Couponing 101

Since I became a stay-at-home mom after Averie's birth, we have been living on a tighter budget. Thankfully, having made stretching a dollar as far as I can my new "job", we've been able to almost maintain our previous standard of living even though our income decreased a good bit.

One of my friends asked how I find all my deals and I figured this could be useful information for others so here goes :).

Warning - this is going to be long :).

First of all, the coupon sites for printable coupons:
Coupons.com
RedPlum.com
SmartSource.com

The only thing I pay for to get my deals is I get two copies of the Sunday paper (and thus, two copies of each coupon insert). I find that that's usually plenty for our little family of three. Occasionally, if there is a really high value coupon (like a recent $4 Nivea body wash coupon) or a coupon for a favorite product (like a recent California Pizza Kitchen frozen pizza coupon), I'm bummed and like "man! I wish I had 10 of these coupons!" but that's pretty rare.

Next off, I really can take very little credit for the deals I get. I am not near organized or creative enough to come up with all these deals on my own. I am a loyal follower of a few coupon blogs but my top two are This Beautiful Frugal Life and Freebies 2 Deals. This Beautiful Frugal Life is great at coupon match-ups with national stores and has links on the sidebars to sort if you only want to look at one store - Albertson's, for example, which we no longer have in my area. Boooo :(.

Freebies 2 Deals is good for everything else - little random coupons here and there (like her most recent post has one for Scotch tape) or deals at other stores (this paper deal came from F2D) and she always provides links to the coupons when she can so she does a lot of the legwork for you.

I've also recently found a new favorite - Totally Target. Confession time - I am a Target addict. We live right across the street from a Super Target and I think we go there AT LEAST twice a week. Anyways, I love Totally Target - she is great at coupon match-ups also, and lays out the details in black and white of how to get the best deals and make the most money.

Last but not least, for baby items, I love Baby Cheapskate. She posts deals throughout the week about coupons for clothes, baby gear (strollers and the like), toys, etc. There are occasional articles too about, say, the best reviewed car seats. My favorite post of hers is on Sunday and it is the Top Diaper and Formula Deals of the Week. She posts which stores are having which diapers or formula on sale and which coupons to use (with occasional links to coupons) to get the best deals.

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OK, now a store-by-store rundown for my most frequent haunts.

TARGET
I'm really surprised they don't know me by name here. I go to Target for groceries, toiletries, cleaning, you name it (see aforementioned Target addiction :D). Totally Target is like my handbook for shopping there. They run gift card deals occasionally where you buy X and Y and you get a $5 Target gift card. Combine with coupons and think of the gift card like cash back and you can usually get stuff for close to free, completely free or you might even make money!

Target also has their own coupons - here - you can use a Target coupon and a manufacturer's coupon on an item.
Example from the other day:
Dove deodorant - $3.49
$2 manufacturer's coupon
$1 Target coupon on a Dove personal care item
Paid $0.49!

Sometimes the coupons that are on Target's website are actually manufacturer's coupons (I seriously don't know why) so you won't be able to combine those with another manufacturer coupon (like from the newspaper or Coupons.com). An actual Target coupon says "Target Coupon" on it so there's no confusion :).

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RITE AID (Beautiful Frugal Life is best for match-ups)
I love Rite Aid for diapers. Once upon a time, we were loyal Pampers customers but since the release of their new Dry Max product and all the complaints, we've switched to Huggies. Which is not a bad thing - Huggies is way more generous with the coupons and sales. I wait for them to go on sale and combine with a good coupon (like the $3 off Huggies that have been out recently) and then I go and stock up.

Rite Aid also comes out with $5 off a $25 purchase coupons (found online at Red Plum or Rite Aid's site) and they have a Video Values program where you can watch short videos - you earn credits and when you've got 20 credits, you earn a $5 off $20 coupon. You also get a coupon for whatever video you watched (so if you watched, say, an Icy Hot video, you get a coupon for Icy Hot) but I'm usually only in it for the $5 off $20. You can print more than one so I usually print a couple and then do multiple transactions so I can use multiples of those coupons.
Example: Buy 3 packages of Huggies at $8.99 each = $26.97
Hand over the $5 off $20 (or $25) first
Then (3) $3 off coupons
= $12.97 or $4.32 per package

Rite Aid also has a great Single Check Rebate program, which is just what it sounds like. You buy something (and you can use coupons on it, too) and then submit your receipts online and they send you back a rebate. These are listed in the weekly ad.

I Heart Rite Aid is also a great resource. I don't know how but she gets the weekly ad scans awhile before the actual ad is released so you can start planning it out. Careful though - in my particular area, our ad is usually just the "short ad" that she mentions so sometimes there's a deal in the "national" ad that I don't get. More than once, I've gone to the store to buy what I thought was also a sale in my area only to find out it ISN'T in my area, so just make sure you check the weekly ad for your area in your newspaper or online at the actual Rite Aid site.

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WALGREEN'S
Not a fan of Walgreen's honestly. I've been given grief there more than once about coupons (even though I was doing it the right way) so I just avoid them in general.

Plus, their "reward" system - Register Rewards - is coupons that spit out of the machine at the end of the transaction that you can use on a future transaction. Those don't really feel like cash to me, because when I'm there, it's usually for just a couple specific things that are a super awesome deal (because I don't like going there) and I don't foresee using the RR. I prefer the cash back with Rite Aid's Single Check Rebate program.

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BABIES R US
On a rare occasion, I like BRU for diapers. Their diaper prices normally are NOT good, but combine with manufacturer coupons and a store sale/coupon and you can get a good deal. The big boxes of Huggies in the picture in my last post were from there.

As an example, here's how that purchase went. Usually when we're in there, at the end of our transaction, they'll give us coupons to use on our next purchase. On one such occasion, we got a coupon for $7 off when you bought the big box of Huggies diapers and the big box of Huggies wipes (also in the picture). One thing I like about BRU also is they will take an unlimited number of coupons per item, as long as all the coupons are different. Well, at the time, I had a $3 coupon, a $2.50 one, a $2 one and a $1.50 one and I was able to use all of them on one box of diapers. I had a couple different denominations for the wipes too (a $0.75 one and a $0.50 one) and then combined with the $7 BRU coupon I had received earlier made for a good deal.

BRU is also good for baby food. I'd gone into this with hopes of making my own baby food, but alas, laziness won out, LOL. I've only given Averie organic baby food though - which is of course more expensive than non-organic - but I paid less than 50 cents a jar by combining sales (Earth's Best brand in particular has been on sale on and off lately - 10 jars for $5) with coupons. Again, it's all about stocking up when there's a good sale so that your stash lasts until the next sale time.

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Alright, that's it! If you made it through this entire post, you deserve an award. I hope that helps some and that it wasn't too confusing. Feel free to comment with questions or whatever you want :).