Sunday, March 1, 2009

Sharing What I Know ...

... Which isn't necessarily a ton. I have had a few people ask me to help them learn how to save money through coupons so I will attempt to put down a few pointers here to get you started.

1) If nothing else, use the Grocerysmart printable grocery planner which I have a link to in the right hand column. In this you can choose your grocery store and look up the best deals they have running at the time. So for example if you are heading to Macey's and you want to know what great deals they have going on you can bring up the planner, choose Macey's as your store and then click on the gray START button in the top right hand corner. Then click on the red star in the top left column that says Stock Up Sale. Then click on the SHRINK button. This will show you only the 4 and 5 star deals they are running at the time. You can then look through that to see what things you might want to stock up on while they are at a great price. You could do this for a few stores to and decide to make your weekly trip to whichever store has the best deals that week. This is an easy way to cut your grocery bill without cutting coupons.

- A few things of Note: Macey's and Rite Aid don't take internet coupons. Smiths, Albertsons and Walgreens do. I am not sure about Reams because I haven't been there. Alisa, do you know?

2) There are even better deals to be had (like free, almost free and money making items) if you use coupons or cash back promotions. I get two copies of the Sunday paper so that I have two sets of coupons. There are also tons of internet printable coupons out there that you can get for free. At the beginning of the month they post a bunch of new coupons on www.coupons.com so go there today and print out any coupons that you think you MIGHT use. You can print each coupon twice per computer but there is also a national limit so if you wait too long the good ones will be gone.

3) Shopping at drugstores like Walgreens and Rite Aid are a GREAT way to get beauty items, cleaning supplies, even grocery items for almost nothing and sometimes less then nothing. Each week I check out the posts for the latest Walgreens deals, copy it into a word document and then go through it to see what I would like to get and what I have coupons for. Then when I go to the store I have a list of the specific things that I want to look for and am better organized rather then just wandering all over the store with a pile of coupons not knowing for sure what I want to do. But that was me when I first started doing this and it did seem very overwhelming so if you feel that way know that it just takes going a couple times before you start to get the hang of how it works and don't feel so confused or frustrated.

I am not going to even begin to explain how these stores work because there are already super experienced deal finding diva's out there who have done a great job of it so I will just link you to them. I would highly recommend reading these posts and learning how to shop there. Walgreens #1, Walgreens #2, Walgreens Q&A and RiteAid. Thanks so much to Hip2Save for this info. She is the BEST. Which brings me to my last pointer.

4) Follow Hip2Save! She is FANTASTIC! She will tell you all the good deals, finds all the freebies that are out there for you. And she is super helpful and always willing to answer questions. I have her blog as well as a few of my other favorites on my blog so you can just see who's posted something new and keep up on the great deals and freebies out there. I would take some time looking through her site and seeing what good deals are out there. I also really like IAmFrugal for Alberstons deals. I don't think Hip2Save has an Albertson's by her because she doesn't blog about their deals. But they do great promos so they are worth watching for.

Here are some of the latest deals that I have seen out there that I told Chris and Janeen I would let them know about. Again, most of these I found on Hip2Save so I will link you back to her.

Free Snore Kit
Walgreens Weekly Deals
Free Gorilla Glue
Great Huggies Coupons and Upcoming Wags Deal
Free Renuzit Air Freshner at Target - I did this one and made money on it!
Free Cotton Panty From Express
$5 Flip Flops at Victoria Secret
Various In-Store Coupons for your next Mall Trip

Restaurant Deals including free Chocolate Fondue for Two at the Melting Pot
- Thanks to CommonSenseWithMoney for this one.

Free Aveda Men's Shampoo
Free Origins Night Health Bedtime Face Cream
- Thanks to DealSeekingMom for these ones.

There are so many great deals out there to be had and really no reason to need to spend a lot of money!

1 comments:

Ryan O'Berry said...

I haven't quite figured out how to link stuff back to other posts yet in my blog...someday. And I haven't attempted doing any internet printables at Reams, only because I haven't thought about it, and the deals I want to do in great quantities are better at other stores. Usually I go to Reams, if I do, for just produce, meat or bread...stuff that you normally don't have coupons for. The last couple of weeks they haven't had great deals, so haven't gone. I'll keep you posted if I do and try it and they work.

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