If there is one thing that is true in using coupons (as in life)…it’s that “timing is everything” . So many people say to me “yeah – I see a coupon for $1/2 of X product…then I take it to the store and the product is $4.99 that week.  Big Whoop! It’s too much trouble and not enough of a return to use coupons”.

Well – YEAH…if you sit at your kitchen table on a Sunday morning clipping coupons, then head out to the store 2 hours later to use those coupons..then you will NEVER maximize your savings.

Manufacturers count on you Sunday Morning Clippers! But here is a little secret for you:  with very few exceptions, you should never use a coupon until about 2 weeks after it was in the newspaper!

Sales cycles at grocery stores are on a very predictable 8-12 week cycle.  Most of your needs will hit their rock bottom price at one point every 8-12 weeks…..and the coupon that is released will generally NOT be the same week that it is the “rock bottom price”.  You need to HOLD ON to that coupon once you clip it…and wait for the lowest price!

Coupon + lowest price = maximum savings!

Now let’s throw in Double Coupons…..

If you live in an area where Double Coupons aren’t the “norm”, but your store occasionally has those events, make sure that you hold on to those coupons for those events! (I happen to live in an area where all the stores double, so I have a little bit more flexibility with my savings.)

Add Store Coupons

Many stores will release their own coupons that can be stacked with manufacturers coupons.  Pair this savings with a double-coupon event?  You have the “Perfect Storm of Savings!”

What are your best tips for timing your savings?

Looking for more Extreme Couponing tips? Make sure that you check out all the posts in my Coupon 101 and Coupon Ethics sections!

Ahh – the grocery circulars….those geniuses of marketing designed to get you in to the stores! We often think of the weekly mailings that we get as notifying us of the sales…and in many cases that is true. But in many cases that is not! Here is a quick list of what you need to know:

1. The front and back pages usually have the true sales for the week. The best prices can be found there. Shop THOSE deals before anything else!
2. The terms “Save with Card” without telling you how much you are saving usually means no savings at all (or maybe $0.20 savings…woohoo!)
3. Look for “On Your Next Trip” deals: these can become a huge source of savings for your meats, produce and things for which we normally don’t see coupons. Simply put, the store is advertising that you will get a coupon at checkout for a certain amount off your next trip when you buy specific items. But those items (using coupons to bring your cost down) and get “cash money” off your next trip!
4. Buy One Get One Free sales are not always the best deals: my best example that I can give you is ice cream. I always see ice cream priced at BOGO….but the “regular price” is $4.99. Better to wait for the times that it is on sale for $2-$2.25 and stock up then!
5. In most cases, if a deal is listed as “10 for $10″ or “2 for $5″, you can just buy 1 of that item and get the sale price. Look to see if there is wording in your circular like “must buy 10″. If there isn’t, you don’t need to!

What are some of your tips for navigating the circulars?

Looking for more Extreme Couponing tips? Make sure that you check out all the posts in my Coupon 101 and Coupon Ethics sections!

One of the key elements to saving money with coupons is being organized.  Without being organized, you spend too much time searching for the coupons and not enough time saving money!

There are 2 methods of organizing your coupons:

:: The Binder Method of Organizing Your Coupons

This is my preferred method.  I find that by going through the motions of clipping and organizing my coupons, I am more aware of what coupons I have at all times. In addition, by clipping and filing all of the coupons (that I think I will use…I don’t clip ALL the coupons), I have them in my binder when I am at the store, ready to take advantage of an unadvertised or clearance deal.

Check out my post on the Binder Method of Organizing Coupons for more details!

:: The Whole Insert Method of Organizing Your Coupons

Some people prefer to organize their entire inserts by date in file folders in a file box.  Another way to do the Whole Insert Methos is to organize them in

The idea is that when you are looking for a coupon for a deal, you can match the date up with the Grocery Store or Drug Store coupon matchups and just pull the coupons that you need and head to the stores. This saves you from clipping coupons that you will never use

I have to tell you – I have tried both methods. I know that some people will praise the Whole Insert method, but I found that by clipping all the coupons, I was more likely to use them (besides – I like getting the unneeded paper in to recycling as soon as possible). I find that I can usually get everything clipped on a Sunday night during a single episode of “CSI: Miami”!

How do you organize your coupons?

Looking for more Saving Money With Coupons tips? Make sure that you check out all the posts in my Coupon 101 and Coupon Ethics sections!

Coupon 101

If you want to maximize your savings, you are going to need multiple copies of the coupons. In order to save the most amount of money at the grocery store, you need to start a stockpile…and your weekly subscription to the Sunday newspaper just isn’t going to cut it…but it’s a start!

:: The Sunday Paper

The first place to find coupons is the most obvious: the Sunday newspaper. Look for deals on your local Sunday paper. The Philadelphia Inquirer (my local “major paper”) often runs deals where you can get the Sunday paper for $1. I have 3 subscriptions. Yep – that’s right – each Sunday I have 3 copies of the paper delivered on my driveway! I am always looking for when they have that deal to extend my subscription!

Please note that the Redplum insert is no longer in many major newspapers.  To find out if the Redplum insert is in your local paper (or find another local paper that does carry it, check out the Redplum website)

:: Internet Printable Coupons (IPs):

there are tons of coupons to be found all over the internet. Make sure that you check out Coupons.com, SmartSource, Redplum and Coupon Network for the newest IPs.

:: Facebook

More and more manufacturers are releasing great coupons on their Facebook Fan pages. Make sure that y9ou Like your favorite brands on Facebook to see when they are releasing new coupons (and of course, I will always tell you on this site when the good ones are released!)

:: Manufacturers websites

In many cases, they may have coupons available right on their site. If they don’t have coupons? Use the Contact form (or get the phone number and call) and let them know your honest opinion of their products. Very often they will respond by mailing you coupons. Simply Google your favorite products and start contacting them! (note: this also works great for smaller companies who do have coupons, but not the ability to get their coupons in the national inserts!)

:: Friends and family

Hit up all the non-couponing people that you know and ask them for their circulars. Do they use coupons? Then ask them for their leftovers! Do you have a cat? Offer to trade cat food coupons with your friend who has a dog!

:: Coupon Clipping services

these are available, but are constantly coming under fire (as are eBay sellers). There are several reputable companies out there if you do some homework

Looking for more Extreme Couponing tips? Make sure that you check out all the posts in my Coupon 101 and Coupon Ethics sections!

If you are going to be able to keep up with Saving Money With Coupons, you are going to need to learn the lingo!

The inserts: there are 3 different kinds of inserts to be found in your Sunday paper

SS: The SmartSource insert. Among other things, this is where you find the General Mills coupons, which have been the best deals lately

RP: the RedPlum Insert. It also used to be called the Valassis insert, but that practice seems to have fallen by the wayside.  Not all major newspapers still carry the RP insert.

P&G: the Proctor & Gamble insert. This comes out once a month (typically the 1st Sunday of each month, but P&G follows their own schedule) and is the only place where you can get coupons for Tide, Pantene, Pampers and many other products.

Couponer: I don’t care how many times my spell-check flags this word, it has now become the descriptive for those of us who use coupons as if our survival depends on it!

IPs: shorthand for “Internet Printable”. IPs are the coupons that you can find online. Printing IPs require the installation of a “Coupon Printer” on your computer. Please don’t fear installing this program. The tracking cookie that it contains is in order to limit your printing of each coupon to 2 times per computer (which means if you have several computers in your house……).

WYB: shorthand for “When You Buy”

OYNO: shorthand for “On Your Next Order”

Catalina: These generally cause the most excitement among couponers. When you see a sale worded something like “Save $10 on your next order when you buy $20 in participating products”, it means that you receive a coupon for $10 at checkout. The coupon is printed not from the register, but from that little white machine sitting next to the register. That machine is made by the Catalina company and the coupons themselves have come to be called a “Catalina”. These coupons can generally be used for anything else in the store, including those items for which there are rarely coupons, like meat and produce.

Rolling the Catalina: the ability to do this is why couponers get so excited about Catalinas. It simply means that you split your transactions in order to minimize your out-of-pocket costs. Let’s say that you are looking at a deal listed as “Save $10 OYNO WYB $20 and you have enough coupons to to that deal several times. There are two reasons that you want to split your transactions in to 3 $20 transactions. The first reason is that, in most cases, if you buy $60 in one transaction you will still only get a $10 Catalina (it depends on the deal, not the store). But if you split your transaction, you can minimize your out-of pocket costs by using the Catalina generated in one transaction to pay for the next. Check out this post to see how I rolled Catalinas to get $174 worth of groceries for only $12 out-of-pocket (or you could say they paid me $3 to take the groceries, since I still walked out of the store with a $15 Catalina)

OOP: shorthand for “out of pocket”. This is the cash that you physically pull out of your wallet.

ECBs: shorthand for “Extra Care Bucks” and is specific to CVS. CVS’s Extra Care Buck program is a great way to get most of your toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo and many cosmetics for free.

The CVS Scanner: It looks like any other free-standing price-checker that you see at Target, etc. If you scan your CVS card at the scanner, very often it will print out extra CVS coupons for name-brand products. If you have a manufacturers coupon for that item as well, you can use both of them at the same time to further reduce your costs!

RRs: Walgreens “Register Rewards” which are basically Walgreens-specific Catalinas (see above).

BOGO, B1G1, B1G2F: different ways to say “Buy One Get One Free” or “Buy 1 Get 2 Free”

MIR: shorthand for “Mail In Rebate”

PSA: shorthand for “Prices Start At”

Blinkie: sometimes you will find a little machine hanging on the shelf in the supermarket aisles that dispenses coupons. These are called Blinkies because the machine usually has a little red blinking light on it

Peelies: these are coupons that you can often find stuck to the product itself.

Hangtag/Winetag: these are usually found on bottles (salad dressing, beverages, oils, etc)

Tearpad: can be found anywhere. they are simply pads of coupons found near the product display

Land of No Doubles: those horrible places in the country where grocery stores do not double coupons. The 3rd circle of Hell

Did I miss any? Just let me know in the comments and I will answer your question and update the post!

Looking for more Extreme Couponing tips? Make sure that you check out all the posts in my Coupon 101 and Coupon Ethics sections!

Have you pledged to save more money this year?  Then you have come to the right place!  Over the next 12 weeks we will give you a crash course on everything that you need to know about saving money with coupons!

Why 12 weeks?  Because almost every item that you buy in the stores hits the “rock bottom price” every 8-12 weeks.  By learning to shop smart, you will create a stockpile of the things you buy at the “rock bottom price” and save more money than you ever thought possible!

Throw out everything that you “know” about how you can’t really save money with coupons, how there are never coupons for the things you need, etc.

Oh – and while we are at it?  Throw out the idea that you are going to go from never using coupons to savings 95% the next week.  Matter of fact you aren’t going to save that much 3 weeks from now.  It takes time to learn how to use coupons effectively, as well as learn the store coupon policies.  What works for me at my grocery stores in the Philadelphia area may not work for you in Pittsburgh, Des Moines or Phoenix!

What will you learn?

1. How to shop the sales and always pay the rock-bottom price
2. How to plan your menus around what you have on hand and what is on sale…not just whatever you “feel like” eating. There will be those times when you may feel like just grabbing a few REALLY good steaks on the way home from work….and that is ok!  You will be saving so much money that you will have plenty of wiggle-room in your budget to do just that!
3. How store and brand-loyalty is completely wrecking your budget.
4. How wholesale clubs (in most cases) do NOT give you the most bang for your buck (have you EVER walked out of one of them spending less than $100?)

Have any specific questions?  Leave them in the comments!

Looking for more Extreme Couponing tips? Make sure that you check out all the posts in my Coupon 101 and Coupon Ethics sections!