Does anyone coupon?

[BigB08822]

Does anyone coupon? My bf and I have been trying to get into it and have been learning the tricks of the trade. We have had many arguments about it but I guess that is part of the fun, We have accepted that we are never going to have shopping trips like you see on Extreme Couponing where someone gets $100 worth of groceries for $3.75 There are no stores in our area, or even in the state (I have researched), that double coupons and doubling is essential to get the products for free.

Anyway, in this economy it is important to save every penny you can. It costs $5 in gas just to drive to the store these days! Please come and share any great coupons or deals you find.

Winn Dixie is doing a pretty good sale this week. They have boxes of Hamburger Helper on sale for $1 and I found a coupon for .75 off if you buy 3 so you can get 3 boxes for $2.25 which is not bad. I am waiting until the last possible minute to buy them because I am holding out hope that I find a better coupon to pair with the store deal.

I check out coupon.com for coupons. However, they seem to be infamous for only putting up coupons that require you buy multiple products. It seems like a good saving but when you divide it by 3 it really isn't so special.

[Aceon6]

I tried, but couldn't cost justify the time involved. I figure my time is worth at least $10/hr, so I need to save $10 for every hour I invest in it. Like you, we have no stores that double, so it takes some doing to save even $10. With our grocery store around the corner (3/10ths of a mile), gas isn't a factor either.

I do watch for coupons for items we buy all the time, but I don't hold them for sales or match them with multiple grocer's circulars.

[Hannahclear]

I'm not extreme about it, but I find that coupons can save me maybe $4-5 on the average grocery bill. My best deals are usually for health and beauty products combined with drugstore sales.

[KikiSashaFan]

I don't coupon, it's not really a big thing here. We get flyers with sales advertised, but they don't contain actual coupons. I keep an ongoing shopping list and go once every 10 days or so, and I usually compare my list to the flyers and decide which of the 4 grocery stores near my house to go to. If none of them are better than another I like to shop at stores that have club cards that give you automatic discounts on whatever items are featured that week.

[Wyliefan]

My sister is a pretty extreme couponer -- I've told her she ought to go on the show. It actually annoys me a bit that the series seems to dwell on the really extreme cases, and then people watch and think they're all nuts. Not everyone does it just to hoard themselves a garage full of toothpaste. My sister does it because she needs to. She's paid a low salary and lives in a high-income area, and it helps her put food on the table. I'd like to see the show focus on more cases like hers. (Though I did like that they showed the one guy putting together something like a thousand care packages for the troops.)

[KatieC]

I sometimes use coupons - for things like laundry detergent and toothpaste and stuff like that. But only if I actually need the things when I come across the coupon. If I cut them out and keep them - I end up throwing them out the next year. I've never seen this doubling business.

[Satellitegirl]

I coupon from the fliers, but I don't get coupons off websites. Food Lion, a grocery here, has a booth where you can scan your card and it will print out coupons you can use on that shopping trip. Sometimes there are free item coupons, and a few other useful ones. Between my grocery card, and a few coupons, I can usually save over 5 dollars...which is better than nothing.

[Stormy]

I've been waiting for this thread to pop up in the wake of the show...which my husband and I LOVE. I'm totally addicted to it.

One thing to note about the show, several people on it have been pretty much proven to be couponing fradulently, like using coupons on products they weren't meant for. J'aime (the lady with the hooker boots and goshawful makeup) is the biggest example, she'd even posted YouTube videos showing how she used coupons fradulently at Target. So some of it I take with a grain of salt now.

I have to admit, a part of me wants to try to get like $500 worth of stuff for $5. I can see how people get a thrill from that. But if it's $500 of items and food I won't use or eat, then what do I do with it all? I don't need 57 mustards and 100 Yakisoba noodles.

Right now I am just trying to combine coupons with store sales for stuff we really buy. I actually got my hands on a bunch of .75 off any Vitamin Water coupons recently. My Stop and Shop doubles coupons up to .99, so when the Vitamin Water was on sale for $1.00, I was able to get all of them for free. I didn't get any "overage" but the coupon doubled up to the price of the item, so they were free.

Brian, check out Slickdeals. On their forums, there's a section for grocery and drugstore deals and people list out all the sales that week and the corresponding coupons that can be used with them. Super helpful! Although you basically have to start a stockpile of coupons for a few weeks to have the needed ones on hand.

[Allskate]

I've been thinking I should start couponing, but I think I might end up buying stuff I won't even really want and don't want to spend the time searching out coupons. It would be nice if there was one central place to search for any coupon you could want. You know, just do a search with your grocery list.

What I did start doing recently was using the safeway.com web site to add additional coupons and deals to my club card. It takes less than five minutes per week and I can do it while I'm watching tv. They almost always have a few things that I buy or need, including fresh fruits and vegetables. Even if it saves me just ten or fifteen bucks per month, it's worth it.

[Cherub721]

For anyone who has a Pathmark or Waldbaums nearby, this weekend they have double coupons up to $2, and next weekend they'll be doing triple coupons up to and including $1. The deals last Fri, Sat, and Sun. They are not quite as good as they sound, because usually when they have really good coupon deals like that, nothing good is on sale. Last week they had triples and some of the stuff at regular price + triples was still more expensive that buying on sale with the usual double coupons. But you can usually find pastas, chips, and staples like that you can get free.

Also if anyone has Stop & Shop they have a good deal on Hallmark Expressions cards this week. Buy 3 and get $5 off your next order. The key is some of these cards are only $.99! Today I bought 6, the machine spit out two $5 coupons, I used one of them on my order and paid $1.45 for 6 birthday cards and had a $5 coupon for my next order. Essentially a moneymaker.

Definitely check out extrabucks/register rewards deals at CVS and Walgreens. They will often put the product "free after extra bucks" so if you use a coupon, the coupon will cover your tax (in my state we pay tax on non-foods) and you make a little extra. We get lots of things like toothpaste, deodorant, shampoo, mouthwash, razors, and shaving cream for free. I don't go over the top because I don't have space, but I like to keep a stash that will last 3-6 months then I kind of ignore the sales until it's time to replenish. Those items go on sale all the time.

I try to eat healthy, and produce is really expensive, so I still end up spending a lot of money on food, but I figure every little bit helps so why spend money on things like that?

So I guess the answer is yes, I coupon. To be honest it's more for fun than anything. It's like mastering a giant puzzle. You have to memorize the different coupon rules and procedures for all the different stores, which ones give overage, which ones let you "roll" extra bucks... I often compare it to studying for the Multistate portion of the Bar exam.

ETA: And don't get me started on when CVS clearances their cosmetics at 75% off and I have $2-3 coupons and get tons of L'oreal, Revlon, etc products for like $.50 each. Love it.

[BigB08822]

Thanks for the recommendation for Slickdeals. I used to live on that forum. I was addicted to the Contests and Sweepstakes section. Over the course of a year I won thousands of dollars in cash and prizes. However, in order to do that I spent HOURS each day at my computer entering contests and playing instant win games which you could play 1 time a day so I had this huge folder saved of all the Instant win games and I would go to them all through out the day. It was definitely worth it, though. Couponing seems like MORE work with less payout since I can't find a store that will double. Anyway, back to Slickdeals, I didn't know about that particular section of their forums! Thanks so much, off to hunt it down, now.

One of the big arguments my bf and I have had is that he wants to buy stuff we wouldn't need or otherwise buy. My view is that I wont even spend 10 cents on something I don't want or wouldn't use. My bf will spend $10 if it saves him $10 because he only thinks of how much money he saved. We bought 3 boxes of cereal because he had a 75 cent off of 3 coupon and they were already on sale for $2.50 a box. That is already a good deal but we do NOT need 3 boxes of cereal and we buy cereal maybe 3 times a year, max. So why go spend $6 on cereal just because you saved a little? If we had kids that ate cereal every morning it would be a no brainer. So this causes a LOT of problems for us and I am sure many well meaning people end up spending MORE money than they need to just because something is on sale.

[Cherub721]

I've been thinking I should start couponing, but I think I might end up buying stuff I won't even really want and don't want to spend the time searching out coupons. It would be nice if there was one central place to search for any coupon you could want. You know, just do a search with your grocery list.

http://slickdeals.net/coupondb/

[BigB08822]

http://slickdeals.net/coupondb/

I am going through the list. I have seen a couple I want to use but there is nothing to click on or a way to see/get the coupon. Is this just a list of what is available but you have to find the coupons on your own?

[Cherub721]

I am going through the list. I have seen a couple I want to use but there is nothing to click on or a way to see/get the coupon. Is this just a list of what is available but you have to find the coupons on your own?

Well it's a database that lists all coupons that are available. If you save your weekly Sunday inserts, it tells you if the coupon was found in what particular insert (Smart Source, Red Plum, Proctor & Gamble, etc) for what week and then you can clip it.

This thread http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthr...2949&t=2297891 will give you links to actual printable coupons you could use immediately. Just do a search with control-F

[Rob]

The Giant grocery store in my area sends out doubler coupons in the weekly flyer that you can use to double brand name coupons up to $1. They send like 4 at a time. One time, I only had 3 $1 coupons to double so I had an extra doubler coupon. The clerk told me that the doubler coupons each act as a $1 coupon when scanned. You don't have to have any coupons to double - you can just get $4 off your grocery bill. That is not how it is advertised, but that is how it works. So if your store has anything like that, don't forget to use the doublers.

[mysticchic]

I used to coupon when the kids were at home and got pretty good at it. One thing I learned was not to use the coupon in the paper the first week. Stuff is not on sale and they want you to buy it when it's not on sale! So I would wait a week or so.
Get them ready before you go out. I used a little file system.
Walmart matches prices from others ads, so take the other flyers with you to Walmart. Don't buy things just because you have a coupon. My best was 35.00 off a 100.00 shopping bill. Adverage was around 23.00 per 100.00.

[Artemis@BC]

Hmm, I don't "coupon" as a verb, but I do sometimes use coupons. However I eat so few processed foods, and so many of my personal care & home care products are generics, there aren't a lot of coupons of that type that work for me.

"Extreme couponing" doesn't work in Canada, either, since stores here don't do doubling.

Where I do use coupons, though, is for restaurants. I buy an Entertainment Book every year, and a lot of my favourite restaurants have extra coupons from the EB web site, or in the local restaurants. And I've recently become a bit of an addict for Groupon. At last count I think I was getting daily emails from at least 7 of them: Groupon, WagJag, TeamBuy, EthicalDeals, SwarmJam, Bargoonz, and DealFind. I've used them for revisiting known favourites and for trying new places. They're also good for other types of deals, like yoga, spas, movie theatres, and a big score of half off my BCAA membership renewal.

[Bonita]

I do coupon, but it's not my main thing. I don't buy a lot of brand names/processed food. However, I don't consider it a waste of time - I consider that and foodshopping a hobby. Really. It's genetic. My gram used to go on and on about sales and going to five different stores and my mom would fall asleep and I'd be rapt with attention, sucking it all in, as a kid.

What I do is memorize prices and shop only for the loss leaders. I never buy a brand name not on sale. I shop at five different stores on a regular basis. No gas wasted since I don't drive. No time wasted since three stores are within two miles of my house, and the other two are next to (a) my gym; (b) my rink. I wish I had more access to coupons, but I don't get the Sunday paper and I'm unwilling to sign up for the on-line ones, as most markets around here don't accept them.

[Garden Kitty]

My mom cuts out the coupons from the newspaper flyers and will give me some for products that she knows I use. If there's a coupon I think I'll use, I fold it around my bonus card for the supermarket so I don't forget it.

A&P has the additional online coupons like Safeway, where you can get additional coupons added to your card, so I'll do that.

[FiveRinger]

I am so glad to see this thread! When I saw the previews, I literally couldn't wait for this show to come on. My financial situation has changed so much that I was willing to watch, read, and learn whatever I could. Especially since everyone claims that anyone can do it. I wanted to start the thread myself, but most people that I mention the idea of couponing to think it's ridiculous.

I'm not looking to start a stockpile that covers three rooms in my house including the basement, but I would love to actually learn more about saving money or just cutting down some of my expenses. I just saw the guy on there this week that got almost $9xx of groceries for free. I would love to be able to get my basic purchases discounted and be able to contribute to my community. It would be great to reduce some of my expenses, and the show does motivate you. I'm just learning, trying to figure it out. There are several major chains here, one of them doesn't double and the other two only double up to the first 15 coupons up to $0.40. But, I live 20 mins from the state line where the stores double and triple coupons up to a dollar and have loyalty cards, so it might be worth it to travel outside of my neighborhood.

Good luck to everyone who's trying to figure it out. That might be some time that is worth it. Especially when I'm sitting in front of the tv or worse, surfing the internet for less profitable reasons.