I have a lot of people tell me, I want to coupon, but I don’t know where to begin. Here are some tips that I have found that helps me.
Frist thing if you want to get started is set your budget. Nothing is more important than having a set budget every month and knowing how much you have spent. I would suggest a money app I love Toshl that is the one I currently use, but there is more than one money app’s out there. Here is a list of money tracker apps that you can try out for yourself.
Knowing how much you have to spend on groceries is essential.
Now when starting out, I always suggest to budget higher for the next 6 months because things go on sale about every 4-6 months and you will need to stock up on the items that are on sale when they go on sale so that you will avoid paying full price for anything.
Currently, I have a budget of $300-$400 a month for a family of 4 and for my state the average household spends $900-$1,100 on groceries for a family of 4. If I am super tight one month I can go down to as low as $150 per month on groceries. That would mean I would be using my stock as my main supplies and just getting the free stuff or money makers at the stores and buying meats and fruits, veggies, and dairy for the month. And anything I absolutely needed.
I also budget in $150 a month for what I call ” Fun Funds” Which is funded my family has to spend on whatever we want a month. I try to save as much as I can here as well. I save by using Groupon and Favorite Eats I also use Swagbucks.
Swagbucks Is a website that has a lot of opportunities to earn what they call “Swagbucks” Swagbucks you can use to earn stuff like gift cards or participate in Sweepstakes or you can simply cash out your Swagbucks for cash. The easiest way is to download the SwagTV app on your phone and let it run. Normally it allows 50-35 Swagbucks per day normally I allow this to run at night time Another way is to make sure you hit your daily goal you will earn extra Swagbucks by doing so and you will also earn even more when you hit your goal every week and then extra every month. You can do so by taking quick surveys and if you make an online purchase through Swagbucks you can earn more Swagbucks. 100 Swagbucks = $1 roughly sometimes more. I normally earn somewhere between $30-$50 a month. I normally use this in my fun fund budget or right now for my vacation budget, but you can use it for whatever you like.
Now let’s move onto how to get started with couponing in stores. The first thing is to be organized get a coupon binder like this one here. I use these baseball card holders to store my coupons in. I really suggest that you buy a zipped binder in case you accidently drop it and the coupons go everywhere. (Not that I have done that or anything) I would also suggest getting a binder divider to help you to separate your coupons into groups.
Now most coupons only allow you to have 4 of a kind sometimes it is per person and sometimes it is per transaction. With coupons make sure that you read the fine print on them before you use them and make sure that you are using the right coupon for the product you are using. For example, if it says Any one with no size limit you can use any product even a trial size on that coupon but if the coupon says you can get any product 5.0 oz or higher then you must buy a product that matches what it discloses on the coupon.
How do I get a lot of coupons all at once? Well, there are four different coupons, printed, paper, mobile, and rebate. The best way is to stack them as much as you can, for example, do one printed, one mobile, and a rebate to maximize your earnings.
To get a lot of Paper coupons for There are a few different options, My favorite is the free way. There are several companies such as Hotels, Libraries, Hospitals, and local restaurants and shops who have subscriptions to the paper. In that case, they get Sunday papers and any Papers that they don’t use they have to pay a fee to have the recycling to come by and grab them for them. You can call around and see if they would be willing to let you take the papers for exchange in them not having to pay the state for Recycling fees, Some places will have you take the whole week’s papers, but sometimes they have coupons in the daily paper as well as the Sunday so double score! That way you can get hundreds of inserts for free.
Another way is buying the inserts the best way to get your bang for your buck is to get them from Walmart you can get two papers for $3 which have two inserts if you buy them anywhere else they are $2 each.
You can also buy them from Fairies. If you are a fairy you are more than welcome to post your location and either your email or facebook where you can be contacted at. A coupon fairy is someone who supplies a lot of coupons all at once and sells the inserts so if there are just a few inserts you would like that is one way to go about it.
You can also start or join a local coupon trading group. This is where you bring coupons that you are not going to use and you trade them with others who also coupon so you can get the things you use and gain more coupons for free. I do this once a week If you are in Utah and would like to join feel free to leave your email below and I will send you more information.
Rebates, Now with rebates you can either use them one of two ways Rebate apps which are my favorite and mail-in-rebates.
Here are a list of my favorite Rebate apps.
Ibotta is a rebate app where you buy certain items either in the grocery store, clothing store, or stores like best buy you then take a photo of your receipt and you get money into your account. You can cash out as soon as you have $10 or more to your bank account or PayPal.
When you first sign up with Ibotta you get $10 back on your first rebate!
Checkout51 is just a grocery rebate app but they have a lot of stuff unique to Ibotta or sometimes the same item where you can submit your receipt to both apps!
Snap by Groupon Is another grocery rebate kind of like Checkout51
Honey is an app that you install right onto your internet browser and it automatically detects if there is a coupon for that site. No more internet searching all you have to do is check when you go to a website and it will automatically show up!
A button will be placed in your browser bar. While shopping at a supported store, click on
to view all available sales and coupon codes. During the checkout process, simply click the “Find Savings” button in the browser extension and Honey will automatically find and apply the best coupon(s) for you.