Couponing 101- Lesson One

Picture me doing my best Jack Nicholson from Batman impression as I repeat a question often posed by cashiers or those behind me in the checkout lane when shopping as of late..."where does she get such wonderful coupons????"

The answer? Most in my binder come from a couponers bread and butter- that of the Sunday paper inserts. I buy multiple copies of inserts- typically 10-12 each week. Our local Walgreens sell these at 50 cents less than other stores and I've learned that some Dollar Trees will even sell them for $1! Some folks opt to "dumpster dive" for additional newspaper inserts. I am not one of those folks (but no judgments to those of you who are!) Do not bother to scoop up multiple inserts on holiday weekends as you'll find that there are no inserts to be found in a holiday weekend paper.

After couponing for awhile and frequenting various message boards, I've learned that different regions get different coupons- not only for different type of products, but the coupon's face value can even vary from region to region and paper to paper. When super doubles are around, you'll be hoping for $1 and $1.50 coupons for your staple items; when it's triples, you'll be wishing for 50 cent and 75 cent coupon for maximum savings. So how do you get the most bang for your buck? You can hope to get lucky from your paper's inserts...or you can do what I do- trade coupons to get those for the products you need in the most desirable face values!

Trading coupons can be a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. There are many sites for which you can trade coupons. There are also sites out there for "clipping services" where you can pay for certain coupons. I don't pay for coupons. Well, that is not entirely true- there are sometimes that I will make a paypal gift as part of a trade- but I don't use clipping services at all. I trade quite frequently on http://www.hotcouponworld.com/. How it typically works is you'll try to work out a trade where it's a dollar for dollar type of exchange- or as close to it as you can come (ie, if you're looking for 10- $1/1 oreo cakester coupons, your trade offer would likely be for $10 worth of coupons). You can also trade with paypal as currency like I mentioned above or for forever stamps- generally these types of trades will work out as 10 cents on the dollar for coupon value (so if you have a trade for $20 worth of coupons, you'd either trade with $2 of a paypal gift or about 5 forever stamps).

I also get coupons online. Typically, you can only print out two internet coupons from your computer/IP address for a specific item. I've grown to use these more and more. I've read that many stores are encounter lots of coupon fraud- so some merchants will not accept these entirely. I haven't yet run across a store that doesn't accept these and I really really hope I won't.

I've recently discovered another great source for coupons at Walmart. It's a magazine that is only sold there entitled "All You." I've started purchasing multiple copies and will likely continue to do so. There are some great coupons you can find in this magazine!

There are other ways of getting coupons- blinkies (those found on the beeping red coupon dispensers along a store's aisles), peelies (those found stuck to the products themselves), hangtags (those found in a hangtag on the neck of a product) and winetags (one of my personal faves as previously discussed in the blog). I'm not a big fan of the blinkie or peelie q's because many of these will not double or triple. You can tell if a coupon will automatically double or triple by looking at the barcode on the coupon- if it starts with a 5, it should double/triple, it it starts with a 9, it will not double/triple.

You can also email manufacturers of products you love and request coupons! I'm going to be doing more and more of this as several of our fave products do not typically have coupons issued in Sunday inserts or magazines.

If any of you have any other tips for hunting coupons, feel free to share!!!

There should be lots of drugstore goodies to be had this coming weekend- I will try to post what I feel to be the best finds tomorrow.

Our next couponing lesson will be ORGANIZING- a trouble spot for most of us who have accumulated an obscene amount of coupons....stay tuned!