Why coupon?

Back in March I started couponing because we were spending a fortune on groceries and I was tired of it. I heard about a website called 'The Krazy Coupon Lady.' They sell a really good book about the ins and outs of couponing. There were so many things I didn't know. I always looked at the $.25 and $.50 coupons and thought it wasn't worth my time. The book points out so many different things, for example at Target.com there are target coupons. Usually at most stores you can only use one coupon per item, but at Target you can use a regular coupon (manufacturer coupon) and a target coupon together and if the item is already on sale it's even better. You can do this at Safeway too and Safeway doubles manufacturer coupons up to $1.

Several people I've talked to recently have said that it's too time consuming, or they can't find coupons for the things they use or they just can't make it work for some reason.

Here are a couple of examples of things I found at target recently. This first one is the Welch's juice that I would always pay full price for at Walmart, this is what my family drinks. It was on clearance for $2.08, regularly $2.99. At Target I always check the end caps for their clearance things and see what coupons I have to go on top. Well this week they had about 20-25 of these on clearance. Now to most people a difference of $0.91 is not that big a deal. Well when I add my $1 off coupon to it, it makes them a steal. I bought 14 of these bad boys for a total of $15.12. Now full price it would've cost me $41.86. This is at least a 2 month supply of juice for my family and I won't buy it again until I find another steal, which I've seen every few months but it's usually at Safeway.

The trick is to stock up on an item when it's at a low price like this so that you aren't paying full price ever if you can help it. This is a great way to build up a food storage and coupons and sales are always rotating so you are constantly buying different things for your food storage.

A lot of times when a manufactuer is promoting an item and they send out coupons, the store is also trying to promote it by putting it on sale, which makes for very cheap and a lot of times free items. There are several things that I have gotten for free such as:

toothpaste (colgate, crest, etc)
toothbrushes (Colgate, Reach)
deoderant (Secret, Right Guard...)
scotch tape
bbq sauce (Jack Daniels, Kraft, KC Masterpiece)
ketchup (heinz)
pasta (Healthy Harvest)
soap (Nivea, Olay)
shampoo (Finesse...)
conditioner (Finesse...)
reams of HP printer paper
Excedrin and so many different kinds of medication!
bandaids (Curad, bandaid brand)
pens (papermate)
Revlon tweezers
dish soap (Gain)
worchestershire sauce (French's)
Glade, Febreze, and Air wick candles and sprays

I could go on and on. These things aren't just the cheap, off brand either, all name brand things that I used to pay full price for, and everything I just listed I easily have a year supply of. Some examples of some really cheap items are:

Glad trash bags
Hefty/ziploc bags
Clorox cleanup ($.49 a bottle at Walgreens)
Laundry detergent (Wisk, Arm&Hammer, All, Gain)
Duracell/Energizer batteries (got these from Amazon.com)
peanut butter (Skippy, Planters)
jelly (Welch's, Smuckers)
Huggies diapers and wipes
Puffs tissue
Target shower curtains and pillows
HP ink
Gillette razors
shaving cream
Banana Boat aloe vera
Nivea shaving conditioner for electric razors
Cereal (try not to pay more than a $1 a box) (Kelloggs, General Mills, Post...)

Seriously, I've never even had close to a year supply of any of these things but now I do and it's all due to couponing. If I had to pay full price for all of this to try to get a year supply I couldn't afford it.

The other day Wes was saying that we needed some supplements around the house, that day I went looking at Target to see what I could find. Here is what I found:

These are $11.99 each full price, which I would never pay! But I had a $5 manufacturer coupon per each item and a $2 Target coupon per item (these I got from the Target pharmacy coupon booklets-just ask for them at the pharmacy). Already that brings them down to $4.99 each, but that still wasn't going to be good enough, then I noticed that they were on an end cap and if you buy 2 of them you will get a $5 Target gift card. So, I decided to get 4 of them which will give me 2-$5 gift cards and after factoring the gift cards in that brings them down to $2.49 each. But wait, I also had a coupon for $5 off a $50 purchase, I am very close to $50 so I threw in $2 item that I was already buying and dividing that $5 between the 5 items it makes my Centrum $1.49. That's a price I can afford and so I did 2 separate transactions. I bought these first, got the 2 gift cards and then used them on my next transaction for the other items I was buying. I LOVE Target, they are the best! Full price these would've cost $47.96+tax, but I only paid $4.96+tax for all 4 of them. This is why I coupon! It is so fun getting deals like this.

Ok one more example and this was actually back in Sept. Back in May or June I got a $2 off coupon for the Off! fans (mosquito repellent). These are usually about $8.49 each and even with a $2 coupon it would not be good enough and I really wanted to try it but was not going to pay $6.49 for just one. So I held on to these coupons throughout the summer all the way until Sept and they expired about the middle of the month. About a week before they expired Target had these clearanced out to $2.12! So I bought 6 of them at $0.12 each = $0.72+tax for 6 of them! I will hold on to these until next summer!

One other thing I have learned though is that you can't be brand loyal. For example, I used to love Tide and that's all I would buy. Tide is really expensive and very rarely have I seen it for a good deal and I would see really good deals on the ones I listed above. You know what? I think they work just as well as Tide does and I'm saving money.

Always stock up on seasonal items after the season/holiday is over for the next year. I already have all of my kids Halloween costumes for next year and I paid $1 per costume (as opposed to $15-$20 per costume) the Saturday after Halloween.

I could go on and on with examples of different deals but it would take forever. Just know that couponing is worth it and we have saved so much money and it is really fun!