How I Learned to Coupon

A friend of mine (who I adore) asked me earlier this week to do a post about how I started couponing. I know that a site like Southern Savers (found here) can be overwhelming if you don't have the time to sit and read. However, she really does lay it all out there. She tells the easiest way to organize, she explains how it all works, and she explains how best to use her site. She has several tutorials. I am in no way going to claim that I came up with any of these methods. Jenny, from Southern Savers, taught me these couponing tricks. However, what I am going to do is explain what works best for me personally and how I use her site. These posts will probably be a series because there is SO MUCH that one post just will not do it.

Getting Started

This first and most important thing is to stay patient. I got started doing this thinking I was immediately going to get $100 for $25. It doesn't work that way. It took about four weeks to really start collecting coupons for me to see the "fruits of my labor." It will seem difficult at first. It will seem like you are unable to buy ANYTHING that is on sale. There's a reason for that and we will go into at later date.

The second and second most important thing I can tell you is to get organized and stay organized. There are many different "schools" of thought about organizing your coupons. For me personally, I DO NOT clip coupons. I use a 13 pocket accordion file folder to organize the inserts themselves.

And I also write the dates of the insert on the front of the insert. The date is the date of the paper you got the coupons out of. You can also find the date on the spine of the inserts. Sometimes I will get loose coupons and I organize these in a index card box.

 

You can put them in categories or you can just stuff them in a box as I have done here. I also use a plain folder (like the ones that have three brackets in them). I use this folder for all print outs and coupon "booklets" I get in the stores.

You can see Jenny explaining her system here. I have taken her system and tweaked it to meet what I want it to do.

The last thing I can tell you about couponing is USE SOUTHERN SAVERS. Jenny spells out each store, each sale, what's good, what's not, what to buy, what to wait on etc. If you still have questions, email me godandxanax@gmail.com. I will be happy to answer any questions you have. I hope to post a tip or something every Saturday. This post will take the place of the one on Saturday this week.

Happy Couponing!