I continued to shop in this manner and I added up total savings from my first trip May 2011 to December 31st, 2011 and I had saved my family over $3500.00 by shopping the sales and using coupons.
Throughout the years since then, I have continued to coupon and save myself money to the point that I had basically a small grocery store in my home (that I now must move to Colorado Springs). This mini mart has saved my derriere on multiple occasions however because there were times I didn't have any money at all to buy anything but I didn't have to worry because it was all in my stockpile for me to use.
It wasn't long after my divorce that I decided that I wanted to start teaching people how to do this and I didn't want to charge them because its hard enough to try to save money without everyone around you trying to take it from you just to teach you how to save it. So, I partnered up with one of the W.I.C. technicians and we taught at the health department in Cortez. I put on 1-2 classes a month and even did drawings and door prizes.
Now it's your turn. I want to teach you how to start couponing.
First things first. Gotta have coupons. Probably the best place to get coupons is going to be your local newspaper. Where I live, that is the Sunday Denver Post. I get 4 of them because I can generally use up to 4 of the same coupon in a transaction or in a day. I would suggest getting a newspaper for each member in your family and rounding it up to the next even number. So, if you have 5 people in your family, get 6 newspapers. Even if that person is a baby or a fur baby, get a newspaper for them. It works out better this way.
You can also find coupons from blinkies at the store (the little dispensers that blink and dispense a coupon), tear pads, hang tags, peelies, in or on product, in store booklets or that are handed out with samples. You can also sign up for coupons from websites of the product or the store itself. Or you can print coupons from places like coupons.com, redplum.com and smartsource.com. Printable coupons will only allow 2 prints per ip address, so if you have multiple computers, you can print multiple sets of 2 of that coupon. Additional good places to check for coupons is magazines and store booklets. All*You magazine is one that has coupons in every issue. Walgreens and Safeway put out a monthly booklet with coupons in it. City Market (Kroger/King Soopers) will mail you exclusive coupons based on your shopping habits with your loyalty card. There are also some companies that will mail you coupons for connecting with them either on facebook, twitter, e-mail or calling them!
Once you start collecting coupons, you're going to want to sort them in a way that makes sense to you. I have a binder with baseball card sleeves and page dividers for each category like baby items, pet, health, etc. You can choose to sort them also by grouping that weeks individual inserts in a sleeve or a folder. Or you might use an accordion folder. Whatever works best for you and makes the most sense is what you should choose. The first time you do this, it might take a bit longer and I hear a lot from people that they just don't have the time to do this. If you're committed to it, you'll start to realize that the time it takes you to clip those coupons, sort and file them, it's actually paying you to do so with the amount of money you just saved. I set aside time every Sunday after church to do my coupons, write out my grocery list for what is on sale at a stock-up price then I do my meal plan for the week based on what I have or will have in my pantry or fridge and add anything else I need for those meals to my grocery list. I then pull my coupons and go shopping. I will teach you more about that process tomorrow. For now, go, collect some coupons!
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