Crazy Coupon Lady

I have been couponing for a couple of years now.  While I am no where near as crazy as the people on the TLC reality show, Extreme Couponing, I do save quite a bit of money when I go grocery shopping.  This post is written specifically for my sister, Rachael, who asked if I could teach her more about the 'art' of couponing.  She is almost 19-weeks pregnant with her first child, plans to be a stay-at-home mom after this little one is born, and would like to learn more about how to save money using coupons.  I hope that I am able to educate her, as well as any other of my blog readers who are interested, about saving money when grocery shopping. 

1. The first thing that you need to do is buy multiple Sunday papers.  Buying more than one paper allows you to collect more coupons, thus allowing you to save more money.  I get 4 Sunday papers each week.  You can either buy your papers from the grocery store or get a newspaper subscription.  A lot of times purchasing a subscription is the cheapest route.  In the Sunday paper there are Coupon Inserts, called Smart Source (SS), General Mills (GM), Proctor & Gamble (PG), & Red Plum (RP).  Not every Sunday paper has all coupon inserts, and not every individual paper has all of these inserts either.  Be sure to ask your newspaper provider which coupon inserts they have.  The more, the better.

2. Buy Your Coupon Binder.  There are a couple of different options when choosing your coupon binder.  You can just buy a normal, everyday binder that are found at your local Target, office supply store, etc.  Or you can buy a more heavy duty zipper binder, which is what I recommend.  Mead & Five Star make some good ones.  I have the Case-It brand & like it.  I recommend these type of binders because they zip up, making it near impossible for your coupons to fall out all over the grocery store aisle when you are shopping (NOT like this has ever happened to me!).

3. Next, you need to decide how you will organize your coupons in your coupon binder.  There are two methods that can be used.

* Organize By Category: This takes more time up front but less time when shopping.  It will take an hour or two of your time each week to clip & organize your coupons.  This method makes preparing to shop quick & easy because your coupons are already clipped & organized.  You can use baseball card holders to store your clipped coupons.  Page dividers are also used to divide your coupons into categories (yogurt, pasta, rice, cereal, etc).  You can buy baseball card holders & dividers at almost any store.  This is the method that I use.

* Organize By Date: With this method, you do not clip any coupons until you use them.  This requires you to get sheet protectors to put each insert into it's own page.  It is best to write the date (from the paper the coupon came out of) on each insert.  This will be valuable to you.  I will discuss why later on.

4. Plan Your Grocery List Based On Sale Ads: Every Wednesday, I get grocery ads in my mailbox.  You probably do, too, but may have never noticed.  They usually come with a stack of other advertisements for places like Lowe's, Arby's, Pet Smart, etc.  The grocery ads that come in my mail are for Safeway, Albertsons & Top Foods.  If you do not receive ads in the mail, you can also get them at the actual grocery store.  Almost all grocery sales go from Wednesday to the following Tuesday.

So how do you figure out what the best deals are & where are the coupons to match up with the deals?  No worries, you don't have to figure this out yourself!  There are many websites out there that do the matching up for you.  Cool, huh??!!  Here are a few of my favorites:

http://thekrazycouponlady.com/

http://forthemommas.com/

http://www.iheartthemart.com/

http://www.frugallivingnw.com/

Just go to their website, click on the grocery store you plan on shopping at, and look at the deals & coupon match ups for that particular week.  It is that easy.  If there is a coupon match up for a certain deal, they will tell you which coupon it is, what particular date the coupon is from & what insert it comes from.  For example:

Kraft Dressing on sale $.99 (limit 2)
Buy 2
Use $1/2 coupon from 4/10 SS insert
$.49 each after coupon

This deal is at Safeway & it is for Kraft salad dressing on sale for $.99 (limit 2).  They are telling you that there is a $1/2 coupon in the April 10th Smart Source (SS) insert, making them only $.49 each after the coupon.  Not a bad deal for salad dressing!

Go through the ads for whatever grocery stores you shop at, check out the ad match ups on the money saving websites & create your grocery list based on the best deals.  Now, I shop at 2-3 different grocery stores during the week to get the best deals.  Starting out, though, I would suggest that you start with just ONE store to focus your efforts on.  You will get way too overwhelmed if you try to do more than one store as you are getting started with couponing.  I think the easiest way to choose a store is to find the one that is closest to where you live.  You will be wanting to go more often, so it makes sense to not to have to travel very far.

And before you know it, you will be saving 50-90% on your grocery bill every week just from shopping the sales & combining coupons with these sale items.  Pretty impressive!

And there you have it!  The basics of couponing!  There is soo much more to couponing (like printable coupons, shopping at drug stores, double couponing, etc.).  I promise I will go more in depth into these topics on another day, but hopefully today's post helped you get a better understanding of couponing & the basics you need to know to start saving money when grocery shopping.

Feel free to leave me any comments and/or questions you may have!

Happy Shopping...and Saving!

How could I not add a picture of my adorable girlies??!! :)