Bigger May Not Be Better

The lesson continues. I learned this week to be sure and read the price per ounce. Dear Hubby always looks at that but it just confuses me. I am used to going in the store and getting out as soon as I can. That has got to change. You see, I found something interesting. It deals with something I buy all the time.
I am stuck on one Carefree Liners. I can bring myself to change brands yet so I comparison shop. The larger package I found this weekend was 8 cents higher per unit than the smaller package. I had 2 coupons to boot!! So I used the coupons on the smaller packages which was a much better deal. Never make fun of the lady with the pink calculator. She is getting a better deal than you are. lol

I saved over 60% on my groceries I needed this weekend. I'm stocking up when I find a good deal but I'm not hoarding. I am not hoarding. I am not.....
I was happy to get free Snuggle fabric softener. One of the girls in our group of couponers got a better deal than I did at Kmart but Food Lion is just down the street for me. I found Snuggle for $2.99 and I had a $3.00 off coupon!!! It pays to get more papers or ask your family for the inserts. I stocked up on Snuggle so I won't have to buy it until another deal like this one comes along.
Now our friend found it at Kmart for 2 for $5.00 or $2.50 each. With the $3.00 coupon it was a money maker for her! They gave her money back!!!
Food Lion just deducted the whole amount off my total food bill.

I found Heinz Ketchup on close out for 86 cents! Of course I bought more than one bottle but I know that summer is coming and typically condiments go on sale for barbecue season.

Okay so we made a call to a co-worker in another department to ask for a phone number for someone. We told her we wanted to find out about Sunday papers and what they do with old inserts. You won't believe it but this nice lady is a COUPONER! She's a serious couponer too.

So since our group is growing so fast I'm starting a little Google group so we can all post and chat and exchange. Maybe later we can move up a little but I want to start small and expand as I find time and gain knowledge.

I have a TO-DO list for April 1st.

Download Kroger e-coupons
Print internet coupons - - - they reset on the first
Clear out expireds and get them ready to donate
Look over the Wednesday flyers I'm too tired to look at

Not too much huh? I want to find a couple more of the Snuggle coupons but that is not a priority. I'm excited about the P&G insert this Sunday.

You can go to the Sunday Coupon Preview widget on the side and check it out.

In the meantime, tell your friends about my blog. I'd like to have alot of followers so I can actually say "I'm a Blogger" with confidence.

Keep clippin!

Beginning

How do you go from forgetting about coupons to never leaving home without them? I admit I was skeptical when my local new station WTOC did a segment on the Coupon Mom. How can someone save so much money? I mean how can you have a life?
So I found Coupon Mom's site and I have been learning ever since. You need this resource so visit her site. http://www.couponmom.com

My goal was to reduce the amount of money I pay for food and groceries and increase the amount of money in our emergency fund. I didn't intend to build a stockpile like I've seen on other sites. I need all the space in my house cause it's really small. As I've been studying I'm finding out that I may lose a little space in my spare room. Okay I won't go overboard but it will be necessary for me to build a little stock.

You can use a coupon and get a little money off. If you look at the store brand it's probably cheaper than what you have a coupon for. UNLESS you use the coupon when you get the most value. I'm discovering the whole seasonal sales cycles. Most all the stores around here have sales events. Well, except Walmart. I hardly ever find grocery deals there yet. I'm talking about my grocery stores. They put out a weekly flyer which I have emailed to me. ALERT** create a new email account and have all your couponing emails sent there. You may end up filling your regular email account up with spam. Put your important store email addresses in your addy book so you'll get all the right emails.

The object of couponing is to get the best price possible and then save even more with the coupon. We buy lots of frozen potato items. I love Ore Ida fries, tater tots, hashbrowns, you name it. Normally these things are over $3.00 a bag. When they go on sale I try to buy a couple and have enough to last a couple of weeks.
I was doing this all wrong too! I now know that when there's a sale on Ore Ida, let's say buy one at $3.50 and get one free. I asked my store manager if BOGO's ring up half price for each product or full price for one then the other is free. Her answer: "you can buy just one and it will ring up half price". That tells me the bags are on sale for $1.75 each. Hey - I got a coupon for $1.00 off one bag. Wait - I got 2 coupons!!!! That makes each bag .75 cents each. Now I know my store does this sale or one similar, every 8 weeks or so. If we use one bag per week I need to buy at least 8 bags. See why I needed that chest freezer?

Cereal is another big thing around here. We LOVE it. I try not to pay $4.50 per box. Kroger just had a sale on certain ones and I had coupons that made the price fifty cents each. Lost a little space in the spare room but not buying anymore until there's another sale.

I'm not stockpiling anything that I don't use or can't use before it expires. Some people stockpile and then sell what they don't use. I just don't have the room or the time.

WHERE ARE THE COUPONS??????
I get the paper on Sunday but that only gives you one copy of each coupon if you're lucky. Sometimes I've bought the paper only to find the inserts are torn or half missing. I hate that. I try to get a paper near the middle but you know how that goes. So where are the coupons?
I'm not going diving - looking through recycling bins for insert. Sorry, I don't have the time or guts. It's a great idea but I just can't bring myself to do that yet. My husband would probably do it. I just ask my friends to save me the inserts. They don't coupon. (yet) If it's a really good week for inserts I may buy more than one paper. I even have a relationship with a local store owner. When they don't sell all the papers he will pull the inserts for me on Monday morning. He only needs to return the "paper" to get credit.

I also print from the internet.
SmartSource, Redplum, coupons.com and other sites allow you to download coupons up to the print limit. Most stores will accept these. Be sure to visit their sites and look carefully after they print for coupons you can get directly from companies. I will direct you to Southern Savers for this information. Jennifer has a great site with all the links. http://southernsavers.com

Signing up to be a fan on facebook will get you coupons too. You can pretty much find them anywhere! Even writing the company may get you coupons.

I keep all my coupons in a binder. I have the time and patience to clip all the coupons. I found that if I have several of the same inserts I'll staple them together so I can cut more than one out at a time. I do this while watching TV so I'm not losing any valuable time. Some people file the whole insert. You can read more about that under organization.

When I cut coupons I slide them into plastic baseball card protectors labeled with each category of my binder. When they are all cut out I file them in the binder and remove any expireds. I donate my expired coupons to military spouses overseas. This way I see each coupon I have. I'm more visual so I tend to see and remember.

MATCHING COUPONS TO SALES
You ever see those little blinky dispensers at the store that spit out coupons? Look carefully before you use them. I've learned that most of the time, the product will go on sale when the coupon dispenser is gone. Case in point - Food Lion had a blinky on Hormel ready meals. I pulled a couple since they were $1 off one. I didn't buy any I just pulled a couple of coupons out. The meals were 2 for $5.00 which was not as low as I've seen. Each time I went in I checked and sure enough, the blinky was still there and the price was the same. Each time I went in I pulled 2 and filed them. As soon as the blinky was removed I found them on sale for 2 for $3.00 or $1.50 each. With my $1.00 off coupon I paid 50 cents for each one. I stocked up and lost a little more space in my spare room.

If I clip all the coupons including those I don't need, what do I do with them all? Well we are starting a coupon swap at the office. Every 2 weeks we will get together at lunch and swap coupons we don't use. The expired coupons are collected and we'll send them off. I'll tell you more about that later.

So lesson here----read my sales flyers and match my coupons to the sales. I found a preview of upcoming inserts:

I get store sales flyers emailed to my house and I check the paper. I sit down and match the sale item with any coupons. I learned how to stack too.

Stacking is where you use a store coupon with a manufacturer's coupon. Some stores let you do this, others don't. You have to ask your manager. What's a store coupon? It usually has the store logo on it and the barcode begins with 0. You get them from sales flyers or the store web site. Target has lots of store coupons on their website. If body wash is on sale at Rite Aid, I can use a Rite Aid store coupon and a manufacturer's coupon on the one item. CVS ads actually encourage you to do this so it's ethical.

I am practicing matching on my own but I also watch the coupon blogs to see what matches come out from other people. If you use the Coupon Mom site you can pull your matches from there. I'm learning though that you must be creative. You must also purchase as much as you can when the item is on sale so you don't have to purchase when it's at it's highest price. By the time you run out, your item is back on sale. The goal seems to be: Do not purchase something unless it's on sale. Which means you can't run out of something until it's back on sale. I think that leads me to stockpiling.

I'm not shopping from a NEEDS stand point but rather a SALES standpoint. That takes a little bit of getting used to. In the long run I'm saving money. I'm not shopping because I'm out of something. I'm shopping because I can get something at a great price and have it on stand by for when I do run out. The grocery bill may rise slightly in the beginning since you are still having to buy essentials you are out of until they go on sale. Once you get your stock pile in place you'll notice the difference.

If everyone else can do this, so can I. Welcome to my attempt to become an extreme couponer. I have used coupons for years but apparently I've been doing it all wrong. I've saved money along the way but I sure would like to save the kind of money I see other people saving.
So as I learn I'll share.

I can't see myself posting several times a day for tons of followers looking for deals. I will post the blogs I visit most often for that kind of information. I'm a casual blogger at best. Maybe I'll get better, maybe not. I live near the Georgia Coast and being casual is a way of life. You have to practice hard if you come from a large city though. So take off those flip flops, prop your feet up and relax. Here's my story.....

What got me started? My local Food Lion lowered their prices so I started shopping there and receiving their emails instead of running to Walmart. Then my local Piggly Wiggly started a promotion with coupons. Use 10 manufacture coupons and get 10 greenbax. So they are both fighting for my business. In the meantime, a new Kroger was opened just down the road. NOW - I find out Publix is coming to my town. So I began to look at all the stores to find out which one was coupon friendly and had the best prices. I search the web high and low for information. Boy was I shocked by what I found. There are people just like me looking for the best deals and using coupons and stocking up! My husband and I bought a chest freezer last year because I insisted on having a garden and buying meats only when they were on sale.
I'm still cooking peas that I blanched and froze last summer. Now I find there are people out there just like me!!!

As I started talking to others around my office I learned that we all use coupons and we are pretty serious about it. We had just never mentioned it to each other. Now we're starting a coupon swap! I've met some wonderful people with those little square pieces of paper money! So now in an attempt to record my journey (that's SOOO bloggish) I post my very first post.
Oh my goodness, what have I gotten myself into?