Tightwad Tuesday-Couponing 101
This week’s Tightwad Tuesday topic is one of my favorite. I have been trying for a couple of years to organize my coupons so that they will be an effective form of helping me save money and stretch our budget dollars.
I use to be really bad about clipping EVERY coupon I found. After a while of coupon overloads, I realized this was not working for me, so now I only clip what we use.
I have found a method that works really well for me and my family. We use a three ring binder and sports card inserts. I have several categories such as frozen, deli, bakery, produce, medicine, paper products, etc. I file my coupons in chronological order so that I use the oldest coupons first instead of allowing them to expire. There is nothing that I dislike worse than letting a great coupon expire!
In the front of my binder is where I keep my pens, shopping list, calculator and all my shopping cards. In the back pocket of my binder is my sales flyer for the store that I am shopping at that day(you can read more about my coupon tips in the February Molly’s Money Saving Digest).
I get most of my coupons from the weekend paper, but recently, I have been printing off coupons from sites such as Coupons, RedPlum, Eversave, and Smart Source.
One of my favorite places to use my coupons is Krogers. Just this week, I was able to rack up on my husband’s favorite deodorant. 
They had it on sale for $1.00 per stick (usually $2.59 per stick). I picked up seven of them. When I got to the self checkout, someone had left their coupons hanging there. I picked them up and low and behold, there was a “$2.00 off your shopping trip” coupon just hanging there. So I was able to get seven sticks of deodorant for $5.30! A total savings of $13.92!
How do you organize your coupons? Do you think that clipping coupons saves money? Let me know what you think.
I KNOW using coupons saves me money (esp when I shop at Giant Eagle that doubles all coupons up to and including $1 ones! I recently got Crest toothpaste for FREE! (It was $2 a tube I had a $1 coupon doubled to $2 so my toothpaste was free! I now have enough toothpaste to last all year!!!) I find these deals all the time.
I do my coupons similar to how you do yours except for Christmas my grandma and my mom found me a zippered binder for them, now the kids do not dump them on me when they decide to help me carry things into the store (one carries the coupons the other carries our bags. Crocheted ones that I made and an assortment of other tote type bags that we use instead of plastic ones!!!)
Last week my coupon savings and in store savings was over $75
If you have extra coupons that you don’t use or expired coupons, military families can use them for up to 6 months past the expiration date.
Check out The Happy Housewife for how to send it
http://www.thehappyhousewife.com/thank-you/
Not to toot my own horn but I actually started the coupon binder method in the 90’s and shared it on a couple of message boards at the time under the username of LWMSAVON. I went on to be featured in Woman’s Day as well as had my binder method featured in a refunding magazine.
You can learn more here on how to set up a binder, get a supply list, and more. http://laurawilliamsmusings.blogspot.com/2007/07/lauras-couponing-and-refunding-hints.html
Molly says:
How very neat! I learned about this method from refundcents.com. That may be the magazine you’re referring to. How fun to know that one of our readers created it!
You can also pick up this kind (along with LOTS of other things) at Big Lots when they send you the 20% off sale coupon. They came out to a little under $1 there last month. More info here on the 20% savings: http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/carolinametzgers/649340/
Lisa Metzger
Mom to 8
That is indeed the refunding magazine, Molly. My article and photo (old as it is) is still up on the refund cents website.
So glad the method is working for you!