Frugal Living Today

Coupons!

Coupons are at the heart of every frugal minded person’s routine, but most people don’t know how to use them or to even find coupons for items that they would normally use.  With that in mind, here are a few tips to help you start saving some serious dough with coupons:

1.  If you aren’t already using coupons, you need to get to it!  Clipping and saving coupons may be a pain, but you have to face the facts – coupons are free money.

2.  Read the fine print.  Take note of the date and any rules that apply to the use of a particular coupon.  I have a friend who is an absolute master of getting items for pennies just by using coupons.  She will find a coupon for – let’s say deodorant – and when it doesn’t specify a size, she will use a $1.00 off coupon to buy a .99 cent trial size.  Don’t laugh, it works.

3.  Combine coupons with sales whenever possible.  I can’t tell you how many times I have ended up getting something for almost nothing by doing this.  I pay special attention to supermarkets that have “Buy One, Get One” sales, and one of them locally even offers to double coupons. 

Example time:  One week I was able to get four boxes of high end pasta for free.  How?  Simple, really.  The pasta was on “buy one get one” sale.  The regular price was $1.99.  I had four coupons for .50 cents off and the store doubled coupons.  Since I was technically purchasing four boxes of pasta, they honored all four coupons, and technically they owed me .04 cents when all was said and done, but I wasn’t going to say anything.

4.  Join your local supermarket’s reward card program.  It doesn’t cost anything and can end up saving you a nice chunk of change, especially when you are using those coupons.

5.  Start a coupon train.  Huh?  In a nutshell, this is a way to share the coupons you don’t use and get more of the ones you do.  For a great primer on coupon trains, click here.