The long road to being thrifty!

Part 1

First off let me add my disclaimer before I begin, I am by no means a professional at this and nor I do not know it all. I find I learn something new all the time and I have no problem sharing it. I will try to keep up with this blog and post the deals that I am seeking and how I am doing it. Please be patient with me while I do this.

If you have any questions please leave a comment and I will try to address them. I am hoping to use this blog for that purpose so not to be fielding calls, post and messages on facebook and annoying those who could care less. ;-)

Being thrifty as I call it is alot of work but gets easier as you do it more. It is time consuming and can sometimes be overwhelming. I use as therapy sometimes to just get out of the house and some time to myself which benefits us in the fact it's cheap therapy and we get products to use as the end result, lol!! We are basically a single income family and being thrifty on the daily basic things enables us to spend more money on other things like date night, camping excursions and etc. I also get brand name items cheaper than I can usually buy generics so it's a win win situation.

The stores I frequent are Target, Walgreen's, Kroger, Food lion, Walmart and CVS. I rarely venture into Rite-aid because it really becomes a hassle when their own employees and managers don't know their own coupon policies so I just save the torment and don't bother. The different types of coupons I use are manufacturer, store, mobile, catilina's , peelies and Internet printables. I get them from different places like newspapers, neighbors, mail, other stores including convenient stores), internet ebay and other sites that sell them. I also collect coupons that I don't use and sell them on ebay to pay for me to buy additional ones for me. I also follow other couponing websites to direct me to some sales and such that I may not know about. I have listed a few of them on the right side of the blog, but my favorite is Hip2save.

Manufacturer coupons state right at the top near the date that they are a manufacturer coupon. Sometimes you can have a Catalina or coupon that has another stores logo on it, if it states it is a manufacturer coupon than you can use it anywhere they accept coupons. A Store coupon will either state "store coupon" or for example a "Target coupon". Another thing to remember is you can usually stack a store and a manufacturer coupon for 1 item which can make for some really sweet deals. For example I went to Target today and I had a manufacturer coupon for $1 off 2 bic products, and I had a $1 off 2 store coupon I printed from he Internet. They had their bic sure grip 7 pack pens for $.99. I bought 4 pack which before tax came to $3.96 so I used 2- $1/2 of the manufactures which took of $2 and 2- $1/2 store coupons which also deducted $2 so they were FREE!
You can also sign up for mobile coupons, I think Target, Foodlion and JcPenny's has them. Mobile coupons are exactly as they sound, coupons and bar codes sent to your cell phone. A Catalina looks like a receipt that prints out of a special printer that some stores have next to the registers and there are also 2 types of Catalina, Store and manufacturer. A peelie is a coupon that you find on a product while in the store and they are those lil buggers that are hard to get off because they are so sticky. I am constantly cruising the stores for peelies to use on other specials in other stores. Internet coupons can be found on product websites, facebook or coupon sites. They are what we refer to as the "printables". Most sites will limit you to 2 copies per IP address, so if you have more than one computer it can benefit you. Most stores fuss over printables because there is alot of fraudulent use of them. People scan them and use them more than once and the stores lose out on them oney when this happens. Most manufacturer printables also include another identifying bar code to show it's uniqueness, but store coupons do not have this and I do copy those. Even if I print from another IP address store coupons use the same barcode. when you are printing a internet coupon you must hit your back browser a couple times (my computer it takes 3 times) to get back to the page to print it again. But as I stated earlier most will only let you print 2.

Where to get coupons? I get a subscription to the local paper ($12 a month) for Sunday only, then my paper carrier gets me 2 extra copies of the coupons each week. On Tuesday my mail carrier brings me a "junk mailer" from red plum and they have the insert for the next Sunday already in there and I send my poor daughter to the neighbors to get theirs that they are not using. Then on Saturday night we get another junk paper that has the smart source insert in it and I send my poor daughter out again to collect the unused ones from the neighbors. Then the only time I have to hit the stands is the weekends that the paper offers the P & G insert. (proctor and gamble which is usually the first Sunday of the month.) There also large papers that will give you a discounted subscription price for just the coupon inserts, you can also buy the full inserts by the pound online, if you know a newspaper carrier you can ask them for their leftovers on Sunday. I also buy from a couple sights online that are fairly cheap and make it worth the $ to buy them, and as I stated earlier I get coupons from the stores themselves. I will stop in at a convenient store and if they have any I take them( not all but some of them, and I have a rule to never take the last one either, just a weird thing I do) for my use or to sell on ebay to buy the ones I want. For example a local store had $.50 coupons for Propel water, Kroger had them for $1 and Kroger also doubles coupons up to $.50 so I got them for FREE!

I think this is enough info for one day! I will try to add pics for examples and hopefully tomorrow I can break down how to use which ones at what store.
Since my blog post the most recent post be on the look out for Part 2.