Coupons 101

Girls you must stop the insanity! If you are paying full price for anything you buy you are paying too much. We use a coupon for everything. Groceries, diaper, health and beauty, lawn care (Hubs may not purchase fertilizer, seeds, ect without a coupon) restaurants! In this day there is a coupon for everything. Hubs called me a “money pirate” the other day as I was hovering over him while he was planning a trip to Home Depot. Our monthly budget is $200.00. We buy everything with that $200 bucks. If we go out to eat it comes out of that money, if Hubs needs something for the yard that money, groceries, diapers (the trade comes in handy here). We make it on this budget most months. Occasionally if there are some special occasions in a given month we will fall short a little. We also “occasionally” like to partake in an alcoholic beverage. That is not included in this budget. We do have a separate budget for that. Hehe.

Where do I get coupons?

1. Subscribe to the newspaper.
2. Ask your family and friends for their coupons. I assure you there are tons of people that you are close to that get the paper and don’t use coupons. (In my case every week for sure I get my paper, my friend Jamie gets two papers and my parents get two papers so I will always have 5 sets of newspaper coupons)
3. Use the internet. Coupons.com and smartsource.com.
4. Read blogs! A lot of the bloggers will post a coupon that I might want. I only print it if it is something I would use. And remember it might be free so you have to ask yourself would I want this if it were free?
5. Subscribe to All You Magazine.

How do I organize my coupons?

I used moneysavingmom method. I clip my coupons and have then organized alphabetically. You can use the coupon princess Homeland deals very well using this method. This works best for me. When I first started I kept them as they came in the paper and just wrote the date on them. You can do Christi’s Homeland deals very well using this method.

Is it time consuming?

You can spend as much or as little time as you like working on coupons. I got insane about it for a while. Now I have slowed down and I normally only work CVS and Homeland. They are both right beside my house (using less gas) and next month we will become a one car family. I will blog all about that later. I find that the cashiers at both of these stores are very friendly and don’t mind to do several transactions for your coupons. Target has great deals but I would rather have a colonoscopy than use my coupons at Target. The cashiers are ALWAYS rude and they act like the money you save comes out of their paycheck. I do like to do Wal-Mart but normally I have both children with me and only when I want to punish myself do I drag them to Wal-Mart.

Just start simple and try it. Once you see how much money you will save I promise you will be hooked!