(sorry for the lame picture. wanted to make this more than just a million paragraphs)
1. subscribe to krazy coupon lady. you will get daily emails. read them. click on each and every link you think might be something that would benefit you, and read through them. as you get used to this, you will know which links are most important to you, and you won't need to click on as many. do this daily.
2. there are two main ways to organize your coupons. i made a binder using the template offered on krazy coupon lady. i got baseball card thingies, which are like page protectors but with slots that will hold baseball cards, so like eight to a page. i think there are actually coupon ones now. the other way is less time consuming. file inserts (smart source, red plum, and proctor and gamble) and be sure to label the date of the newspaper in which they came. this saves you having to clip all the coupons you think you might need. personally, we don't even subscribe to the newspaper. on the sundays we remember to, we will buy one (but the coupons aren't always in there!), but mostly people (our moms and grandmas) give them to me. therefore, the insert method wouldn't really work for me, as i am never sure when exactly they came out, and i don't necessarily get them every week.
3. get rewards cards! for every single store you go into, sign up for whatever rewards plan they have. even if you do nothing else, this will save you easily $100/year.
4. the stores i go to frequently are cvs, walgreens, and rite aid. sometimes i will coupon at walmart or even target if i know i will be near one. but the drugstores are my main stops.
5. basically, i look for krazy coupon lady's list of all the coupon deals at those particular stores each week. they put a little symbol beside the deals that are too good to pass up, and those are the ones i participate in, provided i have the coupons. a lot of them have links to printable coupons too. i write down my list for each store on a separate piece of paper, and paper clip my coupons to the appropriate list. under each item i will write whether or not i have a coupon for it, if it's on sale or a bogo deal, and if i will be earning rewards dollars or points for it. this helps me to double check each item when i get to the store, to ensure i am purchasing the right item for the deal. also, i can check my receipt to be sure i got the rewards i should have.
when i first decided i wanted to try couponing, literally all i did was go to the kcl website and click on a bunch of tabs to kind of figure out what was going on. i'm sure i haven't covered everything in this post, so if you have any questions, feel free to ask!
a note about my stockpile: we have shelving units in our basement, and i have two of them full of stuff. rarely do i get deals on food, though. mostly i have tons of shampoo, laundry detergent, feminine hygiene items, etc. but this enables me to spend our grocery money on actual food. my couponing money comes out of our grocery budget too, but it's a lot better to spend $10/week on deals to add to our stockpile than $10/week on toilet paper that i will have to buy again soon. now that our stockpile is built up a bit, i only take advantage of deals that make the item free or if i know we are running low on that item.
(not my stockpile. just googled for a picture. mine is pretty similar though)
there is definitely a high you get when you score a great deal. and you get pretty down when you get to the store and see some other couponer has cleared the shelves of a particular item you were hoping to stock up on! but i always try to be grateful for those times too, and maybe spend the $7 i was going to use to get 10 shampoos on some fresh flowers or something else fun.
i hope this helps anyone interested in beginning on this journey. and if you're a little skeptical about whether or not you want to get into all this...well, not sure i can help you. look into it, do your own research, and decide. for us, i didn't really have much choice. our budget is so tight we really can't afford not to do this. but to be completely honest (i started smiling as soon as i started typing this sentence!), i LOVE living simply, and on less. it just feels right. :)
