I have discovered two things lately that have really contributed to my coupon savings:
Gather multiples of coupons
This is actually easy to do. Talk with your neighbors and friends who take the Sunday paper. If they don't want their coupon inserts, ask if you can have them. My mother-in-law has given me her coupons for years. In our area, we also get a free community newspaper on Saturdays which has a watered-down version of the Sunday coupon inserts (not all of the same coupons are in the Saturday freebie). My neighbors on both sides don't care for the paper, so they have agreed that I can have it. I also get my MIL's Saturday coupons. That's up to 6 sets of coupons each week!
Believe it or not you can get coupons on eBay--for cheap! Tonight as I was writing this entry, I went to eBay, typed "grocery coupons" in the search line, and got 480 results. Most are very reasonbly priced, and many are Buy It Now. I can easily get $30–$50 worth of coupons that I will actually use for $3 or $4.
Use Internet coupons with caution. Many grocery stores have stopped taking them. Safeway (where I do most of my shopping) was not accepting them for a while, but now takes one Internet coupon per type of item per transaction.
Use your coupons at the best possible time
Matching up my vast collection of coupons with rock-bottom sale prices has been where I've really seen a huge benefit. I log on to a website every Sunday morning which gives me my weekly list of the lowest-priced products at my supermarkets matched with manufacturers' coupons and weekly specials, both advertised and unadvertised. The website does all the hard work and research, and presents it in a straightforward format. Your credit card is charged $10 every 8 weeks for the first store on your list, and $5 every 4 weeks for the second store.
I shop at Albertson’s (for items that I can get for 50% off or more) and Safeway (for everything else) and it’s amazing how much I have saved! My average weekly savings at Albertson's is 57%, and my average weekly savings at Safeway is 35% (I have a spreadsheet if anyone wants to see actual numbers). I was doing OK with just using the Safeway list, but have found that I save more by going to Albertson’s, too, and my pantry and food storage areas in the garage are overflowing with the deals I’ve gotten by using as many coupons as I have when an item is a real deal.
Leave a comment or e-mail me if you would like an invitation to try out the site (the invitation will come from my Hotmail account).
