Coupon Shopping: Not Just For Little Old Ladies Any More

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Five Tips for Coupon Shopping Success

1. Do Not Be Brand Loyal - Whether it is toothpaste, glass cleaner, cereal or shaving cream, everyone has their favorite products. However, when coupon shopping, it pays to be flexible. So, if you cannot live without Tom's of Maine toothpaste, that's fine but if you don't really care if your floor cleaner is Pine Sol or Ajax, then buy whichever you find on sale whenever you find it on sale. Being open to try new things when shopping is a great way to experiment with new products and generally creates a broader range of shopping (and saving) options over time.
2. Find a Favorite Store - Because of proximity, prices, or other reasons, most people have a grocery store chain and likewise, a favorite store within that chain. Generally speaking, your favorite store is the best store at which to do your coupon shopping because you are familiar with its layout, its traffic patterns and its sales. Shopping at other stores is fine, but often times can take a lot longer than the same shopping trip at a store with which you are familiar.
3. The Early Bird Gets The Worm - Usually, there is a finite window in which to maximize savings using coupons against weekly sale items. At a popular grocery store chain in Southern California, for example, the window is from Sunday to Tuesday at which point the store sale items change for the next week. So, basically, one has about three days from the time the Sunday paper comes out (which, in many places, is Saturday by the way) until the sales change. You can rest assured that if you get to the store on the last day, most of the best deals will be out of stock and those will probably be the things you most wanted to purchase. So, do yourself a favor: buy your paper Saturday night; clip your coupons; organize your shopping trip; and hit the store sometime on Sunday.
4. Keep Track of Your Savings - On the surface, coupon shopping can seem trivial but that perception can quickly change when one realizes they have saved three thousand dollars in one year (based on a real story - MINE!). To have some form of serious analysis of your savings will also illuminate other areas of your budget that benefit from your 'couponing'. For example, chances are that with consistent coupon shopping, not only will you save on your actual grocery bill, but you may also see savings on your dining out expenses because your pantry will be so well stocked. A simple spreadsheet in Excel tracking the grocery totals before and after your discount savings is a good starting place. I also keep track of the dates I shop, the stores at which I shop, the averages per shopping trip and the percentage savings. This data helped me to establish a grocery budget for the year.
5. Make Coupon Shopping a Family Affair - This little tip comes from an experience I had last summer. I became a little lazy and hadn't clipped any of the coupons I had collected from the Sunday newspaper for a little over a month. If you have never clipped six weeks worth of coupons, believe me when I tell you it is more than a notion. Then, I got the bright idea to recruit my nephews who were 8 and 10 at the time and it actually turned out to be a lot of fun. They had their little kiddie scissors and took great pride in cutting perfectly on the dotted lines, showing off how well they could read and giving very thoughtful discourse on why they prefer Cap'n Crunch to Fruity Pebbles. This tip applies to older folks too, especially when it comes to sorting coupons, organizing your shopping trips and doing the grocery shopping itself.