When we see shows such as TLC's Extreme Couponing and see how much people save each week on groceries many of us say to ourselves "I wish I could do that!" The truth is you can, it really isn't that hard. Of course, you do not have to go to the extreme and collect 500 tubes of toothpaste, however you can use some common sense and use the same philosphy to save a ton of money on groceries.
The Basics Of Extreme Couponing
Coupon Matchups
The first step to learning how to coupon is to do a coupon matchup for your local stores ad. believe it or not doing a matchup is very easy with the power of the internet. You take your ad and browse through looking at the sale items. When you find an item that you are interested in you search an online coupon database. Here you will find all available coupons for that product. This will include coupons found in Sunday Coupon Inserts as well as Internet printable Coupons, Peelies, Facebook Coupons and more. Taking the sale price of the item subtract the coupon (double it if your store doubles) and determine the final cost. Very Simple.
Knowing your store's coupon policy
It is very important to know your stores coupon policy. Most stores accept coupons, Some stores double coupons up to a certain amount. Some stores limit how many coupons you can use etc. All stores are different. It is a good idea to carry a copy of your stores coupon policy with you at all times.
Catalina Sales
Often referred to as cat deals, these sales are the premium sales to watch for. You will see a Catalina sale as something like "spend .00 on select General Mills products and receive .00 on your next order." The key to these sales as that most of the times they are based on PSP (Pre Sale Prices) In other words, you take the shelf price not the sale price to add up to the required spend amount. So for example, say GM cereal is on sale for .00 per box for this sale and has a PSP of .00 per box. You would only need to buy 5 boxes, 5 x .00 = .00, however your cost before coupons because of the sale is .00. Now say you have a coupon for .00 off 2 boxes. Since you are buying 5 boxes you could use 2 coupons. so it will look like this Cost: .00 - .00 in coupons = .00 Get .00 back for a net cost of .00 for 5 boxes of cereal. Now wash, rinse repeat again using your .00 Catalina coupon.
These are only some basics to get you started. Hope you enjoyed and learned something from this article.