Mom All Day: How to save money with Coupons!

NOTE: CHECK YOUR STORE'S COUPON POLICY.

I've started really getting into coupons and savings. I do take my coupon binder to stores and search the store ads and online for sales. And every once in a while if I need to make a big shopping trip, I do go to my main store (Krogers) and walk the isles and write down sales. Then I compare those to coupons at home. They have good Mega sales and 10 for 10 items that are great to combine with your coupons so it's worth the isle walking because they don't show all their sales in their printed ads!

I wanted to give you a few steps to help you start to save. Once you get started you will find it so much fun. You will organize your coupon binder differently than I do, you will sort your coupons differently and you find what works best to help you save. A lot of stores have changed policies due to the "Extreme Coupon" show. But in the end, you should do these things:

1) Buy more than one newspaper! OR ask others to give you their inserts.
2) Carry a coupon binder!
3) Search for things on sale 1.99 or under.
4) Check out Couponmom.com and let her do the work!

1) Buy more than one newspaper! OR ask others to give you their inserts.
You need 4-5 inserts per Sunday paper in order to save big. I sometimes get 6 depending on what is in the coupon inserts. You can preview Sunday Coupon Inserts HERE. If one deodorant is on sale for $1.29 and you have ONE .50 cent coupon (my store doubles it to $1), then you can get ONE deodorant for .29 cents. Great, right? Well, if you have FOUR or SIX coupons for .50 cents each (doubled to $1) then you can get FOUR or SIX deodorants for .29 each. So you can stock pile those until the next sale.

Krogers had Crest toothpaste on sale 10 for 10 (buy 10 participating items get them for $1.00 each) . I had TEN 1.00 coupons in my binder so I got TEN tubes of toothpaste free! The key is to look for sales, check your coupons and buy when things are on sale when you can.

Try to clip and save all coupons in your binder. You can't always be brand specific when using coupons. The deodorant you like may not be on sale for pennies like another brand, but if you can get it for pennies or free, why not try it. Donate it if you want to also!

2) Carry a coupon binder!

It may seem like a lot of work, but it is really fun once you start and it's the best way to find those deals. I sit down after my daughter is in bed and organize my coupons while I watch television. I organize mine by my store layout. I don't get all neat and fancy when organizing as you can see by this photo. This day I was organizing coupons and looking through store ads on my bed while my daughter played in her room. You can get baseball card insert pages at any store (I got mine at Target), which work great for displaying them in your book.

3) Search for things on sale 1.99 or under!When I'm shopping, I always detour down the cleaning isle and the health and beauty isles. I look for wipes, cleaners, deodorants, shampoos, lotions, hand soap, toothpaste etc that may be on sale for less than 1.99. Because my coupons can be doubled at Krogers, any .50 coupons or more will actually be $1 coupons. So anything less than 1.99 you can get for pennies! (Just watch if the coupon has a size specification). These are great items to stock pile because they won't go bad and are always useful.

4) Check out Couponmom.com and let her do the work!
Click here and scroll down a bit and watch her #1 video called "Grocery Deals By State". You'll see what I mean by letting her do all the work for you! All you have to do is print her list and cut your coupons. I prefer to keep the coupons I use a lot or think I can get a good deal on clipped and in my binder so they are close at hand, but I also put the additional inserts in a stand up file system shown below for easy reference.

DEALS I'VE GOTTEN

I got all this for .24 cents!
The large crest was 10 for 10 at my Kroger grocery store plus I had (10) $1.00 off coupons.
So buy 10 at $1 each minus the $1 coupon and they are all free!
The floss was .88 at Walmart and I had $1.00 coupon so that was a .12 money maker.

Paid $15.35!! 87% Savings!

Actually, two of my Mega Sale items got messed up on this order so I'm going back tomorrow to fix it! After that I actually will have only spent about $9.46 on all of this! ALL Body wash and water was FREE, everything else was on sale plus coupons.

GOT ALL THIS FOR ONLY $2.76 !!
Deodorant was only .19 each and Conditioner was .25 cents each!
Had a free coupon for the Caress.

Spent a little over $14.00 on these items!
The gain sheets were .12 cents each box!

Here are just SOME of the items I picked on a Krogers shopping trip!Total grocery amount $302.51 and only paid $173.74!
$128.77 SAVINGS!$7.00 of that total was on 4 Sunday Papers, so technically I spent $166.74 on groceries.