Todays recap is on Step 3: Get Coupons.
Step 3: Get Coupons
What’s couponing without coupons?!? It’s time to start collecting. It is suggested that an average household obtain at least two copies per member of your family.
The easiest way to obtain coupons is to get them out of the Sunday newspaper each week. There are three companies that put coupons in the newspaper; Smartsource (SS), Redplum (RP; formally Valassis), Proctor & Gamble Brand Saver (P&G). Please keep in mind that there are no coupon inserts on major holidays. To see how many inserts will be in the paper each week, check out the 2009 Coupon Schedule.
You don’t have to pay for your multiple copies of your paper each week. There are many ways to get coupons for free. Be sure to ask your family, friends & coworkers for their coupons if they don’t plan to use them. Another great resource is to check your local recycling center (yes, go dumpster diving!). Many hotels remove the coupon inserts from the papers they distribute to guests, so you may be able to ask them to hold them for you each week. If you are unable to get them for free using the methods I listed, you can purchase your coupons from various clipping services (The Coupon Clippers, The Coupon Master, Clip and Ship, Coupons & Things by Dede). I have personally ordered from all four of the clipping sites I listed and I haven’t had any problems. You can also purchase from ebay; so check it out!
Lastly, begin collecting non-insert coupons. These include, tearpads, blinkies, peelies, booklets, store coupons and home mailers. Keep your eye out online for Internet printable coupons, but don’t print them until you need them! Internet printables have a “rolling” expiration date. This means that they expire either 15, 30 or 60 days after you print it. So, if you print a coupon today, it’ll expire 30 days from today. If you print it tomorrow, it’ll expiree 30 days from tomorrow. So, it’s better to wait.
Here is my coupon story. We have a local recycling facility that took all kinds of recyclables In the newspaper bins we’d go dump our recycle and jump in and see what we could find in terms of newspaper bundles or coupon inserts. It was kind of random what we would find but we would get a few bundles. I actually met up with a girl who delivered news papers and her extras she’d dump in the recycling. We exchanged numbers and now we’re friends and I don’t have to dumpster dive anymore. (I had a picture of Rosemary in the dumpster but I can’t seem to find it anywhere. I will post if I ever find it).
I usually grab a bunch of q’s (coupons) in the store whenever I go I walk the isles looking for those blinkies and peelies and tearpads. It’s fun to go hunting those down especially the really good ones! Another place I go look is in the front little display that holds that week’s sale flyers sometimes there are sheets of coupons. I also check around the customer service desk for any coupons that they didn’t feel like putting out on the floor.
So have you started collecting your coupons??? Have you found any really good ones???
