The Top Five Things I Have Learned about Coupons
I’ve always tried to be a bargain hunter and find the best deals in my shopping for groceries and household products, but it’s only been in the past six or eight months that I’ve added using coupons to my repertory of bargain hunting strategies. We signed up a Sunday-only subscription to the newspaper soon after we moved here. My original intention in doing this was not to get coupons — it was to have all the weekly sale ads conveniently delivered each week, as well as having the entertainment value of the Sunday paper to read each week. But, as I started paying attention to the coupon inserts, I realized I could actually make use of them. I’m no coupon diva, but I have managed to learn a few things that are helping me save money.
1. There really are coupons for things I use. Before I started actually looking at the coupon inserts in the newspaper, I thought that almost all the coupons would be for convenience foods I rarely use. I was surprised to find that many coupons are for household products (toilet paper, paper towels, laundry and dishwasher detergents, dish soap, etc) and “personal care” items like body wash, shampoo, deodorant, contact lens solution, and so on. We like cold breakfast cereals, and there are a fair number of cereal coupons for the non-super-sweet varieties. There are also a decent number of coupons for fairly basic food items like plain pasta, canned tomatoes, frozen veggies, baking supplies, yogurt and other dairy products. There’s also the seasonal coupons — I saw coupons for pens and other office supplies at “back to school” time and coupons for ice cream in the summer. There are now coupons for Halloween candy. Around Thanksgiving and Christmas time there are extra coupons for baking supplies.
2. Internet coupons are (more often than not) the “real deal”. I also had this idea that internet-printable coupons were a total fraud. Several years ago, when using a coupon I had gotten in the mail from a manufacturer, a salesclerk really gave the coupon a close look and asked me if this was one of those “fake internet coupons…because all those are a scam, you know.” I didn’t really know anything about internet coupons, but at that point I was scared into thinking that I should never try and use one anyway. A few years ago internet coupons may have been a scam…and that “too good to be true” coupon your Aunt Ethel forwarded you in an email probably is a fake. But coupons printed today from reputable sources are usually just fine to use.
These days, coupon publishing firms like “smart source” (the same people who bring you some of your Sunday newspaper coupon inserts), the manufacturers themselves, and other coupon websites have found ways to allow consumers to only print a specified number of each coupon (usually one or two) and to make the coupons more difficult to tamper with. The downside of this is that you have to install little coupon-printing applets from the various websites that allow you to print the coupons, and these applets seem to only work well in Internet Explorer. But, that small hassle seems well worth it to find coupons that are often even better than the ones you find in your Sunday newspaper inserts.
It is still wise to check on your local stores’ policies before walking in with an armload of internet-printed coupons. Some places still won’t accept them, even with the safeguards against fraud that are now in place. Other stores limit the value they will accept (such as only accepting internet printable coupons up to $1 in value). Some stores may require the coupons be printed in color or limit the number of identical coupons that can be used in one transaction.
3. Use your coupons when the product is on sale. This seems so obvious now, but until I read this tip on a bargain hunting blog, it had never occurred to me. When I had considered using coupons in past years, another reason I had thought it might not be worthwhile is that even with a coupon for a name-brand item, it seemed like the generic would still be cheaper. However, I find that when I use the coupon the same week the product is one sale, many times the name brand product will now be cheaper than its generic equivalent.
Cold breakfast cereals are a good example of this. I can get a box of generic cereal at Aldi for somewhere in the range of $1.75 – $2.25 depending on the flavor. But, if I wait to stock up on name-brand cereal when it is on sale or a special promotion is in effect, I usually end up paying as little as $1.25 to $1.50 per box, and occasionally as little as $1 per box! Some items rarely go on sale, and sometimes the generic is still cheaper even when I could combine a sale and a coupon, but the “sale + coupon” strategy is usually pretty effective.
4. Combine manufacturer coupons with store coupons for even more deals. This is another strategy that was new to me in the past few months. If your grocery store puts out store coupons, you can usually combine those with a manufacturer’s coupon and use both on the same item! You do need to read the fine-print on each coupon, because some coupons that are published in a store sales flyer really are manufacturer coupons. Similar to using your manufacturer’s coupons when an item was on sale, combining your coupon use also makes for some of the best deals.
5. Use blogs and other websites to track coupon deals and other bargains. I’ve discovered there is a whole genre of blogs devoted to hunting for bargains using coupons and other money-saving strategies. These blogs will alert you to the best deals of the week (often combining sales, coupons and other special promotions) at various grocery stores, drug stores and discount stores like Target and Wal-Mart. These blogs will also often alert their readers to free product samples various manufacturers are giving away, special give-aways and other deals at various restaurant chains, and general bargain-hunting strategies. A couple of blogs from this genre that I’ve been enjoying are Money Saving Mom and Northern Cheapskate.
There are also websites solely devoted to pointing out the best deals each week at various grocery stores. Some of these like “The Grocery Game” are a paid service, while others such as Coupon Mom and My Grocery Deals don’t charge for their service, but also don’t have quite as much information. I did the free trial of “The Grocery Game” and didn’t find it useful enough to pay for it, at least based on the way I shop. But many people apparently find it to be a great way to save a ton of money on their grocery bills.
Another great resource for learning more about using coupons and other deals is “Hot Coupon World.” They have forums devoted to couponing in general, as well as forums for specific kinds of deals, and store-specific forums. The store forums can be a great resource for learning more about the coupon policies of the stores you shop at, as well as finding out about great deals that other shoppers are finding. There’s also a coupon database. If you see a sale on a particular product and are looking for a coupon to pair with the sale, you can search in the database for that product, and if there have been any coupons lately it will tell you where to find them.
Concluding Thoughts: Like I said, I am no coupon diva. I’m not one of those people you read about who can walk into the store and come out with a whole cart-load of groceries for a couple bucks. But, I think I have saved a decent amount of money by spending a little bit of time pursuing the use of coupons. I am also not super organized about, so it doesn’t really need to take a lot of time to make it worth while. I read through the Sunday paper coupons each week, but I tend to only actually clip coupons once every few weeks. I have a coupon organizer (I think it’s really a check organizer) I got in the dollar section at Target, and sometimes lots of coupons are sitting in it clipped, but not sorted by category. I try to spend a little bit of time each week looking through sale ads and finding coupons, but some weeks I just go to Aldi and find what I need and I don’t look for all the best deals. Even if I only have time to pursue using coupons and finding awesome deals one or two weeks out of each month, I’m at least helping make our grocery budget stretch a little further.