Coupon Organization

Tip’s For Couponing Success

by Tia on August 25, 2009 · 2 comments

Are you overwhelmed by your coupons or the thought of couponing at all? Has a bought of “deal chaising” left you with a bad taste in your mouth for the drug store game? Is it just too much to add to your life?

I have been in all of these places on my coupon journey. When CVS first came to town after the Savon buy out in California I was bent on NEVER missing a deal. When we bought this house last year and were in full makeover mode and then moving 10 years of our lives into the new (to us) house the thought of shopping at all…let alone couponing…made me ill — even though we needed more than ever to be pinching our pennies. And now — as I have adjusted to being at home and loosing the 2+ hours a day on the commuter bus (I can NOT believe I am missing this at all but I am a tad) that I used to plan shopping trips, cut coupons and balance my check book — I have found making the time to work these in nearly impossible. Nearly – but have made it work as best I can.

The keys to attaining couponing success ~~and keeping your sanity~~ has boiled down to these few steps…

1) Make it a priority. Schedule it like you would an appointment and make it part of your routine. If you think you will just fit it in when you can chances are it will fall by the wayside. Just as I get up before my family does during the week so I can work on this blog everyday I make use of that time on Sunday to cut and organize coupons and get my shopping trips lined up. I don’t always finish before it is time to get ready for church but it is at least started and I can work the rest out later in the day or on Monday.

2) Keep it manageable for YOU. If you can only hit 1 store every other week, once a month or whatever that is ok. Make sure you are doing your best to stockpile on that one stores sale cycles. If you don’t have the time to research prices or sale — use a website like The Grocery Game. Corrie at “Cents”able Momma shared with us how she uses The Grocery Game and Coupon Mom to organize her shopping and had great tips! My way isn’t even always the right way for ME — so it is definitely not for everyone else either! Keeping it manageable for YOU will make you more likely to stick with it and that is what is most important.

3) Know it is ok to miss a deal!This can still be hard for me but I have to remember that my time is valuable also. I used to live down the street from 4 major grocery chains and both Walgreens and CVS. Now I live close to 1 local grocery store and everything else is far enough away to be inconvenient. Since I can not just pop in and grab the deal on my way home from work anymore I often have to skip it but you know what I have found? There will almost always be another deal soon!

4) Take a break if you need to. If I need a shopping break — be it a week or two — we eat from the stockpile and have enough drug store items to take month long breaks too. If I just need a break from couponing I stick to only shopping for the perishables that likely don’t have coupons anyway and again rely on my stock pile. Occasionally I will also ask for help. My mom works near all those stores I used to live by and since she does not have 4 kids in tow it is a faster and less complicated stop. I try not to ask too often and I return the favor when I can but I love that she is willing and able to help find those great deals for me. Do you have a friend or family member that you can share this duty with too?

Do you have any tips? As back to school approaches I am about to be thrown into a new routine and my job search with intensify. I would love to hear your tips for working couponing into your life and what is working for you.

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Why I Have A Seperate Email Account for Coupons

by Tia on April 8, 2009 · 1 comment

Do you have a separate email account to use when the companies ask for one in order to get that coupon?

Setting up a separate email account to use when signing up for online coupons and offers is essential. It keeps your inbox from becoming Spam-A-Lot and it gives you a go to place when you are looking for coupons to use. I did not do this initially and I was amazed when I moved all my coupon subscriptions to the new email account and unsubscribed from my main account – at the drop off in ads and spam I was receiving. What a relief!

I check this email account just once a day as opposed to my personal email account and not only does if keep me more organized…it also saves me a ton of time!!!

My favorite for this job is Gmail hands down. Not only do you have nearly unlimited space but they are great at separating the spam you wanted – i.e. newsletters and email coupon offers – from the OTHER spam that is offering you lottery winnings you did not enter for or that AHEM pharmaceutical enhancement that is guaranteed to work. Other options include another email from your home internet provider if you have an extra or a free email account from AOL.

If you don’t have a separate email account I suggest you get one now! Below are the instructions to get an account on Gmail. Let me know if you have any questions.

Go to the Gmail homepage.
Click the “Sign Up for Gmail” link in the bottom right of the screen.
Fill in the appropriate boxes: “First Name,” “Last Name” and “Desired Login Name” and choose and confirm a password.
Fill out the remainder of the form with a security question (which will help you if you forget your password), a secondary email (if you have one), location and word verification and then click on the button marked “I accept. Create My Account” if you accept the Gmail terms of service.

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You Provided the Q & Here Are My A’s

by Tia on January 14, 2009 · 4 comments

The questions for the coupon binder giveaway are great and I am really excited to share some of the answers with you now and others in separate posts over the next two weeks. Thank you for your participation! This has been a really exciting giveaway!

I am about to expose all of my money saving dorkiness to you all. If you know me already you have seen it many times — sometimes to your embarassment! If we have just met here, forgive me because I can not help it! LOL! First, I will answer the questions that can be answered in a link to older posts or other sites that I use. Then I will list what is coming up.

For those of you who asked about coupon organization, I will direct you to my Coupon Organization 101 post here and my post on Price Books and why they work is here. Yesterday I addressed Coupons & Savings On Produce and you can find out which stores Double and Triple Coupons in your state at About.com. If you have questions regarding anything after that please feel free to comment or email me at ibetbird @ gmail. com (remove spaces). Becentsables Grocery Gathering has an awesome round up of blogs who post the coupon match ups and best deals for grocery chains by region and they rock!

Ruth Ann asked if there was a way to decode the Coupon Barcode to avoid the embarrassing beep. While I can not tell you how to always avoid the beeps, because I get them myself occasionally, and sometimes there is a programming error, I can tell you that the 5 digits after the first number (usually a 5 or a 9) on the coupon barcode should match the 5 digits on the product after the first number of the UPC label. You can read a little more thru the link.

Hopefully I am covering many of the remaining questions with the topics below:

E-Coupons

What’s The Deal With Milk & Dairy?

Bread & Baking Products

Getting Deals On Meat & Deli Items

Target Coupons

Keeping Track Of What Coupons You Have – Knowing When They Expire

Why I Always Have My Coupons

Budgeting For Those Extras – Building Your Stock Pile

Knowing When Enough Is Enough

I will be posting these topics over the next 2 weeks. Here is hoping I don’t bore anyone! J

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Another Take On Couponing

by Tia on January 12, 2009 · 0 comments

I am super excited to have a guest post today from Corrie over at “Cents”able Momma. She is sharing with us how she uses The Coupon Mom and Grocery Game websites to save money! Without further ado…

Hi, I’m Corrie from “Cents”able Momma. I’m so glad that Tia invited me to do a guest post on my coupon system. Unlike Tia, I am not so good at remembering prices of items in my head, so I only know the “rock-bottom” price for just a few items that I purchase quite frequently, without having to consult my price book. But, what if you don’t have the time to create a price book (or don’t really feel like doing it)? Or what if you hate clipping all the coupons that come in the newspaper inserts each week and trying to file them all away in the an organized process?

That’s where CouponMom and the Grocery Game enter to save the day! They match the sale prices with coupons and tell you what the percentage savings is from the regular price. They also tell you which inserts to find the coupons, so you only have to clip them when you need them (I store the inserts in a page protector by week in a binder. You can see my coupon organization process here).

CouponMom is a free site (you just have to register). You can browse the list of national chain stores (such as CVS, Walgreens, Walmart, etc.) or you can search by state for some of the more local stores. Once you pull up the list, you can sort by final price and percentage savings, among others. I started out using this site, but I soon discovered that unless you had a price book, you still didn’t really know whether those were good prices. That toothpaste may sound great at 75% off with the sale and coupon, but could I get it for a lower price?

That’s when I found the Grocery Game. To me, the Grocery Game is better than CouponMom because it includes both advertised and unadvertised specials, and, more importantly, it uses a color coding system for each item. A green item means that it is free after the sale price and coupons, a blue item means that it’s at rock-bottom prices so you should stock up, and black means that it’s a good price, but not rock-bottom, so only buy it if you need it now. The Grocery Game does the work for me…so I don’t have to be stringent about creating and keeping up with my price book.

One drawback to the Grocery Game is that you do have to pay to use the site. You can do a 4 week trial for only a $1 to see if the system works for you. After that, it’s $10 every 8 weeks (so $1.25 a week) for one store, and you can add additional stores for $5 for the same time period. I pay $1 a week for my newspaper for the coupons, so I just budget it as an additional expense that helps me save lots of money.

Also, because the list includes unadvertised sale prices, the list is not available until a couple of days after the sale period begins to give the Grocery Game a chance to update those unadvertised items in their database from a store walk-through. To compensate, I just adjusted my shopping day of the week to account for it. If items are out of stock, you can always ask for a raincheck.

If you do join the Grocery Game, please use my e-mail address as a referral (so I can get some free weeks). It’s ctermors at hotmail dot com.

Finally, what if you need to purchase an item from the grocery store that is not listed on either of the sale lists? Since, I don’t clip my coupons, I check the Grocery Coupon Database on Coupon Mom for each item that I plan to purchase to find any coupons that I need to clip and bring with me. Then, once I have all the coupons that I need for my trip, I will go through all my inserts and clip only the coupons that I need.

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Coupon Organization 101
January 5, 2009

Today I will introduce you to my own coupon binder and discuss other popular options so you can choose the system that will work for you. Being comfortable with your organization set up will be one of the most efficient ways to make sure you will continue to coupon and shop smart.

Read the full article →