable coupons that you can print off at home. This week, for example, Target had 10.0 oz. Vaseline lotion (the preferred brand in this house) on sale for $2.50, down from $2.99. I printed off a Target coupon for $1/1 Vaseline lotion. I also had a manufacturer's coupon for $1/1. I used both to get a bottle for $0.50. Target will also run specials where you can get a $5 gift card for purchasing certain items together. If you can match these up with coupons, it's even better! Recently, they had the ginormous bottles of Vaseline lotion for $5 each, and you could get a $5 gift card if you purchased two at the same time. As it turns out, I had two Target coupons for $1/1 and two manufacturer's coupons for $1.50/1. I used the coupons and paid $5 for two bottles of lotion, plus I got a $5 Target gift card. I don't have one in reserve now because it came in handy for Christmas shopping, but I usually hang onto the gift card until I see another gift card deal for an item I use.
Some stores will allow you to use a buy one, get one free coupon with a buy one, get one free sale. I honestly felt sketchy doing that the first time, but the folks over at CVS don't bat an eye when I use those coupons. Hello, free deodorant!
Get Organized
Clipping coupons is...boring, at best. I try to sit down on Sunday or Monday and get rid of expired coupons and clip new coupons that I think I might use. I used to clip everything, but that started to make things too cluttered and difficult to use. I also used to try to save expired coupons to send to military bases overseas--they can use coupons up to six months past the expiration date. This is a great way to support our troops and their families, but I just couldn't find time to haul the kids down to the post office and get it taken care of. When the expired coupons started to take over the entire living room, I made a command decision to table that idea for now. If you have the time, though, it's something to keep in mind.
I'm still working on getting my coupons organized so that I can actually use them at the store. I have one of these small, plastic, expanding file folders. It has built-in plastic dividers, but I also cut out pieces of construction paper that divide my categories into more specific sections. My main sections are cold, freezer, canned goods, boxed food/cereal, hygiene, snacks, paper, snacks, dessert/baking, drinks, cats, paper products, cleaning supplies, and miscellaneous. The cold section is further divided into yogurt, cheese, biscuits, and meat. This allows me to find coupon quickly when I come across a good but unexpected deal. Some people don't bother with clipping and just stick the whole insert into a binder, but this doesn't work for me. In one example I saw recently (and cannot find again to save my life), someone used a binder with baseball card sheets. She organized the sheets into categories like mine and put one coupon into each little slot, and put the rest of the insert in the back of the file. This allowed her to see each coupon quickly, but she also had the other coupons she probably wouldn't use in case she came across a great deal.
I have a separate index card box for my store coupons. I keep Target, Randall's and CVS coupons in that box, as well as my CVS ExtraCare Bucks. Since I don't need those when I hit Wal-Mart, I can leave it in the car and have less stuff taking up space in my purse.
My system isn't perfect, and I'm always looking for improvements. Some people organize by category, like I do, and some people organize by expiration date. Some people even organize by expiration date within categories, but I'm not that organized yet. I'm intrigued by the baseball card sheet idea above, but I don't think I want to spend that much money getting organized right now. The important thing is to find a system that works best for how you operate--and not to let the organizational aspect of couponing take over your life and give you coupon burn out.
Learn the CVS Game
CVS has such high prices that I would never, ever buy anything there at regular price. However, I started playing the CVS game last year, and it has been a huge money saver for me. They have deals where you can get ExtraCare Bucks (ECB) on items that you purchase. They key is only to use ECB when you are going to get about the same amount of ECB back on that purchase. I've essentially been spending the same $10 at CVS since last April. This week, for example, they had some good deals on diapers and mouthwash. Huggies were on sale for $8.99 with $1 ECB. Listerine Zero was $2.99 with $1 ECB, and Crest ProHealth Rinse was $3.99 with $3.99 ECB. I had a CVS coupon for $2/1 Huggies, plus a manufacturer's coupon for $2/1. I also had two $1/1 manufacturer's coupons for Listerine Zero. I got one pack of Huggies ($8.99), two bottles of Listerine ($2.99 each), and one bottle of Crest ProHealth ($3.99), for a total of $18.96. I used $4 in coupons for the Huggies and $2 in coupons for the Listerine, bringing the total down to $12.96. I used $10 in ECB that I already had, bringing it down to $2.96 before tax. I got back $7.99 in ECB--$1 from the Huggies, $1 for each of the Listerine bottles, $3.99 for the Crest, and $1 from my green bag tag. (The green bag tag is a little tag that they scan every time you use a cloth bag on your purchase. On every fourth scan, you get $1 in ECB. I've gotten $10 in ECB from this from this.) I lost some money on this one because of how my ECBs were divided--I had a $10, a $2, and a $1, but was willing to lose $2 because I still have $10 in ECB total. It sounds complicated, but you can get the hang of after just one or two trips.
The downside to this is that you are, on occasion, forced to use or lose your ECB. They expire one month after you get them. There have been a few times where they didn't have anything on sale that I really needed, but I had ECB that expired that week, so I got something anyway. I usually get personal care products on weeks like this--I might not need any toothpaste since I already have ten bottles at home, but we can either add it to the stash or donate it to a food pantry, and I get to keep my ECB from expiring. The plus side is that having a stash allows me to lower my base price for hygiene items. Since I don't need anything right now, I can hold off on buying it till I find a rock-bottom sale price. I will not pay more than $1 for a tube of toothpaste--in fact, I have gotten several tubes for free over the past year by pairing coupons with ECB deals. My base price for bar soap is now $0.25/bar, my base price for body wash is $1, and my base for shampoo/condition is $1 to $1.50, depending on the brand (I LOVE Dove's shampoo, but I refuse to pay full price for it.).
Wal-greens has a similar deal, but they are kind of stingy with using multiple coupons on one item, and the store "cash" expires in two weeks instead of a month, so I was not able to save much money at all with their system. Rite-Aide also has a similar deal, but there are no locations near me, so I can't speak to how well it works.
Shop Clearance
This is one type of deal that is resistant to planning. If you have the time to check out the clearance sections, you can find some awesome deals. It helps if you can figure out a store's clearancing pattern. As far as I have determined, on Mondays, the Randall's near my gathers all of the dairy items that are going to expire that week and puts them at 50% off. I have no idea what types of items will get set aside--sometimes milk, sometimes cheese, sometimes yogurt--but I have scored some free or nearly free items this way. Remember, too, that you can pair coupons with clearance items. Yogurt is something that we eat a ton of, so I always look for it on clearance. Here's how the deal works out sometimes: Yoplait cups are $.50 each. I usually have a coupon for $0.40/6. At regular price, this works out to $3 with $0.40 off, so it's $2.60 for 6 cups of yogurt at Walmart, which is where I do my regular shopping. I sometimes find it in the clearance section of Randall's though, so I get 6 cups for $1.50. Since Randall's doubles the coupon, the coupon is for $0.80, so the final cost is $0.70 for 6 cups. Obviously, this is a much better deal--but I have no way of knowing if I can get it unless I actually go to the store and look. (I've made this deal really sweet before when I happened to have an e-coupon loaded onto my Randall's card--that gave me an additional $0.40 off, so I paid $0.30 for 6 cups of yogurt!)
I've learned where Target has clearance sections in personal care and grocery areas, and this has given me some pretty good deals, too. Just this week, I found two boxes of Celestial Seasonings green tea for $1.28 each. I had two coupons for $1/1, so I got each box for $0.28. Do we need green tea at the moment? No--I just bought a box recently. But for that price, we can just add it to the pantry stash.
It can be a pain to scope out clearance sections on each trip, and it can be a pain to get to more than one store with the kids, but I've gotten enough good deals to make it worth it. My ideal routine is to hit Randall's first on Monday to get sale/clearance items for the week, and then I hit Walmart for everything else either on Monday, if the kids are patient enough, or, more likely, Tuesday. CVS is about half a mile from the house, so we stop there on the way home after we are out for play dates or walks or other errands. I try to stay out of Target and only go once or twice a month when I know there is at least one good sale waiting for me.
I hope you found some helpful tips here! I'm trying to get into the mindset of making saving money my "job" so that I can justify staying home with the kids. If I can't bring much money into the house, then I can at least find ways to save it!
No comments:
Post a Comment