Getting Started: How to Collect Grocery Coupons

This is your new mission, you can't move too much further forward unless you have these baby's so start collecting!

(Confession: I consider couponing my hobby on certain days, and my part time work-at-home job on others, - I tell myself; "C'mon you're making like $50 an hour here - keep it up girl!")

How to collect coupons and sales ads:

Grocery store/other store "mailers" -
You know the ones you used to call junk mail? Well they're not junk any more baby! Those are your ticket to the good sales and there are lots of coupons in there as well. They're your best friend now so keep em!

Each store has a website that will have their weekly mailer posted if you'd like to go that route. I do both sometimes, these websites are awesome with tips, recipes, grocery list creaters etc...but I still keep the mailers because I will circle the items I want to purchase and bring the add with me to the store so I don't forget anything .....Target, Albertson's (Albies), Smiths, Walmart, Wallgreen's (Wags), Shopko, Dicks, and Macey's are the ones I look at.

Store coupon hints:

Target - Target has their own coupons available to print (unlimited!) on their website. They let you pair these with manufacturer coupons so you can stack coupons on any item.

Walmart: Will take competetor coupons and will price match so theoretically you could just go to Walmart for everything:) I don't enjoy Walmart much and I think price matching is a pain. So my favorites are Smiths and Albertsons. I like to shop there, and since Im spending a couple of hours I need to be in a place where I feel comfortable.

You have to go where it works best for YOU!

The Sunday Paper -You'll want to have 2 -5 Sunday Papers that contain the coupon inserts. The rule is one paper per family member up to 5 papers.

In the paper:
We are looking for the P&G brandsaver, Red Plum, & SmartSource inserts,.

There are other coupons and store ads and specials can be found throughout the paper so scan each page!

If you can find four or five people to save papers for you if you're lucky. If not, it may sound expensive, but trust me, the money you save from those babies will be worth it. The Trib and Deseret news have a special that's $2 for BOTH papers when you buy on Sunday in a store.

To be honest I started out with just two papers and thought that would be fine because I'm not "stocking up" yet, I was just trying to get by; But there were times I wished SO BADLY I had more of some coupons so I could cash in on a screamin deal....but do what's best for you and your family and add more papers later when you get the hang of it. I'm up to 4 papers now. I take the Salt Lake Trib, the Deseret News, the Standard Examiner and one or two people save theirs for me.
Crazy alert: The Crazies do 5 or more papers every sunday.

Internet Printable Coupons (IP's)-
These are half of my coupon stock pile. There are many sites online that have IP's. I've listed the biggies to the left and have links there for you. The coupon bloggers to the left have links for you directly to the desired coupon. Nice and Easy.
There are many company sites you can get coupons from too. Like Kraft, Boxtops, Leapfrog, Quaker, Coke, Kelloggs, General Mills, Nabisco, Jolly-Time, etc.

Tips:

• I go to the sites on the left every week and print whatever's new and sometimes duplicate what I already have.
• Most Blogs give you links to direct printables so surf the coupon blogs daily
• Get a good printer and change your printing to "greyscale" so you don't waste your color ink. How To: Go to Printers and Faxes in your pc's start menu, select your printer, go to Preferences then Properties then Color, set it to "greyscale -Black cartridge only."
• These IP's reset each month on the 1st but they add new coupons throughout the month too so check back often.
• There is a small IP download you'll need load on your PC to print these. (Takes less than a minute) This is necessary so the site knows how many you've printed. You will only be allowed to print one to two coupons per item per PC.
• Crazy Alert: So if you have 2-4 PC's in the house (like I do) you can print 2 coupons per item per PC. That's 8 of the same coupon. Hah!
• The nice thing about these IP's is they all print the same size and they are pretty universal throughout the Internet. But you'll need tons of paper too, most of these print one per page

Blog Lingo Hint - IP's are for Internet Explorer users, FF's are for Fire Fox users. You'll see "IP" links or "FF" link refered to throughout these websites.
Good news, most of these coupons are MAC compatible too.

Other options for coupons -

In-store coupons and peelies, Catilina's and shopper card promotions- go to this blog to learn more about them all-she's done a great job explaining them, why duplicate work? :)

Continue on to "Gaining Information" below....