With budgets tightening for families everywhere, ours included, coupons are more important for household budgets. I have always been a sales junkie, but coupons (and freebies) have become an important way for me to contribute to our bottom line. I have learned a lot about couponing over the last year, and I am proud of the money I have saved my family on everyday necessities. To me, it is like found money when I save money on things we would have purchased anyway.
Since saving money is such an important way of life for The Suburban Mom, I love to include freebies and good deals on this blog. But the best way to make sure you get the most out of your hard-earned dollars at your favorite stores, it is important to match sales and deals with coupons.
Where to find coupons? The most obvious place to find coupons is the Sunday paper – Red Plum, Smart Source and Proctor and Gamble are the most common inserts. The next place to look for coupons is online. My favorite place is Coupons.com. (Note – you can usually print 2 of each coupon from Coupons.com, but they are limited in quantity, so the best time to check them out is when they reset at the beginning of each month — AKA today! So, if you see a coupon you want, print it right away.)
In order to make the most of coupons and sales, you need to know all of the best match ups. No one pairs match ups better than Jenny over at Southern Savers. With Southern Savers, I find out how to make the most of my coupons at Publix, Walgreens & CVS. (Jenny tracks lots of other stores too, but these are my favs.) Oh – did I mention, Southern Savers is a FREE service!
Check out all of the items I have gotten for FREE over the last few weeks. Note, I am donating all of these items to Harvest Time International to send to Haiti – I actually more free items, but the ones my family is keeping were put to use and put away. (While I got a lot of these from coupon match ups from Southern Savers, some of them came from other places too…)
(Yes, some of those are sample sizes, but most are full-size products! And yes, they were all free! Sometimes I had to pay sales tax on items – depending on the deal – but that is the most I paid for any of the items pictured.)
Saving real money takes effort – it doesn’t happen without work. But it can be a lot of fun – kind of like a game once you get good at it. My best Publix trip, I saved more than $90! The important thing to remember when couponing to save money is that no matter how good the deal is, if you aren’t going to put the item to good use, it isn’t saving money — it’s wasting money! I feel the same way with freebies, even though it is no money out of pocket, if I can’t use the freebie or know someone (or an organization) who can use it – leave it for someone who needs it.