Introduction to Couponing

The History

My husband and I have always tried to do things a little differently even before we really knew much about Dave Ramsey, debt snowballs or a zero-based budget.  We paid for 95% of our wedding before we walked down the aisle with the remainder being paid off a month later.  When the tie came to look at daycare for our first child, it made more sense for me to quit my job and become a stay at home mom.

Going from a two income household to a one income household, we had to get creative. One of the ways we achieved this was by finding a way to drastically cut our grocery budget, couponing!  When it was just the two of us, we would make a monthly trip to Walmart where we would stock up on Michelina’s pizzas, frozen chicken leg quarters and Pastaroni.  I know, not the best of choices but we were in our early twenties.  This one grocery run would last us more than a month and we had no complaints.  We had tried cutting coupons before but taking 25 cents off the name brand spaghetti was still more expensive than the Great Value, so we deemed it as a waste of time and energy.

The Change

That all changed one Wednesday in 2007 while I was pregnant.  On this particular Wednesday, I opened the Harris Teeter circular, which I rarely paid any attention to because of their prices, and saw that they had a triple coupon deal.  What in the world is that?  Well after looking at the fine print, I realized that they would give me triple the face value of any coupon up to 99 cents!  I had to try it.

We typically kept a stack of coupon inserts as a just in case because you never know when you will come across a good deal, right.  I quickly went through them cutting out any and every coupon that was under 99 cents for items that we would use, whether we needed them or not.  I had to try this!

Sure enough, it really worked.  I used about 20 coupons, since that was the limit, and spent about $45.  I remember buying two items I was extremely excited about, Welch’s 100% Grape Juice and Snicker’s Ice Cream bars.  When I made it home and finally told my husband about my new found savings tool, he was excited about the couponing but not as excited as I was about the Snicker’s Ice Cream bars.

I figured it out!

This lead me to do more research on how to do this couponing thing.  There had to be more to it and boy was I right!  There was an entire world that I knew nothing about but I was eager to learn.  I dug in deep and in no time I had my binder ready, my circular in hand and my list ready to go.  I would only go for the best deals and I always used the maximum number of coupons. There was a community of us that would show up at 6 am on the first day of the sale and we were generally friendly and helped each other out.

There were forums of couponers that listed the best deals they found with the links to online coupons.  It was great!  There was one time where the store had to pay me $4 because of a mistake on their part and another time where my entire bill was $.02.  We had more mustard, cereal and toothpaste than any family should ever have.  One of our best finds was a Kroger deal on cheese where they were less than $1 each.  By the end of the week, we had over 50 blocks/bags of cheese in our fridge and freezer!

It took time but it was saving us tons of money until…the TLC show extreme couponing became popular and that changed the game.  New couponers were coming out of wood works, coupon forgery started to increase and stores begin to crack down.  What used to be fun had turned into small hassle.  This also meant that the deals weren’t as sweet.

This is when I began to start to cut back on my couponing.  I was one of the originals and it just wasn’t the same.  From time to time, I still do a run and get really good deals.  The fad left a bad taste in the mouth of many stores, so the restrictions have stuck.  The forums also died off during the fad as I think a lot of the original gang backed down however, I know a few people who still go hard and are able to pick up tons of stuff for cheap.  Every now and then I take a stab at it again and stock up on items that we need and I usually come out with good deals as well so all is not lost.

I will have a series of posts that will help you understand the basics of couponing and the best ways to apply it. If you really want to make this happen, you can and I have the tools for you!  I have learned so much and I look at things a little differently now. I want to share these tips and tricks with you, so stay tuned!