For Those Of You Just Getting Started

I'm sure there are many people out there who have made New Year's goals to work on saving money this year. For all of you out there who are new to couponing, I thought I'd give some pointers on how to get started.

1. Get multiple Sunday papers each week. The rule of thumb for stocking up is 1 paper per family member. Get creative about this, ask your neighbors or co-workers to save their coupon inserts for you if they don't use them, ask your parents for theirs (what I do!), swipe them from your local coffee shop on Sunday morning, etc.

2. If you are in the Portland area, make sure you are getting the Food Day delivered to your house on Tuesday. This is free, and contains the new Safeway and Albertsons ads for the week as well as special Safeway coupons. For example, the first week of each month Safeway releases $10 off $50 purchase coupons on the back of the Food Day page. Without that paper, you would miss out on getting those coupons.


3. When you notice (or it's pointed out here) that something is on a really great sale, stock up! Buy more than you need right now so that you don't have to buy it later when it is not on sale. I'll give you an example, over the summer Nature Valley granola bars went on sale quite frequently. I had 12 boxes and figured I wouldn't need anymore for a while. Well, it's been about 6 months since we have seen a really great sale on them, and I've been out for months! I really wish I had bought more as our family loves them for quick snacks on the run. Knowing how much to stock up on at a time will be a trial by error kind of process. Once you have been watching sales and using coupons for about a year, you will have more of a feel for the sales cycles.

4. Get organized! All the coupons can quickly become overwhelming unless you have an organizing system that works for you. I use a coupon binder with baseball type plastic sheets with slots. Each of the slots are labeled and filed by category.

Now that I have been using coupons for about a year, there are a few things I never pay money for (or if I do, it's only pennies):

Toothpaste (adult, not kids)
Shampoo/Conditioner/Hair products
Regular style tooth brushes
Air fresheners
Pasta
Cereal
Cold & Flu meds

Watch for more tips and inspiration this week on bargain hunting and saving money!

Erika