Couponing (Saved from Stockpiling for Emergency Thread)

[jryanna]

One last thing...

Collect ALL coupons. Don't pick through the coupons, looking for things you use. Just clip and file them all. Trust me on this. Or, at least put the ones you don't think you'll use in a container and keep them. Do not throw them out.

Many people I have taught this system too make this mistake. They look through the coupons and think that there are none for the things they use or like. But, if you collect them and file them all, you will be amazed at how a sale will come up that you never thought of and voila, you will have a coupon for it.

The thing is - don't look at a coupon all by itself. Keep the coupons and then look at the sales THEN look for a coupon to match it to.

Also, very often a coupon you don't use will lead to something you do. Let me explain--a sale came up recently where Campbells soup combined with a coupon and a promotion that led to free chicken and ground turkey meat. Well, I don't care for canned soup, but I bought the soup to get the free meat! And, then I kept some soup for my emergency stockpile and donated the rest to my church foodbank. So, had I followed my instinct and thrown out the soup coupons because I don't like canned soup, I would have missed out on the free meat.

Don't throw out any coupons!!

[chel0524]

jryanna - I have just recently got into the coupon thing. Recently Kroger had hamburger helper 10/10. I bought some hamb helper coupons on Ebay for 1.50 - got about 30 of them. They were 1.00 off 2 boxes.

My question is if I go into Kroger with these coupons, can I buy 10 boxes of hamburger helper and use 5 coupons? Or can I only go in and buy 2 boxes at one time with one coupon? That kind of confuses me. I don't want to get to the check out and be told I can only use 1 coupon at a time.

BTW - I think this a great for this thread. It is helping me to stockpile items for if we need them later. Also this has cut my grocery bill way down. Last week I didn't have to buy anything at the store except milk and cat food.

[jryanna]

What about coupons where say, it's a $1.00 off two. You have to buy two to use the coupon. If I buy two, can I use the $1.00 off coupon and a second coupon for it's face value?

No, you cannot use another manufacturer coupon on the second item when you are already using a $1/2 manufacturer coupon. The key here is "manufacturer". You CAN use a store coupon in combination with a $1/2 manufacturer coupon if your store allows coupon stacking.

An example is this - I recently bought two 1/2 gallons of Horizon organic milk at Publix. They allow coupon stacking so I was able to use one $1 off 2 manufacturer coupon AND two $1 off 1 STORE coupons. The milk was on sale 2/$5, so the math went like this: 2 milk at 2/$5, minus $1 off 2 manufacturer coupon brings it down to 2/$4, minus two $1 off 1 store coupons brings it down to 2/$2 or $1.00 each which is not a bad price for organic milk!

[jryanna]

jryanna - I have just recently got into the coupon thing. Recently Kroger had hamburger helper 10/10. I bought some hamb helper coupons on Ebay for 1.50 - got about 30 of them. They were 1.00 off 2 boxes.

My question is if I go into Kroger with these coupons, can I buy 10 boxes of hamburger helper and use 5 coupons? Or can I only go in and buy 2 boxes at one time with one coupon? That kind of confuses me. I don't want to get to the check out and be told I can only use 1 coupon at a time.

BTW - I think this a great for this thread. It is helping me to stockpile items for if we need them later. Also this has cut my grocery bill way down. Last week I didn't have to buy anything at the store except milk and cat food.


Yes, you can buy 10 and use 5 coupons. You don't have to do them 2 at a time. Just check with your store and make sure there are no limits on how many coupons you can use per transaction. Some Krogers have limits, some don't. There doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason to it!! I have 3 Krogers within 5 miles of my home and only 1 has limits -- so guess which Krogers I shop at? LOL

By the way, there is a cheaper place to buy individual coupons than ebay. There are two places actually- one is called couponclippers and the other is couponmaster. They charge anywhere from 3 cents to 50 cents a coupon which is a better price I think than a lot of ebay sales.

Also, if you want whole Sunday inserts from past weeks you can order those through a website called couponsnthingsbydede. Sometimes ordering whole inserts is cheaper than buying the entire paper, but it takes longer to get them than it does to buy the paper. So, if you are not in a hurry, that may be the way to go. The lady who runs it is named Dede McConnell and she has agreed to give my coupon students a 5% discount on their first order. So, if any of you are interested in doing that, PM me and I'll give you the code. I consider you all my "students", so it counts, right?

Another tip - sign up for all store newsletters. For example, if you sign up at Food Lion stores, they will email you coupons every Wednesday morning. Likewise CVS pharmacy will email you coupons once you sign your store card up with them. Ditto for manufacturers - Pillsbury.com, BettyCrocker.com, etc.

[Gesso]

jryanna, dont the coupns usually have a 3 week ish usable period befor ethey expire? most stores that i know of you cant use coupons on items on sale :scratch
i think i need to research this more, because it seems like if it would work, then we could save soooo much money

i am in canada though, so some of the stores you are mentioning dont apply here..

i shop at

farmers market (hormone free organic meat..also some veggies too)
save-on foods
safeway
IGA
Costco
walmart

[jryanna]

jryanna, dont the coupns usually have a 3 week ish usable period befor ethey expire? most stores that i know of you cant use coupons on items on sale :scratch
i think i need to research this more, because it seems like if it would work, then we could save soooo much money

i am in canada though, so some of the stores you are mentioning dont apply here..

i shop at

farmers market (hormone free organic meat..also some veggies too)
save-on foods
safeway
IGA
Costco
walmart

Actually, the average expiration date on most coupons is 30-60 days. Some are longer - 90 days or so. It depends on the popularity of the product. But, it seems that just as a coupon expires, a new one is published. For example, Proctor&Gamble put out their coupon inserts on the first Sunday of every month so their coupons are usually only good for 30 days. But, thats okay because at the end of the 30 days, you get a new insert with a lot of the same coupons!

I don't know how the store coupon rules are in Canada, but I understand they are stricter than in the U.S. Here, we CAN use coupons on sale items - that is the beauty of this system as well as the golden rule - "only buy if an item is on sale AND you have a coupon for it". Using coupon on sale items is what makes for awesome savings!

I am not familiar with the stores you listed above except for Safeway, Walmart and Costco. In the US, you CAN use coupons on sale items at Safeway and Walmart. Costco does not accept any coupons at all. The best thing to do is call your local stores and ask to speak to a store manager and then ask them if you can use a coupon on sale items. If so, you are good to go!!

[tygerkittn]

Costco mails out some incredibly good coupons, sometimes the greeter hands them out too. They're in store only, of course.

[Vetswife]

I use coupons to buy groceries and have been regularly saving up to 90% on my groceries. I am not exaggerating!!! I started doing this a year ago when I, too, felt a prompting from the Lord and now my family and I are well stocked for at least the next year!

Tomorrow for example, I am going to get free toilet paper, starkist tuna, suave shampoo, cattlemans barbeque sauce, toaster strudels, poptarts, and sausage gravy. This is just the free stuff, I am getting much more for very cheap!

If anyone is interested on how to do this you can go to www.hotcouponworld.com and go to the forum where you can find threads on coupon basics.

If you want more info here, just post a reply here and I will be happy to post some of the basics for you all here.

Hope this helps.

How funny, I was just going to post abot Hot Coupon World. I love that site. I also like Couponforum.com. I too save a ton of money, especially at CVS. I also am getting the free tuna. This is the starkist tuna in pouches, not the cheap stuff.

I put two pouches of tuna with one box of tuna Hamburger helper (which I aso got free) and sealed in my vacum sealer. A free meal for a family of four. I also do this with chicken helper. Coupons, coupons, coupons matched with a sale is a great blessing for those of us on a budget.

Please, please go to this site.

[HeLivesinMe]

I just wanted to let you guys know that I've been really into the stockpiling and I've been LOVING it! :) Today I went to my local Albertson's because they were doing 12 for $9 and I wanted to get some more pudding. They also had a special in their ad where you could get 10 items (granola bars, cereal, etc.) for $16, but they had a coupon to go with that for $6, so you could get 10 boxes of cereal (Captain Crunch, Life, etc.) for just $1/box!!! I didn't have any coupons for the cereal, but it was an awesome buy. They also had Crest toothpaste on sale for 3/$5 and I had 8 coupons for $1/off 1 that I got from couponmaster.com. My total before instore savings was around $92. After instore savings, it was $43.32, after my $14 in coupons, I ended up paying $29.32. I was REALLY happy with my savings. I'm going to go back and buy 10 more boxes of cereal and 10 more boxes of granola bars. They had some other stuff, but this is what I needed. The lady at the cash register told me that I had done some "excellent shopping" today! It was REALLY awesome!

Thanks for all the good tips! I didn't know Kroeger sold their papers on Monday for half price! I have King Soopers in my area (still part of Kroeger), so I will ask them about that on Monday! This last week they had a TON left!

[HeLivesinMe]

1. First - start collecting coupons. The Sunday paper is the best place to get inserts. I buy 10-20 newspapers each week. I have one delivered on Sunday, but I wait until Monday to buy the rest because Krogers sells the Sunday paper on Mondays for half price. So, I spend $10-$20 a week on papers. A worthwhile investment since I know this will save me $100s.

Jryanna,
I asked at a local King Soopers and I called another, and they do NOT sell the Sunday paper for any less. I know the distributors pick them up so the stores can get credit, so they don't even want to mess with that, I guess. However, I found out I can get the newspaper delivered for less than half of what I'd get it discounted on Monday. I've put in an e-mail to my local paper to find out if I can get 10 newspapers per week delivered and pay either weekly or monthly, so I can save the money from my weekly budget. :) I'll post what I come up with. :)