Put it Together
You are on board to coupon and have started your collection, so now what?!? Well here are the ins & outs of how to best use your coupons:
- using coupons to get things for FREE!- Wording on coupons is most important, the words matter, the picture doesn't! If a coupon says take $1 off ANY tide. You can use that coupon to get a single load in the travel section at Walmart (priced at 97 cents) for free. There will typically be a picture of a big tide bottle on that coupon, but the key word is ANY, meaning you can use it for any tide product. If you have 5 of those coupons, you can get 5 travel tides for free! You can also get things free in the grocery store. French's mustard was recently on sale for $1. I had a coupon for $1 off 1 french's mustard, so I snagged some for free!! Mustard is regularly $1.69, if I didn't wait for the sale, I'd have paid $0.69 for mustard, but I waited and scored it for FREE!!! If you have more than one of these coupons, play them when cost is lowest (or nothing at all!) and score more items for a great price.
- stacking- Stacking is an important term in the couponing world. Stacking is when you use a store coupon and a manufacturer's coupon for one item. In my area, you can stack at Target, CVS, Walgreens (although a bit more complicated there), and Publix. This will lead to BIG savings, but remember it has to be 1 STORE coupon AND 1 MANUFACTURER coupon, you can never use 2 manufacturer coupons on one item and it is bad couponing to do so. Target recently had a target coupon for crunchy nut cereal, $1 off 2 boxes. They also had a sale on crunchy nut cereal, $2 for 1 box. I had 2 manufacturer coupons for $1 off 1 box of crunchy nut. So, when I went to check out, I got 2 boxes of cereal, use my target coupon (TQ) $1/2 and 2 of my manufacturer coupons (MQ) $1/1 and paid $0.50 per box. Not too shabby!!! :)
- Drugstore Rewards- In my area I shop at CVS and occasionally Walgreens (WAGs). CVS uses extra care bucks (ECBs) as their rewards program money. ECB's are great and considered cash at CVS! :) LOVE cvs--did I mention that?!? Walgreens has register rewards (RR). They are treated a manufacturer's coupon, so it can get tricky, but I have been able to save some money there as well. Bi-Lo grocery store has a fuel perks rewards program where you get $0.05 off per gallon of gas for every $50 you spend in the store.
- Doubling- some grocery stores double coupons up to a certain amount. In my area, Bi-Lo doubles up to 55 cents and Publix up to 50 cents. In some areas there is no doubling--sorry--just call and ask your store for their policy.
