Where are the Coupons?

Here are some tips on finding coupons.  A lot of these ideas come from Erin at I Am Frugal.

1.  Get your local newspaper.  The coupon inserts are in the Sunday paper.  By using one or two coupons you have paid for your paper, since usually a Sunday paper is only $1.00 to $1.50.  You may want to subscribe to two papers to get more coupons. 
          
2.  Ask your friends, neighbors, relatives for their coupon inserts.  If they are not using them, the coupons are just being thrown away.  In one family, one of their boys had the responsibility of going down the street to neighbors' houses with his bag and collecting the coupons that the neighbors would save for him every week.  If people know you coupon, they are usually more than happy to save their coupons for you.

3.  Print coupons online. "Printables” are an awesome source for coupons. Make sure you ask each store at their customer service desk before you start shopping with them though. You can do a search for "printable coupons" online and it will bring up huge lists of different printable coupons.  There is also a list of printable coupon websites on the side of my blog.

You can also search for a specific item and see if there are any printable coupons. If there is a product that you love or that is on your grocery list you can look up their websites and see if you can find any printable coupons. Most of these sites allow you to print multiple coupons per computer every few weeks so bookmark your favorite sites.

Click Here for some helps from Being Frugal is Fabulous on printing coupons.

One tip on printing coupons--to save on ink I put my printer's default on "draft printing" and I still get a well printed coupon.  All printers are different though.

4. Trade.  If you have a baby but not a dog, for example, you could trade dog food coupons for diaper coupons. 

5. Find coupons at the store. Keep your eyes peeled at the store and pick up any coupons you find on tearpads usually hanging on the shelves or find them in the blinking dispensers attached to shelves. If you have kids let them find them for you.  There are usually some really good coupons from those. If there are extras, pick up multiple copies of these. Many times, the same item you picked a coupon up for in the stores will be on sale just a few weeks later and you’ll be glad you picked up more than one coupon from the tearpad and blinkies!

6. Load electronic coupons to your shopping card.  Cellfire is one site that has coupons you load onto your shopping card.  Also, some stores have their own sites, like Safeway.com and Kroger.com (Smith's), that have electronic coupons too.  You can do a search and maybe find more.  I am not too knowledgeable about his subject yet! 

7.  Save the coupons you get with your receipt.  Sometimes coupons print out with your receipts, especially at Smiths and Albertsons.  If the checker forgets to give them to you, ask her/him.  They are for that specific store, of course.

8.  Buy coupons from some websites.  You will have to decide if you think it is worth it.  This saves you time with coupon clipping, and you can pick which coupons and how many of each you like.  Here are some sites:  thecouponclippers.com and thecouponmaster.com