Basic Couponing Lesson Two: Gathering & Finding Coupons

Gathering &Finding Coupons

Just to reiterate the key to buying things at the rock bottom price is to take full advantage of all the consumer offers available to you. This includes coupons, store incentives and sales, and rebates. Coupons don’t make much impact by themselves. When you use two or more of these strategies at a time, that is when you move into the range of saving 50%. When you can use more than one or there is a great sale is when you can get things for free or possibly create overage, that is make money off your purchase.
One thing that I learned from one of the coupon classes I took was that when a manufacturer has a new product they want to promote, wants to change, wants to discontinue or simply wants to temporarily boost sales they will do it in waves. The first wave is when the manufacturer issues coupons. What they want you to do is get your Sunday paper clip ten of the coupons for items you really really like. Go to your favorite store and buy that product which is most likely overpriced. And most of us did that before not knowing about the second two waves.
The second wave is store incentives. Some examples are CVS Extracare bucks, Walgreen’s registry Rewards, Target Gift cards, sales, store coupons or store credit. The third and final wave is rebates. That is to say manufacturers will offer a mail in rebate to further boost their sales.
So to get the most savings you have to wait and use at least two hopefully three of these waves. If you do you can get many things for free or even overage, that is profit!

Types of Coupons

There are two types of coupons, manufacture (MFC) and store coupons. Manufacturer’s coupons are issued by the manufacturer and when used at the store the manufacturer reimburses the store plus provides a handling fee. They can be used at any store that accepts manufacture coupons.

Above you will see a Manufacturer coupon printed from the Internet and one clipped from a newspaper.

Store coupons are coupons issued by a specific store or chain and can only be used at that particular store or chain.

Finding Coupons

There are many places to find coupons. The best place to start is in the newspaper. If you haven’t done so already you should consider subscribing to the newspaper. You should subscribe to the one with the widest distribution so for us here in Oakland County that would be the Detroit News and Free Press. Most will advise to have one paper per consumer in your home. So four person families will purchase four papers but that is something to think about down the line. I have a two person family and still only subscribe to one paper. You can also find coupons online, through text messages, store ads, magazines, store register receipts, or on or inside the product.

Online or E-coupons
Online printable coupons are being used more and more. Most major store chains as well as local grocery stores will accept them as long as they have the barcode and expiration date. You just need a printer to access these coupons and it is free. It most likely will require you to install an activeX control or enable cookies and disable a pop-up blocker. When you go to print one the on-line site will let you know if you need to install something and then walk you through the process if necessary. Note that it is illegal and considered fraud to photocopy these coupons.
Many manufacturers usually have one printable coupon on their homepage as well. This is a good source especially for organic coupons that come out only infrequently in the newspapers.
Another great way to get coupons is to email, write or call the manufacturer. For products that you love send a sincere email, compliment or even send a complaint on a product that disappointed you. You can expect to get coupons in the mail usually one for a free product. Also ask to be on their mailing list if they have one and sign up for on-line newsletters.
Here are some coupons I received directly from manufacturer:

As you can see these sometimes look a little different however a lot of times manufacturers send you coupons for free products or in the case of the Ken’s Marinade, they have no expiration date.
Other printable coupons will be from coupons consolidation websites. Some of those are:

coupons.com

smartsource.com

redplum.com

Most sites will let you print two copies of the same coupon per IP address. After you print your coupon, you can simply hit the back button a few times until the coupon is resent to your printer. You may also have to hit the refresh button. Many coupons are “rolling” meaning they reset after a set amount of time. So check back monthly to your favorites sites to see if there are new coupons or ones that have reset so that you can print them again.

There are stores now offering their customer the option of loading coupons on to their store loyalty cards. For us here in Oakland County this is only available at Kroger for the most part. Upromise offers some incentives for CVS as well. For more info go here .

Sites to check for those are:

shortcuts.com

cellfire.com

softcoin.com (which can be accessed through Kroger’s website)

Lastly one of the newest ways to get coupons is through facebook. Frequently coupons for free or high value products are offered to those that become fans of a manufacturer’s website on facebook. I must admit I signed up for facebook specifically to get a coupon I really wanted!

This week’s tasks: If you have a Kroger card start loading ecoupons to it via the above three websites.
Search the printable websites and print off coupons that might be of interest to you.
Be sure to subscribe to a paper or pick up one if you haven’t yet.
Next Week's Lesson: Organizing coupons

If you are a blogger please link up any articles are guides you have about how to find coupons below.