Kids Toothpaste Coupon

Save 75 cents off of new Sensodyne Pronamel for Kids here.

Basics for Beginners

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!

Free IceCream Day!

Tomorrow(Saturday, May 30, 2009) is Free Ice Cream Day at Walmart locations across the country from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. See more details and find out if a local store is hosting a Free Ice Cream Day in your area here.

When Can Free Be More Than Free?

Occasionally in the Sunday coupon inserts there will be a coupon for a product to be completely free. In the past I would get excited to come across one of these little gems and take it to the store on my next shopping trip to redeem my coupon for the free item and I was happy.


I was happy then, but now I'm also wise. Since then I've learned why it is often better to wait to redeem free coupons with good sale or promotion to get more for free. While it's great to get something for free, it's even better to get something for more than free.

Example #1: How to turn one free pack of gum into two.

Several months ago there was a coupon for a free pack of Doublemint, Juicy Fruit, Wrigley's Spearmint, Big Red, or Winterfresh Slimpack.


A week or two after this coupon came out there was a BOGO (Buy One Get One free) sale at my grocery store for the same gum. If you went and used your coupon then you get get not just one, but two free.

Example #2: Spending Less $$ OOP (out of pocket)

Another great way to use free coupons when the said free item is included in a sale that requires you to buy a certain dollar amount of products to get the sale price.

Scenario 1: Albertsons is infamous for having "Spend $20 among participating products and save $5 on your next shopping order" (sometimes the amount vary, like spend $30 and save $10, etc.) You only have to get your total to be above $20 (or whatever the minimum is) BEFORE coupons.

This means that when Digornio pizza is included in a sale like this I can use my coupon for a Free Digornio (Which is currently waiting in my coupon binder for just such an occasion) on this promotion. Depending on how much the pizza costs it means I could spend $3-6 less OOP (out of pocket) to reach the $25 min. for the promotion. So in this case my free pizza coupon is helping me "spend" enough to participate in a good sale.


Scenario 2: Similarly, I'm using my "Free" coupons right now is as fillers in order to double coupons. Out here in Wisconsin my current grocery store doubles 5 manufacturers coupons (up to $1) every Wednesday when you spend a minimum of $25 (Remember this is $25 BEFORE coupons). When I make up my weekly grocery list I often don't have quite enough to get to $25 so I will add one or two "Free" items to bring my total up to $25 without actually having to spend any more money and I still get the benefit of being able to get 5 other coupons doubled. Since the $25 minimum isn't just for certain products, in this instance I can use any "free" coupon (which has come in very handy over the past few weeks starting out with no groceries again after moving cross-country).

These are just a few ways to make your Free stuff more than free. As you go you'll discover more little tricks like this to help you get more bang for your buck.

Speaking of which, here's some free stuff for you right now. Go here to sign up for a coupon for a free chocolate bar from M&M's Chocolate Relief Act. They are giving away free chocolate every Friday for the rest of the summer, and you can request up to 4 coupons during that period. I got my first one in the mail today!

**Also, just note the expiration dates on your free coupons so you can redeem them in case there aren't any profitable sales for the item while they're valid.**

Free Samples

I love getting free samples in the mail. It's like mini little presents for me. I thought I'd share the place I get the vast majority of my free samples:

Walmart's website!



They usually have 6-9 products available as free samples, and they rotate every couple weeks (sometimes sooner when sample products are particularly popular and run out faster). Walmart samples also tend to come a lot faster than other online free samples I've requested which is a bonus.

I've made it a habit to check about once a week and sign up for all the new samples. Other than getting to try a product I may not have otherwise, samples sometimes come with high value coupons which is another thing I love. So go sign up today for free stuff in little packages!

So Many Sidekicks

Here's another weekly grocery post.

I was going to do one last Wednesday too (my grocery shopping day) because I got a lot of really great deals last week, but after I spent so much time arranging my food on my table for a picture, my camera batteries died.

Anyways, this week isn't as glorious as last, but there were still good deals to be had; like Lipton Sidekicks for about 15 cents each (they aren't called "sidekicks" in the states, but they are in Canada, and I think it's a cooler name).

Anyways, here's my groceries for the day:

I did my shopping in two trips, hence two pictures.
So although I now have more pasta, Ragu, yogurt, and sidekicks that I know what to do with, it was pretty cheap.

The grand total was $24.42
(Before sales and coupons was $147.78)
Savings of 85%

Pizza Anyone?

Save up to $15 on a utility bill from Tombstone Pizza through 1/15/2010.


Since it's a pretty broad time-frame I'm hoping I find a good BOGO sale, to match up with the $1/2 pizza coupons found here.

Couponomics

So awhile back Wendy's started their promotional campaign: 3conomics.

Thinking about a nice juicy double stack and saving money today got me thinking, and I say to Wendy's:

I see your 3conomy and I'll raise you one.

I give you Couponomics.
It really consists of three basic yet indispensable components which I shall explain for you.

1) Wendy's Crispy Chicken is so simple that it often is underrated for it's true value, as is the basic coupon, yet both provide me with inexpensive tastiness all the time.

(I get the majority of the coupons I use in inserts that look like these that come in most Sunday papers)


2) Wendy's Double-Stack is a little like Weekly Store Ads:

Match your coupons to sales, and/or (double)stack them with store coupons for the greatest % of savings.


3) Last but certainly not least Wendy's tastiest 3conomic sandwich, the Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger, with it's many layers of goodness is akin to the best part of my couponomy:
A good organizational system to keep the many layers of said coupons and ads sorted for easy access and use.

Behold the coupon binder
(by far the best method of organizing coupons):
(When a man saw me and Lincoln at the store today with my binder, detailed grocery list and cell phone, aka calculator, laid out on my grocery cart first he asked me if it was bring-your-kids-to-work-day, then when he realized I was just another customer he said "Holy Coupon! I've never seen anyone as serious as you" I'll take that as a compliment.)


It's really rather simple, see?


And when all the principles of my Couponomy combine magic happens in a very tasty way:


It only cost me $29.31 for over $156 of groceries, and I even got another coupon for 2 free Yoplait yogurts at the register! (That poor cashier didn't even know what hit her when I handed her a fat stack of coupon-kung fu)

Now that's Couponomics my friend,
and that's waaaaay better than fast food.