Why Not?

I am not a coupon lunatic... but today I felt like one. This all began 6 weeks ago when I decided to pay $12/month for the Detroit Free Press to be delivered to my door 3 times per week. Coupons come Sundays, so that's the paper I really care about. (Other than coupons I take advantage of the puzzle page for my own enjoyment.)

Before I took that plunge, I had some encouragement from a few friends/family members of mine, namely Valerie, Jen Squire and my Aunt Tammy. They do "the coupon thing" so I thought that I might as well order the paper and try to save some money.

So yesterday I clipped ALL the coupons from the many coupon booklets that I had lying around. I learned that you are supposed to clip ALL the coupons out of the booklets, not just what you normally use. I hadn't been doing that for the last 6 weeks... oops. So I got caught up and organized them all in an empty 4x6 photo album.

So this morning I was all geared up and ready to go to Kroger, where all coupons $1 and under are DOUBLED. Yup. That is sweet, if you didn't know. Call your local grocers to see if any do the same. So the stuff in the picture above is worth close to $125. I paid $25. It seems too good to be true, really, but it does happen!

Two amazing deals that I found today were for the men's Speed Stick and the Loreal Vive products. They were Buy One Get One free (BOGO). Each item was upwards of $4 each, so with Kroger's sale they were 2 for $4 (or $2 each). Not bad! BUT for these brands I had coupons for $1 off 2 items, which were doubled b/c Kroger is awesome, so I paid $2 for 2 of them (or $1) each! That is 75% off!

Another one of my favorite items is Suave shampoo, which for a small bottle is only $1.07. I had quite a few $1/2 (that means $1 off 2 items), which is doubled to $2/2, so I pay $0.14 for the 2 bottles. Nice. (Last week these were on sale even more for $0.88 a bottle, which means that they would have been free with overage.)

Those Buddies soaps that you see on the right are $0.99 each. I had a $3/3 Johnson's products, so I got 3 of these babies for free, and the register always prints me out another coupon for $2.50/3. So I keep getting 3 buddies soaps for $0.50, over and over and over again!

Another thing... I had 3 coupons for Scott brand TP, but they were for the expensive kind only, Scott Naturals. So I looked at the first 5 or 6 digits under the bar code on both the coupon and the regular 4 packs of Scott and they matched. The coupon worked like a charm. As long as the first set of numbers match, the coupon will work!

So this really isn't hard! I was discouraged at first, trust me. It can take a few weeks of Sunday papers to come to get your coupon stock up. Let me give you all a few basic pointers that I have learned:

- Only use coupons on things that are on sale. Be patient and wait for things to match up.
- Clip all the coupons out of the coupon booklets and...
- Organize them well! You can use a binder, photo album, or accordion coupon folder.
- Try not to pay more than $1 for things that you are using coupons for. This won't always happen, but often it will.
- Always get the highest percentage off. If you need baby shampoo and you have a coupon, buy the smallest/cheapest bottle to get the deepest discount, instead of buying the bigger bottle you usually would buy.
- You can buy coupons on eBay. Yes, its true.
- You can combine store coupons with manufacturer coupons.
- If the first numbers match under the bar codes on the item and the coupon, the coupon will work, even if it describes or pictures a different line of a product. (They like to write/picture the more expensive item to get you to spend more.)

There are tons of coupon blogs that people use. I find it overwhelming. Maybe this is silly of me, but I just go to Kroger (b/c they double their coupons) and walk down every isle and look for yellow tags representing sale items. Then I look to see if I have a coupon. I usually remember my coupon inventory, which makes this matching up a lot easier.

My hope is that you will be inspired to save some cash and use coupons too! Don't pay retail for anything ever again! Especially toiletry items!