Quick Version to How I Save

My grocery store stacks coupons. If you wanna get on this register at afullcup.com and look up your supermarket. They should post a weekly forum updating their sales items, what the available matching coupons are and where to find them. Look up all your grocery stores. Then contact them and ask them what their coupon policy is. Once you know what they take I'll help you understand the policy. All markets should take manufacturer coupons. Some even double 50 cent ones. That means they take off $1 instead. Some triple. some have their own store coupons that u can use on top of a manufacturer coupon. That's called stacking. Some take competitor coupons. That means using another store brand coupon. When an item is on sale and you stack coupons on top, that's when u make a killing. If your store does BOGO (buy one get one) some stores let you use two coupons. One on the one you're paying for and another on the free one. You can stack on BOGO too. Many times the value of the coupon exceeds the price of the item. So not only will I get the item for free but you will get the remainder value of the coupon subtracted off you grand total. For instance, the pepsi was BOGO $1.79. So two for the price of one. I had a coupon that said buy 4 Pepsico Products (aka pepsi, tostitos, lays, quacker) and get $8 off. I also had the same coupon but it was buy 3 get $5 off. So I bought 4 for the first coupon and 4 for the second because even though the coupon says 3 they are still BOGO so u get 4. Anyway I have 8 pepsi and I'm paying for for because of the sale. That comes our to $7.16 -$8 -$5= -$5.74. That - amount comes off my grocery total. So free pepsi that paid me $5.74. That's called overage. This is the short cut version of how I save. Let me know how this helps.

organizing your coupons; the file crate

So how do we get organized? There are so many different ways to do this, you just have to find what's right for you. I can give you some ideas, but it all comes down to what works best for you. When I first started out I had a small accordion folder that was divided into several categories such as; breakfast, diary, meats, snacks, baby and the like. The problem with this was that there were so many different subcategories I could have included that when I got to the grocery store I found myself shuffling through stacks of coupons looking for the one I needed.

After about 2 weeks of this organized mess, my sister suggested I not clip my coupons at all. 'Huh' was my first response, but then she showed me, as my two-year-old daughter would say, “la luz”.

This is what the light looks like. It's my coupon file box.

How this works is you get a $5 box crate from somewhere like Walmart, some file folders and hanging folders. I have two crates, one for each Sunday Supplement, which for me would be RedPlum and Smart Source. Since P&G doesn't rotate as often I use another method of organization for them, which I'll talk about later. So, like I said in my last blog, I usually get about 10 to 20 inserts a week. When I bring my inserts home I place them in a folder and file them in my crate in order by date, placing the newest ones towards the back.

Why do it this way, you say? When I do my grocery shopping I don't make my list based on what we want on a weekly basis. I stockpile by buying what's on sale for that week and use my coupons on those items in order to get the best, and lowest, price for them. Then I buy in BULK. This way when it's no longer on sale I won't have to worry about buying it at full price when I've run out.

I use websites like www.afullcup.com, www.hotcouponworld.com, and www.iheartpublix.com to do my research. My favorite of these being www.afullcup.com, where you can find forums on almost every chain supermarket and pharmacy you could think of. I do most of my shopping at Publix, which is a local supermarket found in the south. I check the weekly ads forum for my local store, which list the sales for that week along with any matching coupons available for that item. To make it easier, they also list where to find that coupon. For instance, if the item is Prego and the coupon is from the RedPlum insert that came in the March 21, 2010 Sunday paper, you will see something like this

Prego Heart Healthy Past Sauce, $2.69
- $1 off of 1 jar Prego, 3/21/2001 RP

Not everything that's on sale will have a coupon listed for it because not everything that's on sale has a coupon to match it. However, everything that is on sale that week WILL be listed in each posting. So, if this jar of Prego is on sale BOGO, that is Buy One Get One Free, I would use 2 $1 off coupon, one for the jar I'm paying for and the other for the free jar, and I now have 2 jar of Prego for $.69, or 34.5 cents a jar, but I'll get into this later

For coupons such as P&G, or store coupons, I used a 3rd filing box and organized them by store name, than a section for P&G's and then any Printable coupons I may have. Since I don't usually have as many of these as I do Sunday Supplements I don't need more than one file box for them all. Having my coupons filed this way made it easier for me to find the inserts I needed. Once my shopping list was done all I had to do was pull out the appropriate inserts, cut out JUST the coupons I was going to use and go shopping. The good thing about this was that it saved me time when I brought my coupons home. It also saved me from having to cut a butt load of different coupons that I might not get to use. The bad thing was that since I only had the coupons for what was on my list, if I found anything else on sale that wasn't listed in the forum, I was outta luck.

This brings me to my coupon binder, which I'll discuss in my next post. For all you newbies, filing is one of the best ways to start. Even though my method has now become the binder, I still rely on my filing crates. But like I said, I'll give more details later. Thanks for reading and please let me know how this helps. Also, I welcome all ideas, so don't hesitate to share.

"I think I can, I think I can"

I never considered myself to be much of a writer, so, needless to say, this blog has been a bit intimidating to me. There are so many things to know if you're really going to attempt to pursue the lifestyle of a coupon-er. I feel confident in what I know thus far and although I'm sure there will always be more to learn in this ever-changing world I feel confident in my ability to move with the paces.

My question to myself is...can I do this...can I organize myself...can I organize my thoughts and communicate with my writing in a way that others will know what the heck I'm talking about? So, I've decided that I will no longer run away from the things I want to do for fear of failure or for fear of success. I will not deny myself the chance to pursue my passions for fear of what others will think of me. I will not let myself be intimidated by others who think they are better than me or smarter than me. So with that said, I'm inviting you all to read my next post which will cover organizing your coupons by using the filling system.

For those of you who have trouble with organization, I will tell you this, it's time to step outside of your comfort zone, time to stretch yourselves in order to reach your goals and go for what you want. Listen, I know it's hard, but I'm doing it and we can do it together. The last thing you want to do is come home and leave your coupons laying around in a pile of mess. Trust me when I say that you WILL become overwhelmed when it's time to cut your coupons and you find yourself lost in an abyss of glossy paper.

Let's take my mother for example, who collects anywhere from 4 to 6 papers a week and leaves them piled in a cardboard box mingling with her mail and other random lose papers. She thinks this works for her, but when it comes time to clip she never knows where anything is and gets easily discouraged when trying to work her way through them. She eventually gives up and just goes to Walmart where she spends $75 to $100 in groceries, and she only shops for 2 people. The last time I spent $70anything on groceries I purchased a $20 box of diapers, 2 bottles of wine, 6 jars of Prego sauce, 8 cans of Lysol Nuetra Air, 8 sticks of Sure deodorant, 4 packs of Perdue chicken nuggets, 4 bottles of V-8 V-Fusion, 4 bags of Contessa MicroSteam and Stove top Meals, 2 bricks of cheese, 2 travel first-aide kits, 5 NyQuil travel size packs, 2 boxes of Puffs tissues, Asparagus, 3 oranges, a bunch of bananas, 3 romaine hearts and other items that I can't remember. In the end I saved over $190 and went home with over $260 of groceries. THIS IS WHY I COUPON!!!!

If I were not organized I wouldn't have been able to cut and locate the coupons I needed for this VICTORY and WIN I did!!!