I look at a coupon like money. Even a $.35 coupon is money that I have in my pocket instead of in someone else having it in theirs.
The trick is to only use them on things that you were going to buy at some point anyway. I wont buy things that I wont use (unless I can make money off of them which I will discuss later on). Coupons are meant to trick you into buying things, Say that you normally buy the generic brand ketchup, but you get a coupon for the more expensive brand and use it to get the good stuff. I bet if you price compare the two, you actually spent more money. This leads us to coupon rules.
RULE #1: Do not think that just because you have a coupon for an item, it will be the best deal.
RULE #2: Get organized. I don't care if it is a binder, envelopes, or one of those cute coupon accordion style organizers... you need something to organize.
My method of organization is a binder, If you don't plan to spend as much time as I do with your coupons, something less extreme is fine. I started out in some envelopes. Each was labeled with a category. Then I progressed to a small binder with a few baseball card sheets and some dividers. Now I have a big zip up binder that has pockets, accordion sections, a pencil bag, currency sheets, and page protectors. (I will do a blog next on the binder itself, so stay tuned) If you just stick your coupons in your pocket, you will never get the maximum savings from them.
RULE#3: Be prepared to buy things that you WILL USE, even when you may not need them. An example of this is; I have toothpaste, Probably eight tubes. A few days ago the Dollar Tree had some Crest 4.2 oz tubes. I just happen to have $3 off of 3 tubes of crest. This made them free, I had two coupons so I left the store with six tubes of toothpaste that I only paid the tax on. Did I need toothpaste that day? No! Will I use these eventually and be glad that I didn't have to pay full price? Absolutely!
RULE#4: Utilize all your assets. Use every avenue possible to get the coupons and/or savings that you need. Websites, apps, blogs, store coupons, manufacturer coupons, mobile coupons... anything you can use, use. At Target you can use a target and manufacturer coupon plus cartwheel app and mobile coupons that they send out from time to time and sometimes get gift cards back. The deals work out like this...
ABC toothpaste $5.00 per tube
Target has a promo going to buy 3 get a $5 gift card
They have a coupon on their website for $2.00 off of ABC products
There was a coupon in your newspaper last week for $6.00 off of 3 tubes of ABC toothpaste
There is a 10% cartwheel for ABC products
You buy 3 tubes = $15.00
use 3 target Qs - $ 6.00
use 1 man Q - $ 6.00
=$ 3.00 left to pay
Take 10% off of that with cartwheel leaving your total out of pocket to be $2.70. Then you get a $5.00 gift card. You just made $2.30.
Save your gift card until your next Target deal comes around for even less out of pocket expense.
This same principle works great at CVS and Walgreens.
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