My Guide to Couponing
1. Let go of your brand loyalty. You will start to shop based on sales and what coupons you have. (Don’t worry if you have to have one or two certain products. David will only eat Peter Pan peanut butter, and I still occasionally find a coupon!)
2. Buy the newspaper. Start buying 2-4 copies of the newspaper from the largest metro area near you. For us East Texans, I have found the Dallas Morning News to have the best coupons on a regular basis. (If you get the Lindale News they include the Proctor & Gamble insert each week too!)
a. I will talk about how to organize all of these later J
3. Learn the value of the Facebook. Almost every company has a Facebook page. You will want to ‘Like’ as many of these as possible. Almost all of them post coupons that lead to free or nearly free products.
4. Seek out “deal finder” type pages on Facebook. Most have a corresponding internet site. These wonderful people find the deals for you. They post new finds, online coupons, and some have databases of coupons where you can type in a product name to find a deal! Most have a sharing aspect so followers can also post deals they find. Here are my favorites:
5. Organize your coupons. I use a binder divided into 13 sections. I have plastic trading card pages inside it that hold the coupons (but you can find others through Amazon.com). Doing the initial setup took me about 4-5 hours, but now it takes me about an hour a week to pull old coupons and replace with new ones. Here are the divisions that I use (but you can use whatever makes sense for your household). Because Target.com offers so many coupons, I also have a small plastic fold-out case for these.
a. Razors/Shave Gel/Skin Care
b. Body Wash/Lotion/Deodorant
c. Detergent/Laundry Care
d. Cleaners/Air fresheners
e. Medicine
f. Snacks/Chips/Sauces
g. Frozen/Refrigerated
h. Dry food/Canned Food/Drinks
i. Storage/Household/Other (For me this also includes pet items since we don’t have pets. I still keep these because my parents do, and I will buy items if they are free.)
j. Toilet Paper/Paper Towels/Tissue
k. Toothpaste/Mouthwash
l. Makeup/Haircare/Feminine Products
m. Baby Stuff
6. Stack your coupons. This means matching a manufacturer coupon to a store coupon. Here is an example of one I did last week:
a. Target had MaybellineLip Gloss for $4.94. I had a $2 coupon from the manufacturer and a $2 coupon from Target.com. Target allows you to use both, so the lip gloss was only .94!
b. Target and Walgreens have the best stackable coupons from what I have seen. You can access them through their websites.
c. CVS has them sometimes.
7. Take advantage of gift card deals, money back deals (CVS & Walgreens), and rebates offered. CVS calls these extrabucks and Walgreens calls them register rewards. These can be very profitable. For CVS and Walgreens these will be shared in their weekly ad, and with the purchase of the items, these print out with your receipt. They do expire, but it’s usually after a few weeks. Here is an example I got at CVS last week:
a. They offered $3 in extra bucks back on the purchase of 3 American Greetings cards. They have 99 cent cards, so I bought 3 @ .99= 2.97 and got $3 in extrabucks back for my next CVS purchase.
8. Join store loyalty programs like CVS’s ExtraCare and Brookshire’s loyalty card. At Brookshire’s you can load coupons onto your card online! At CVS you scan your card at a machine when you walk in, and “magic” coupons print J
9. Print coupons online. You can generally print 2 of each coupon per computer you use. One some sites it also asks for a zip code. Sometimes coupons are only offered in certain areas. The Facebook pages you ‘liked’ will usually share the zip code if this is the case. Here are the sites I use the most:
c. www.redplum.com
10. Learn the coupon policies of the stores you will shop. They can usually be found on the company website. For example, most stores accept no more than 4 of a like coupon, but many reserve the right to limit you based on manager or cashier opinion.
Depending on where you live, you may find a store that doubles or triples, but around the Lindale area these are limited so I did not address this. It’s pretty self-explanatory though if you find one J
In general, I find the best deals at the stores below. If you live in an area with other drugstores or grocery stores, you may find your own favorites. J
1. Target (and not just because I work there J) They have the largest number of store coupons for stacking that I have found.
2. CVS
3. Walgreens
4. Brookshires
5. Walmart
