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My first double couponing experience. All this for $4 and I received a coupon for free milk and eggs. I was so shocked I had to go back and try again later that day... |
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| $16.62 later I had bought all of this AND received 3 coupons for free gallons of milk and 3 dozen eggs. This is when I got hooked! (BTW--cereal makes great snack alternatives. My kids love it!) On Double Double Days at Copp’s you can double up to 10 coupons. This is how I stock up on a lot of my food and save lots of money. I purposely wait for these days. If you aren’t a coupon person, no worries, let me introduce you to “Carrie” from Pocket Your Dollars. She takes the Copp’s flyer and finds coupons online (and from the paper) for you. You can then figure out great deals and simply print out her coupons. (I apologize I got this post out a little late—some of the online coupons are already gone! A lot of the companies have not reset their allotment for the month, usually there is much more!) Here is her link for this Weds deals: http://www.pocketyourdollars.com/2010/08/rainbow-foods-copps-pick-n-save-coupon-matchups-81-8710/ This week is a really good stock up week for Kellogg’s items (includes crackers, cereals, breakfast bars, shakes) as the flyer says, “buy 10 items at $2.50 each and get $10 off your next purchase”. So technically you could buy 10 Kellogg’s products for $25 (you must have $25 of items in order to get your coupons doubled), use 10 $1 off coupons and have $20 taken off your purchase. You would pay $5 out of pocket and then receive $10 off your next grocery purchase. (See how this works ! Now you are actually receiving free groceries AND making money off the store! ) So you probably are a little mystified by all this—or a little overwhelmed saying “I don’t have 10 $1 off coupons.” If you start noticing coupons a little more you soon will. Also if you have access to more than one computer you can print out additional coupons. The coupon limit is normally 2 – 3 prints per computer. After printing your first time, press the back button a couple of times and you should be able to print again, or just go back to the link. I often send the coupons to my husband to print out at work to get 4- 6 prints of a high value coupon. There are also other ways… For example, magazines have TONS of them. If you get Parents, Family Fun, or Family Circle perhaps you have noticed the Ronzoni pasta coupon for $1 off? (It has been in every issue for the past year.) Ronzoni pasta is $1.69 shelf price at Copp’s. I like to wait for it to go on sale for $1/box. I then take my $1 coupon and double it. This results in FREE pasta and $1 to go towards my extra purchases. In fact, I haven’t paid for pasta in the last 9 months and I have a nice stock from these fabulous coupons. And of course the newspaper has inserts every Sunday. Many people don’t use these inserts so you could pick them up from a friend or neighbor. I personally subscribe to the Sunday & Weds paper and have found that I save so much money that it more than pays up for my subscription (though I wouldn’t do this unless you were committed to couponing.) So a couple extra pointers in helping you save money. If you are buying more than $50 of food, try to split your groceries up in $25 purchases (remember you must have $25 of items in order to double!). Then you can double 10 coupons with each purchase. (I will do 2 purchases back to back to do this, or I will just drop my first purchase in the car and come back and do my second. If you go at a less busy time of day, the cashiers don’t mind if I do 2 transactions. Always ask first though.) And finally, Copp’s only doubles up to $1. Unfortunately, you will not be able to double those $1.50 coupons. Are you mystified by this and think I spend a lot of time doing this? Well, I don’t. Every week during one of my favorite shows, I take Carrie’s list and make my own and pull out/print my coupons. I am done in less than an hour and I watched my favorite tv show. I also have had people tell me that I am probably buying things now “just because I have a coupon.” That’s not true either. My motto is “unless I get it for free with the coupon, I am not going to buy something I would not normally get.” This is also how I am also able to keep my limits and watch my grocery bill dive from over $300 a month (yes I was a frugal shopper even before all of this) to about $200 a month for a family of 4 and still stock food! I also think stocking is key. You need to know when food is a good price and then buy what you need until the next time it goes on sale. It took a few months to figure out how much I needed to stock and for how long, but now I am doing well. In fact, my first few months of couponing, I was spending about the same amount before I couponed, but I was stocking up on additional food and figuring out how to save! And that is where this blog comes in. I am hoping to make the ropes a little easier for others and get them into savings too! So what do you think? Are you going to try it out? How have your couponing experiences been? |
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