If you are new to the site or the idea of using coupons I'm sure that you are still confused. Couponing can be viewed as a competition against the store to get the best price. Paying with pocket change for food, toiletries and cleaning supplies can be achieved easily with about an hour of work a week. Now we are not trying to start a huge stockpile like you may have seen on some popular TV shows because let's get real we are in college and we are low on cash and on storage. Here is a place you can learn the ins and outs of spending your money more efficiently. Good Luck!
Now as a couponer you are looking for 3 specific coupon inserts; the Red Plum, SmartSource and Procter and Gamble. Not all newspapers carry all 3 so you must check to make sure what newspaper around you does carry them. By me for instance that would be the Chicago Tribune.
Now how do I get the coupons?
1. The first way would be to actually subscribe to a newspaper and get it delivered. This is cheaper than buying it in a store but can be tricky if you still live in the dorms.
2. Another option would be if you have a mailbox at your school post office you could ask if they get a newspaper that would have the inserts that you need.
3. Im sure that your parents would love to hear that you are gonna try and save them some dough. So you could ask them if they would save the coupon inserts from their paper and send them to you.
4. If you have a car with you at school most stores like the Dollar Tree or Menard's sell the paper for $1, which is a pretty good price.
Now that we have figured out how you are going to get your coupons let's go over what to do with them.
First you need to pull out all of the coupon inserts from the paper. SmartSource and Red Plum come basically every week, but Proctor & Gamble only come out once a month.
Once you have pulled all the inserts out all you have to do is right the date of that Sunday's paper. So if you got the Tribune from Sunday August 28th, you would write 8/28 somewhere on the front.
Then just save them until we can find a sale that corresponds with week's coupons. That might be this week or it could be a month from now. Using coupons to their full advantage is like a game of waiting to combine a pretty good store deal with your coupons to make it an even better deal and possibly walk out of the store with some free stuff!
The stores that I will be using are Walgreens, CVS, Target and Walmart. When you get the paper I would also save the Walgreens ad because they send out store coupons that we can combine with our other coupons.
Well Good Luck I hope you come back to $ave Study $hop!
