Sunday, October 28, 2012

Extreme Couponing.. It’s Not for Me!

Have you ever seen the TLC show, “Extreme Couponing”? These men and women treat couponing as a full time job. Clipping thousands and thousands of coupons and paying mere cents for hundreds of dollars worth of groceries. Take a walk through their house and you would find walls of toilet paper and shelves full of items much like a grocery store, all items they likely got for little to no cost. Sounds great right? I think is sounds fantastic in theory, but in reality it is not something I, or most people, would ever have time for. Plus, who has room to store all of that stuff?
I use coupons but by no means am I an extreme couponer. I am very busy most days and don’t have time to look for coupons so I need them to come to me.
Disclaimer – Beware of enticing coupons. If you don’t usually use the product/service, then the coupon is of no use. Don’t just buy something because it is on sale, buy it because you need it and will use it or consume it in your every day life. It is easy to get into trouble with those enticing buys (Groupon is a great example) where you buy them and never use them.
Where to find coupons:
1.     In the mail – You know all that junk mail you get that usually comes in the door and goes right out into the recycling? Take a look through it one day you would be surprised what you could find. There is usually a P&G (Proctor & Gamble) coupon book that comes out with everyday cleaning and household products.
2.     Save.ca – This website is an assortment of coupons you can print at home or order online to be mailed to you. All for free.  The benefit of this is that you can look through the coupons for the products you need or buy on a regular basis and just pay less.


3.     Daily deal websites – Groupon.com, Wagjag.com, LivingSocial.com, etc. A lot of the time, these sites will give you 50%+ off of regular prices for products/services.
4.     On product coupons – When you buy products, sometimes these include a coupon on or inside the packaging. I find these to be the best coupons because they are for products I am already buying and usually the expire date allows me to use the coupon by the time the product runs out and I need its replacement.
5.     Finally the best coupon is no coupon at all. Price matching – There are various stores that allow ad matching. All you need to do is give the competitors flyer to the cashier on checkout and they will match the price. A couple examples of stores that ad match include Walmart and Freshco in my area, but I am sure there are additional.
A lot of people say that they just don’t have access to good coupons, I believe you just need to know where to look.
Now once you have all those coupons how to you organize them? I don’t think I have the most organized system, but it is the only way I remember to use coupons and be aware of what I have.

On the end of my cupboard in the kitchen, I have a magnetic white board that I keep all of my current coupons on. This way the coupons are staring at me every time I go in the kitchen.
·        I check the coupons before I go out shopping to make sure there is something that I can use.
·        I also check the board once every couple of weeks for coupons that have expired to keep it maintained.
There are many different ways to organize coupons you just need to find your perfect solution. You can have a separate wallet to hold them, if you have ever seen my purse you would know why that would never work for me!
Do you coupon? How do you stay organized?

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