Saving Cash With Coupons
By Melissa Wynn
During these hard economic times more and more of us are saving money with coupons. A new kind of shopper has emerged that takes clipping coupons to extreme. Often spending several hours per week clipping and gathering coupons these savvy savers have figured out a way to buy hundreds of dollars worth of products for mere pennies on the dollar.
As I understand it, certain grocery and non-grocery items go on sale in an annual cycle. For instance we all know that hot dogs, condiments and buns will be on sale around the 4th of July and that fl our, sugar and other baking ingredients tend to be on sale during the winter holidays. Also many markets and even big box retailers often have a day of the week that is dubbed “double coupon day”. So, if you had a coupon that was good for $.50 off a package of hot dogs, and shopped on double coupon day to make your coupon worth $1.00, during the 4th of July week when they were on sale for $1.29, you would only pay $.29 per package.
Extreme couponers learn these cycles and gather several of the same coupons whenever possible. That way instead of getting just one they can buy perhaps ten packages of the hotdogs only spending $2.90, just over the cost of two at the sale price.
Another step in the process is to begin a “stock pile”, a room or area for storing the large numbers of items purchased at one time with the many coupons. Since this weeks won’t have the highest saving until next year it pays to buy for the year if you can gather enough coupons. Even though we see these super shoppers on TV buying $600.00 worth of merchandise for $39.00 they may have only purchased six or seven items. They just bought a large quantity at their carefully planned out rock bottom price.
There is no doubt that extreme couponing can save you a mint. It does however take a lot of time clipping, organizing and doing and double checking the math before going on that epic shopping trip.
Start slow by clipping when you can and never pass up a chance to print coupons online before your weekly shopping trip. Perhaps plan to shop on double coupon day and practice checking the sales flyers and matching your coupons for a few weeks. As they say, practice makes perfect.
Everyone likes to save money and even if your first little stack of coupons only saves you a few dollars, a penny saved is still a penny earned. Break out the scissors and start saving cash with coupons!
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