Couponing the Time-Saving Way!

On Sundays I look forward to getting the coupons in Sunday’s newspaper, but I dread the extensive clipping and filing. On a good day it would take an hour, more if I had been given more coupons from my neighbors. With the subsequent pulling of the expired coupons, it frequently felt like a fruitless exercise.

So I am trying something different.

I continue to read multiple coupon blogs (see my previous blogs for their addresses), peruse the Sunday newspaper inserts and determine what we need. But instead of clipping ALL the coupons and filing them in the big book, I am now filing the coupon packets by date, which can be found in VERY small writing on the fold of the coupon packet. I write the date on the front. Instead of locating them filed in my big book, I look them up using the coupon data base at couponkatie.com.

I tried it at Kroger last night. They are having a "Mega Event-- Save $5 WYB (when you buy)10 participating items."

Step 1. Review the items available through the Mega Event by looking through the Kroger flyer and checking the list at southernsavers.com

Step 2. Come up with 10 things that I want and for which I have coupons. (You can have multiples of 10.)

(While I am not going to file the Sunday coupons anymore, I still will file many coupons. These include the ones that Kroger mails me. Also, coupon bloggers post alerts on popular internet coupons. I print the ones I think I will use, because there are only so many printed copies allowed. I also have a section in my big book for Procter & Gamble's periodic flyers.)

Step 3. I look on couponkatie.com's coupon data base for others. I found a Birdseye coupon that I didn't know about. I went to the coupon site for which she had a link and printed the coupon. She also had listed a General Mills cereal coupon from the SS -- Smart Source -- insert of August 28.

Result of my 10 items (these are all products/brands that I would have bought even if I didn't coupon):

6 boxes of General Mills cereal (one e-coupon from Kroger's website for one box, $.50, one Kroger printed coupon that was mailed to me at home, $2 for four, $.50 for one (doubled) from the newspaper

2 boxes of Birdseye frozen vegetables. ($1 off if I bought Mrs. Paul's frozen fish. I'm a cradle Catholic--I crave fish sticks!)

1 Maxwell House Coffee ($1.25 coupon from the packet Kroger sent to my home)

1 Simply Orange juice. ($1 off that I had printed last month because someone posted a notice. I noticed that Southern Savers posted that this coupon was no longer available to be printed from its on-line source. Glad that I printed it when it was available! Timing is everything!)

1. I believe that ALL these items were specially priced. If I had bought any of these items individually this week instead of other weeks, I still saved money.

2. I combined 10 items, so I got $5 off.

3. I had $6.75 worth of coupons on these items.

A triple play! Now that is when I like to play the game of couponing! Sure, with some additional items that I bought without coupons, my Kroger receipt states that I only saved 39 percent. That's not going to get me on Extreme Couponers, but it is still REAL MONEY SAVED!

Additionally, it was much quicker to pull out the August 28 insert for that one coupon that I used instead of clipping, clipping, clipping, filing, filing, filing. I love saving time, too!