Tips & Useful Websites for Couponing

I've only been couponing for the last month or so and have enjoyed it so much! As anyone will tell you, it is time consuming and requires organization.

My overall goal is to eventually be able to donate products I get for free to the local schools. I'm currently in the process of making my own stock pile for me and my family. After this process is completed I'm hoping to gradually make the donations. Its a difficult time for everyone in this economy but there is a way to save tons of money and in some cases even get money back due to the overages from coupons and price matching.

Here are some tips that really helped me:

1. As I stated previously, you HAVE to eat something before going shopping. Your 30min. -1hr. grocery shopping time is going to be non existent from here on out. For me, it takes about 3-4hrs. I know that sounds like a lot of time but you want to make sure that you are getting the most out of your coupons.

2. You have to be EXTREMELY organized. If not, it will take even longer at the grocery store because you will be bouncing from isle to isle. Everyone has there own way of organizing there coupons. Some use binders or plastic containers. Find the store that suits your needs and has the best coupon policy. As I said before I'm a big fan of Walmart because they price match and allow overages (overages are coupons that are worth more than the product, the left over money will go towards the rest of your purchase or in your pocket).

3. Read coupons carefully. You don't want to get to the register with all of your items and then not be able to use the coupons. One of the "golden" words to look for is ANY. For instance, if there is a coupon for $1.00 off ANY Colgate toothpaste (and there are no restrictions on the coupon) look for the travel size, those are usually under a $1.00 and this will give you overage.

4. I learned that when a coupon says "one coupon per purchase" that only means that its only good towards those item (s). For example, if you have 5 coupons for 5 cans of soup, you can use all 5 coupons towards that part of your purchase. Now on the other hand if it says "one coupon per transaction" you can only use 1 coupon for 1 single transaction (i.e. if you have 5 coupons and 5 soups, you would have to make 5 individual transactions to use all of the coupons)

Here are some of my favorite Websites:

iheartthemart
Krazy Coupon Lady
Mommy Saves Big
Coupon Divas

Please feel free to ask me any questions :) I will be posting tips and new coupon deals as frequent as possible.