I personally LOVE coupons. I love to see how much I can save, how cheaply I can get things, and how far I can use coupons to stretch my dollar. When I talk to people about their coupon usage, or lack thereof these are some of the things I hear:
-It takes too much time.
-Store brands are cheaper than a name brand with a coupon.
-I don't know where to start.
-I'm not that organized.
-I don't want to shop several stores.
What I'd like to do over the next few weeks is share some ways to overcome these reasons to prove that couponing is worth it. Today I will be overcoming this excuse:
It takes too much time. Using coupons can be time consuming, however, there are many, many, many ways you can save time.
- Check out blogs like Be Centsable. They have a feature called the Grocery Gathering where they team up with many other bloggers to list the sales at stores around the country with coupon matches. This takes the guesswork out of getting the best deal.
- Check out the other blogs on my blogroll who share deals, freebies, shopping trips, and ideas for frugal living.
- Hot Coupon World is another wonderful resource. I always check out the Walgreen's forum to see the latest ad scan, deals, and coupon matches. This resource shares information from coupon shoppers all over the country.
- Set aside some uninterrupted time each week to organize, clip, and prepare your lists. I usually spend less than an hour a week preparing to shop.
- Don't try to get every deal out there. This is what I did in the beginning that caused a lot of problems. I went to every store for this deal or that deal and by the time I was done I was frustrated and had spent all night getting 5 items. Not cool. Just get the deals that you can't live without - it will save you tons of time!
The bottom line on the time thing is that there are many successful frugalites who do not use coupons. Amy Dacyczyn author of the Tightwad Gazette is a perfect example. Gayle from the Grocery Cart Challenge is another. If you are willing to spend a little bit of extra time each week to coupon, trust me it is worth it!
How about you? Any other great time saving ideas for those anti-coupon people?
3 comments:
I love clipping coupons and saving money. With the help of the internet it really does not take that long any more. I clip all my coupons on Sunday night and organize them, and glance through the ads. I like to make a list of what I need first, then I get online to see if there are coupon and sale matches. Then I look at what I could stock up on. All together I would say I spend about 2 hours a week clipping coupons and making my list, but I'm very OCD so I like things to be perfect. And 2 hours a week to save money it not a bad investment of my time.
With the way sites post deals these days you don't need to cut coupons, until the deal comes around. Just keep them all in a file with the date (in a big sharpie on the front) and when a deal is posted you can use get that one coupon.
If there is a coupon for something you would purchase anyway cut that one thing out and put it with your dollar bills (it is afterall cash). If you are only cutting one or two coupons out each week it won't fill your wallet.
I would cut coupons if they had them for the really basic stuff. But my husband and I eat a lot of fresh food, hardly any meat, and so there's hardly anything we can coupon. The stuff we can coupon we buy so rarely that it doesn't seem worth it to coupon.
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