One Cheap Chick

I blogged earlier about the Smith's sale that runs through tomorrow. The great thing about this sale is that there are coupons available for many of the sale items, which adds to the savings! For example, I purchased nine cans of Hormel chili for the food bank and one can of Mandarin oranges in one transaction and paid only $1.63 for all 10 items - 42 cents of that was tax! I used three coupons, each worth $2 off three Hormel products, and a coupon worth 50 cents off any Dole canned product to get that deal. Go here to read about the sale and where to get the coupons.

This week's sale made me think about some of the basics of couponing:

1. Get multiple copies of the Sunday newspaper, which contains a variety of coupons. Most newspapers have special discounted deals for those who want several copies of the Sunday newspaper. (Or, find out which of your neighbors and/or friends get the newspaper but don't clip coupons and ask them to give them to you each week!) In any case, I always have several copies of the same coupon, which enables me to take advantage of sales such as the one at Smith's.

2. Only clip the coupons you need, but throw all of the coupon inserts in a file should you need them later. For example, I didn't clip the Hormel coupons when they first appeared weeks ago. But when I saw the Smith's ad, I decided that it was worth using them to get the cans of chili for 16 cents each. Use a coupon database such as AFullCup.com to look up when the coupon appeared in the newspaper and get them out of your file.

3. Get coupons online as well. I printed off the Dole coupon I used at Smith's off of the Internet. Go here to read more.