New to Couponing? Here Are My Top 5 Couponing Tips!!

Stacy’s Savings is mainly a portal for me to show the World Wide Web the savings that I achieve by using coupons, being a smart shopper & DIY. Today, I’m going to give you my Top 5 Couponing Tips!

There are so many new couponers out there these days, and many people have been asking how to get started. Instead of giving you a novel, I’m going to give you my top 5 tips on how to start couponing! These aren’t all of my tips, just the top 5. I’ll give you some more soon, but this is a good list to get started. Hopefully, this helps at least one person begin their own couponing adventure!

Top 5 Couponing Tips

1. Collect Your Coupons

You can find coupons everywhere, once you start looking. I mainly get mine from the Sunday paper. You want to get multiple copies of the largest paper from the biggest city near you, even if it’s two hours away.

Hold on to your coupons and wait for the item to be on sale at it’s lowest price. That means, not just waiting for any sale, but waiting for the best sale. If the sale doesn’t come during the coupon’s valid time, don’t worry about it. You’ll notice that the same coupons pop up every few months.

You can also find coupons online. I mostly get my coupons from Coupons.com (which are available right here on the blog!) and Facebook.

Digital coupons are offers that you can load on your shoppers card! Check your grocer’s app. There are also coupons on products (peelies/winetags), Catalina coupons that print at checkout, and sometimes, you can get them direct from the manufacturer by emailing them!

2. Get Organized –

This is a really important tip. If you can’t see your coupons, and you don’t know what you have, you won’t use them. By taking the time to make a binder with clear pocket sleeve pages, you’ll know what you have and you’ll save money! Once I switched from an accordion file to a binder, my savings when through the roof!

Read about my coupon binder and how I organize it for inspiration! Binders with pocket pages allow you to see what coupons you have. If you can’t see them, you won’t use them! I arrange mine in the flow of my Kroger. that way, if I see an unadvertised sale, I know right where to flip in my binder for that coupon.

3. Start With CVS

Drug stores get a bad wrap for being expensive. Yes, their regular-priced items are, well, pricey, but when you use their Rewards systems to your advantage on sales and combine those sales with coupons, you walk out with a bag full of stuff, and you only paid $1.

It’s super easy to get started learning how coupons work at a drug store like CVS or Rite Aid. The transactions are smaller, and you can use these principles on a larger scale at your local grocery store and Target when you are comfortable with how it works at CVS. Sign up for the ExtraCare Card and the CVS Beauty Club. Visit a matchup blog where you can see the ad early, like IHeartCVS to get ideas about the best ExtraCare-producing deals. Use the ExtraCare Bucks that you receive this week to pay for your trip next week that you will get Extra Care Bucks- that’s called rolling your rewards. Save Walgreens for last. It’s much more complicated.

4. Go Slow

It’s easy to see all of these blogs and feel like you have to do every deal everywhere. If you do that, you’re going to get frustrated and burned out, and quit. There is also so much to learn about how to coupon. Pick one store, and ignore every where else until you’ve mastered that store. Then, add a second store, and a third. Take your time to really learn how this works. Slowly build your stockpile. In the end, you’ll be much less stressed and a much better couponer!

5. Follow the Rules and Be Nice!

Remember, you can only use 1 manufacturer coupon for each item, unless the coupon requires you to buy more, like $1 off of 2 items. You can never use more than one manufacturer coupon per item. Don’t photocopy coupons. It’s illegal.

Don’t clear shelves. Unless there are 3 or less of an item on a shelf, leave some for other shoppers. You can go back on another day after they’ve restocked or get a rain check. Clearing shelves is a couponing no-no.

Don’t take peelies/winetags or other coupons on products if you don’t intend to buy that product, it’s stealing. Those coupons are meant for the person buying that product. It’s not cool to want to buy something, and find the sticky residue where a peelie was.

Be nice to the cashier; they are working hard to get you in and out, and most think coupons are a hassle. You know they aren’t, so be as nice as you can be! It will make the process smoother. Also, be nice to the cashier. They are just doing their job!

These are just my top 5 quick tips for how to start couponing. Want more tips? I’ve got 5 more tips right here! Plus, learn all about my coupon binder and what pages I use to organize my coupons.

I hope you’ve learned something that will help you get started on your couponing adventure! Remember, you can always leave me questions in the comments or on the Blog’s Facebook. If you wish not to be published, you can also contact me at stacy@stacyssavings.com.

There are a ton of blogs out there that will tell you the ins and outs of coupons. Being a full-time working mother, I don’t have the time to get into every detail about how this works, although I do love answering your questions – keep them coming!

Happy Couponing!