Coupon Adventures of a Small Town Mom

In the Beginning... it is difficult, interesting, and very confusing. Lets Start there. I am learning couponing. Some of you, my friends, have asked for help, ideas, tips. Guess what.. I feel clueless! In Alpena, it is challenging to coupon. Walmart doesn't have a great coupon policy, though it is better than before. Kmart does some doubling, but they don't have a grocery section (really) so it is difficult to see major savings. We have Walgreens and Rite Aid, which can solve some issues with diapers, wipes, and basic health, beauty, and cleaning issues. You can get your paper products there, so it is a start. The first thing we want to do, what we are concentrating on today, is to learn to lower your spending amounts with coupons, even if it is only $5-10 worth the first few times. Since you are already online, open a new browser. 1. Go to coupons.com, smartsource.com, redplum.com, couponnetwork.com, and suddenvalues.com. Print off all coupons that you will truly buy the products for. Today I printed off almost $10 worth of coupons for Huggies diapers (which we know that I will use) from Smart Source.com. I also printed off frozen veggie coupons. now this takes a bit of time. you can go through their pages, select the coupons, print, then hit the "home" button to start again. Most of the time you can print off up to 3 coupons per item. this is everything from makeup personal care to groceries. I am first going to concentrate on the groceries, but you can do what you would like. 2. Clip, cut, and organize. Usually the coupons print off 3 to a page. Cut these and organize. I have a 2 inch binder full of coupons. if you want to start with this, it is nice, works well, and is a more organized and easy to find the coupon you want method. I will talk on organizing your binder soon. another thing that you can do is buy a medium sized expandable file. at least 8 dividers, more is probably better. Think of the things that you normally use. Groceries: for my binder I have Refrigerated, Frozen, Beverages, Snacks, Canned, Boxed, Baby Food. Next: Paper Products (TP, Paper Towels,Napkins) Feminine Hygiene, Hair Products, Deodorant, Body Wash, Razors, Oral Care, Baby Wash, Diapers, Formula, Pet care. I may be missing some, but think of the things that you buy, divide them up. Organize your coupons. 3. Next Sunday(or Saturday when our Alpena News comes), get a paper. Look at the coupons in the Smart Source insert that you get. Are they good High Value coupons? Like $0.75 or higher on something that you will use? Buy another paper... Cut these coupons and organize them. 4. Plan... Walmart is harder to plan for as they do not have a circular out, they do not usually have buy 10 for $10 like Neiman's does. But, you can get some really good deals here also..Look on line for prices, or a good one is to search for Walmart Coupon Match-ups. As soon as I get some permission, I will give you guys links to some good ones for Walmart, Walgreens, and Rite Aid. So, pull out your Neiman's Circular every Sunday, with your coupons. look at the big sales first. This week Neiman's had really good prices on Split Chicken Breasts, $0.88 per lb.. This is a decent sale. I bought 10lbs. Post Cereal was $1.99 a box. I had a older coupon for $1.00 off 2 boxes. $1.49 a box for cereal is excellent, but it is good. Bounty Paper Towels was $2.99 for a 2 pack. kind of expensive, but I had a coupon for $1 off. Brings us down to $1.99. Not a great deal, but I was out and it was a savings. The Chief Boyardee was on sale 10 0for $10. I don't normally buy, but the Whole Wheat kind is a good meal for me at work. I bought 7 cans, 2 were free so it was $0.71 a can, not bad. Basically what I do is go through the circular looking for the good sales already, this comes from practice, still getting there on that. I also look at my coupons. Last week, with produce and milk, some meat, and then my sales with the coupons I spent $114, saved $30, a 21% savings, not bad, could have done better, but didn't hit it high. Here in Alpena, unless Neiman's Starts to double, we will never be an Extreme Couponing town, but we can save Money. $30 is a half tank of gas, less if prices keep rising. I will try to keep you updated on some of the special deals here in Alpena. Thanks You All! Feed Back is Appreciated as this is my first blog!