Tuesday, August 30, 2011

COUPONING!

I have recently joined the band wagaon of couponing!  WOW!  I never knew I could save so much money!  Don't get me wrong, I have always clipped a few coupons and used one from time to time, but never on this level.  I littarally cut my bill in half the other day!  The FIRST KEY thing for me to understand was I was NOT buying for the week.  I was buying for the lowest possible rock bottom price for the products we use in our household.  You definately save more when you are willing to be flexible on your brands.  To be honest I am not very flexible.  I love my brands!  I will be flexible on some things, but not everything.

I began my adventure by creating a notebook with baseball card collector sleaves labeled with various food/staple items.  I collected coupons from my local papers, internet, and flyers.  The SECOND KEY thing for me was to lay out my sale papers for the week and match my coupons to the sale items.  I understand it takes about 6 months to get fully acclimated to couponing.  I am not there yet, but I am on my way!   I picked two stores to start out with.  You may pick more than that if you feel ok, but I didn't want to overwhelm myself.  I laid the sale papers out and began going through my collected coupons.  The more coupons the more possible savings and quantity you may buy.  Over time, you will learn what is the lowest sale price on each product and when to use the coupons on that item.  When that item is on sale for the lowest possible price, you use your coupons and stock up for about a 3 month supply.  The Third Key thing for me was to undersand that ALL items go on sale every 6-8 weeks.

The most wonderful thing is that there are several great websites that do all the guess work for you.  My favorite is southernsavers.com.  These sites will not only guide you every step of the way, they will give you every week the best deals possible.  It does look a bit overwhelming at first, but trust me, give it a try!  It is addicting when you can cut your grocery bill in half and get things so cheap, some things free, and believe it or not sometimes the store will pay you to buy some items!  Its true!

Happy couponing!  Below are a few helpful websites:

Southernsavers.com
Faithfulprovision.com
Moneysavingmom.com
Krazycouponlady.com
Couponmom.com
Coupons.com

More sites: