Couponing can come with a steep learning curve. There are good ways to use coupons, and better ways (and also fraudulent ways, but I'm going to leave that be).
I've learned a lot through my own mistakes and experience and a lot more by reading blogs and coupon sites. Here is a list of some of my favorite and most frequented sites for good info. Some of them are good to check on a regular basis for updates of deals and freebies, and some have good one-time info like what various coupon slang means (BOGO, OYNSO, or OOP for example) and how to get, sort and file coupons.
Beginners & Just starting Out (One-Time Visits):
Savvy Shopper Deals: There are videos posted on the homepage with good beginners information of how-to get, use and organize coupons. She's also a very convincing sales-woman for the coupon-leary. These are good to watch first because she has a more polished presentation.
You should also note that she resides in Utah so her website is quite Utah-specific in it's deal posts.
(Disclaimer: I recommend her videos/presentation because it has a lot of good information but I don't like this site in general because it's a little hard to navigate, and the forum can get a little ridiculous at times. That's all I'm going to say about that.)
Pinching Your Pennies Blog has a pretty long list of "couponese" and lingo that you come across using coupons (it can all be a little confusing at first). On the PYP website you can also find "coupons 101" and several how-to videos, like how to navigate their website (which although contains a lot of good information is unfortunately not the most user-friendly format), how to clip, sort, and file coupons, etc. The videos have some good info, but are much less professional (and hence slightly harder to watch) than the Savvy Shopper's videos since they are filmed at home by one of the site admins.
Birthday Freebies: a good website with a list of over 50 Birthday freebies including fast food, casual dining, kids stuff, movies, ice cream and retail stores. Go and sign up for all the free stuff in your area for your next birthday.
Deal Blogs/Sites (Frequented Daily):
Slick Deals is a daily deal site that also has tons of information about online deals on various products and sites and also several forums with information about deals and upcoming sales at several grocery chains, and drugstores including CVS, Walgreens and Rite-Aid.
Common Sense With Money is one of my favorite deal blogs to check often. I've found many good deals, coupons, etc. through this site. It's updated multiple times a day, and also has all the weekly deals for CVS, Walgreens and Rite-Aid posted the day before the sale starts (i.e. posts on Saturday for Sunday ad start day), which is always nice to plan ahead. Coincidentally the author of this blog also resides in Wisconsin and posts up weekly grocery deals for Copps/Pick'N'Save, which is a wonderfully inexpensive store (when you know how to coupon well) where I now do the majority of my grocery shopping as you will see in my weekly grocery posts.
Money Saving Mom is a similar deal/coupon blog updated several times a day, but also includes how-to parenting, etc. type of articles like "how to teach your children about money" and things like that. This blog also has good articles about how to get deals at CVS and Walgreens for newbies.
Pinching Your Pennies is the main site I used to plan out my grocery shopping lists each week when I lived in Utah. They have State Forums for each state which members can post deals found locally. The Utah forum was particularly helpful just because the site administrators live in Utah and posted the ads each week with ratings (of how good a particular sale price is) and deal ideas. There is a lot of good beginners information on this site, as listed above, as well.
In addition to this here are some online coupon sources:
Coupons.com has a lot of internet printable coupons. Many are for the same products as come in standard Sunday Paper coupon inserts, but often this site also has higher value coupons than those in the inserts or coupons which aren't found in inserts. You can print 2 coupons per household (IP address).
SmartSource.com and RedPlum.com are similar to coupons.com
Deals for New Moms has several coupon sources specifically for baby products.
Many good coupons can also be found directly at the product's website. (Try a google search for coupons when you want to buy a certain product to find these; or go directly to the website and look for a "coupon" or "special offers" link on the homepage)
For example: Save $3.00 on any ThermaCare Heat Wrap. Click here for a link to the coupon. (This is a good one, typically the coupons in the Sunday paper for Thermacare are $1-1.50)
There are also a lot of great deals when you stack Target coupons to manufacturers coupons. You can either print Target coupons directly from their website, which makes you print out a coupon 1 at a time, or print multiples using the Target coupon generator found here. I'll often post up the deals you can find at Target.
And if this is all too much, don't worry. I plan on posting a lot of the information I think is neccessary when starting out on this blog myself. It hasn't been that long since I first assembled my own coupon binder, and tried to figure out how to successfully stack store coupons and manufacturers coupons with sales with catalina promotions, roll-over my register rewards and redeem all my mail-in rebates before they expire and still keep my head straight so I'm trying to make it easy on you!
Saturday, May 30, 2009
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