Saving
Money with Grocery Store Coupons
Where to Get
Coupons
The inserts in
the Sunday paper are often a good place to get coupons. Ask
your friends and neighbors to save their inserts for you.
You can also find
printable coupon on the Internet. Some of the better coupon
sites include:
Successful Coupon
Shopping Tips
- Keep you coupons
organized in a binder book or coupon folder organized by
category.
- Have you coupons
organized and ready at the check out lane to save time for
yourself, the checker and as a courtesy to other customers.
- Watch for double
coupon days at your local stores.
- Ask for rain
checks when stores are out of advertised items.
- At least once
a month go through your coupons and weed out any expired
ones.
A Few Caveats
Despite the many
claims of people in Internet forums who use coupons and only
spend $50 a month for a family of 4 on groceries, these coupon
gurus are not the norm. One study found that most people who
used coupons actually ended up spending more, not
less on groceries, than noncoupon users.
I think coupons
can be a good deal, if you can find some for products you
already buy and ones that require reasonable quantities
purchases, but here are a few of my own "lessons learned"
about smart coupon use:
1. Avoid using
coupons on high priced, nutrition poor, overly processed convenience
foods. A dollar off of an expensive bottle of salad dressing
loaded with dyes and preservatives isn't really a good deal.
You may be able to save more money by making your own healthy
dressings from scratch using fresh ingredients without the
added chemicals and dyes of commercial products.
2. Don't use coupons
on products you otherwise would not purchase, just because
you have a great coupon deal.
5. Be aware that
many coupons require multiple item purchases to entice shoppers
to buy more than they normally would.
6. You may be able
to save more money by buying generic store brands than you
can with name brand products and coupons. I buy store brands
on products such as toilet paper, napkins, tissues, etc. In
most cases my family has never noticed the difference.
7. Many cleaning
supplies can be made at home with non toxic ingredients for
less than you would pay for commercial cleaning products,
even with coupons.
8. Couponing can
result in great savings, but it does take time. I stopped
using coupons as much when I started to make
some extra money from my web sites, as I found I could
make more money per hour by adding pages to my sites than
I could clipping and sorting coupons.
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