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Save your grocery receipts for at least 3 weeks. Coupons often come up for something you have already purchased, some stores will accept them within a reasonable amount of time after the purchase.
Here is a really good tip. When you get any kind of coupons for free items, save them for times when you really need them. Times like these would be when you are low on money and/or when there is no triple coupon sales going on at that time, for those who have stores near them that participate.
Here are the questions asked by community members. Read on to see the answers provided by the ThriftyFun community.
I live in Canada. Both hubby and I work. He works for a call center and I work for home care. Money is a very tight issue for us. How can I get my hands on coupons? I would love to use them but never can find or get my little hands on any. Things are just getting so pricey that it's start to kill us.
Subscribe to a Sunday newspaper that will be mailed to you that includes coupons. Perhaps you could find a coupon marketing company or several and offer to act as their rep. in your area, selling the service to your local newspapers. First make sure your grocery stores accept or even double or triple coupons. The New York Times has excellent coupons and is a great Sunday paper, as well, and well worth the investment.
We, in Canada, can NOT use USA coupons, so any coupons in the New York Times are not able to be used up here.
Some Sunday papers have coupons, some do not. Actually, there are very few coupons in stores and flyers now compared to years ago. I find that for ourselves, I am now only buying what I need and nothing else, not buying "name brand" particularly (unless it is on a really good sale) and just watching what I spend $ on. I find that the few coupons that do come in the flyers are for items that I would rarely buy anyways. Coupons that I do see now in the store mostly seem to be on or in items that are "frivolous" items...why buy a sugared cereal when the same amount of money can buy you a loaf of bread and 2 dozen eggs.
Just some things to think about.
http://www.save.ca has coupons they mail right to your home.
When you are out shopping, pick up coupons from the shelf displays and hold onto them until you need them.
Try to work a coupon exchange with someone at work, or if you are in an apt building, put a coupon exchange envelope on the bulletin board.
Buy generic and store brands, avoid "convenience" items and buy your produce fresh and in season. 5 pounds of carrots can be had for about $2.00 right now and 10 lbs of spuds for about the same $2.00. Buy whole frozen chickens instead of parts and avoid deli meats... use leftovers for lunch.
Call the manufacturers of the products you are interested in and ask them to send you coupons.
Tell them you really like their product but are on a tight budget, you will be surprised at what you will get.
Espeicially if you tell them that you will have to buy a cheaper brand.
Most of the companies have a toll free number on the package.
I do not recommend using this if you do not need to however.
If Canada is anything like Australia there are very few coupons, and what there are are for reduced price take away foods or prepackaged/pre prepared items. Basically things that do not even approach frugal. I would have to second a lot of what beanygirl and valleyrimgirl say - buy loss leaders, basic foodstuffs, cook from scratch, menu plan and stick to your shopping list. This will save much more than a few cents off a bought pizza or a dollar off a trip to the cinema.
Regards
Jo
Thank you all so very very much..... i love the ideas and find every single one of them very helpful. I will keep you all updated on how things are going
search the manufacturers web pages. they often include coupons they will send you or you can print them out.
Hi Karen~~I'm also from Canada and have joined a group of people who do trains of coupons. If interested you can look into it at tradingpostcoupons@yahoogroups.com. Hope this helps you.
You can aslo sign up for all kidns fo newsletters taht will help you find Canadian coupons. Try going to yahoogroups.com (or a similar site) and search for Canadian coupons or freebies.
Also, if you're buying anything online, make sure you do a google search with the store name and words like coupon codes, or discount, etc. You can often save a lot of money or shipping fees just by doing this search.
I subscribe to a wonderful refunding magazine that is really helpful on what to look for at the grocery, couponwise & refund/rebate form
wise. People send in their ways to save, pictures, etc. They have a website. You can use the following url to get there: refundcents.com/
If it's where you can grow your own veggies, it'll be a great investment till the end. The flavor of homegrown fresh veggies are the best, far better than anything bought at the grocery produce counter. Best of luck in your hardship.
Refund cents magazine is published in the US which means that we in Canada can not use it. You also have stores there that we do not have. But it does sound like a great magazine, for those who live in the US.
Save.ca is available for us in Canada and seems like an easy site to use. I have just used it for the first time and saved it into my favorites, to use in the future.
there are other sites that do coupon trains as well and we have alot of coupons in canada and even our grocery stores will sell you a coupon book for a buck with a great amount of savings inside (ie safeway)
i recommend using cnd tire money for day to day things such as dish soap, foil paper etc
If you live in golden horse shoe try www.smartflyer.ca
I cant get through to smartflyer.ca
wendi2 @ hotmail.com (remove spaces)
this has nothing to do with coupons, however this is a site that has saved me money and is helping the environment. check online if you have a freecycle.com site available in your province. people offer and accept free items of all sorts there. my sister got a free air conditioner that actually works,a computer and i've gotten things like dog food and furniture. simply put evreything there is free and stays out of the landfills. hope this helps.
We find plenty of coupons in the stores and now that we're seniors my brother shares his coupons with me also I get them from save.Ca.
Does anyone here know if Canadian grocery stores double or triple coupons? If so, which ones?
There is a new show that is called Extreme Couponing. Personally I think they should combine the show with the show Hoarders since all of the people have a problem.
My question is, how do you get coupons for meat? There are coupons to be found for staples, but a wall of free toilet paper isn't doing anyone any good unless you're reselling it. Does anyone know how to get deals on meats like steaks, chicken, and seafood?
Thanks.
By Patti from Ewing, NJ
How many grocery stores accept coupons printed from the Internet? I'm seeing more and more tempting coupons on-line.
By Liz
My local WalMart supercenter takes coupons that are printed online. I don't know about the other grocery stores in town. I don't go to them because they are too expensive, plus being too far away to take a cab to.
You should talk with the grocery store manager and ask if they accept the on-line coupons.
Some of the dollar stores will not accept on-line coupons, I found out the hard way. I printed out some General Mills cereal coupons and drove to Dollar General since they had a sale on Cheerios. I went to pay for the cereal and was told that they wouldn't accept the coupons. Well, I didn't buy the cereal and wasted my ink.
The manager did tell me that if the coupons were from a local newspaper, they would accept them.
Most coupons you print off the internet are manufacturers coupons and will usually SAY they are so when you print them. As long as you go to a big name grocery store like Food City, Kroger, Ingle or Food Lion you should have little to no difficulty using the coupons you print out. It cost manufacturers big bucks to have coupons printed in local papers and many of them are switching to internet only coupons because of the cost savings. Smaller stores that don't accept printed coupons from the internet 50% of the time won't take coupons at all.
Either way, the cost of printing the coupon and saving some money is worth the time and effort even if the store you normally go to won't accept them. In that case don't throw the coupons away, give them to a neighbor, friend or church. They won't go to waste. Another option is Coupons for Troops for coupons you can't use. Just do a search here on ThriftyFun.
I have never had a problem with legitimate coupons printed off the net. Stores even Target accept them. I also google for online coupon codes whenever I buy something from an online store. They may be for free shipping or a % off, those usually work too.
I have use printed coupons at CVS, Walgreen, Target, Kmart, Safeway, Albertsons and WalMart. Walmart is the only store that gives me a hard time. I just ask them to call a manager and they take care of me.
Do coupons really save money? No really, I'm being serious. They always end up costing me me more. Help? I tried the coupon craze and ended up raising my grocery bill by almost $200 a month. We are very frugal generally and I am good at feeding our family of 4 on about $400-$500 a month, (with diapers), but I started couponing and my budget went way up.
I didn't spend much on coupons, just a few Sunday papers and I did buy a few online, but just for a few dollars total. What did I do wrong? Is it just me or do you still get a better deal sticking with the house brand and clearance stuff than the coupons?By Jae Rue
I have been trying to improve my couponing skills. I got a few tips from the extreme coupon shows but would like to know how people are getting items for free. My local stores only double coupons for $1.00 or less. And now most coupons are buy two items for $1.00 so the cost of using the coupon is really too high of an investment. I'd like some advise about how to either get better coupons or how to use them more wisely.
By Teressa Goebel from Akron, OH
Does anyone know of any rebate or couponing newsletters still in publication?
Carol from Tehachapi, CA
I used to subscribe to two (at different times), and both are still in operation.
Refundle Bundle was the first (refundlebundle.com), and Refunding Makes Cents! was the second (refundcents.com).
Quite honestly, I liked both publications when I first started. However, refunding itself became "big business" (people selling forms and qualifiers -- and the subscriptions are now quite -- in my opinion -- expensive), so I let my subscriptions lapse.
Besides all that, I remember when rebates didn't require the CRTC. You should have seen my qualifier "stash!" I threw everything away when I saw all those ooooold UPCs for which there were no rebate offers.
Not to put you off, but just my 2¢ worth!
Best of luck,
Sharon B.
I subscribe to Refund Cents. There is an online version ($12 a year) and a written publication (10 issues and it includes the online access- $25 a year) I have been a subscriber for years, and LOVE it!! The daily "deals" more than pay for everything. Go to http://www.refundcents.com to look around and see if this is for you! :)
There is one called the Penny Pincher Gazette that you can view online. I receive the newsletter for free, but cant remember the URL. You need to be careful when you do your search for the site as there are many imposters. I think its www.ppg.com, but am not sure about that. You will know it when you see it. Best of luck always,
The web site to the Penny Pincher Gazette is:
http://www.ppgazette.com
I'd like to learn about trading coupons. This is my first time here. The site looks like lots of fun. I am also new to couponing and live in a small rural area where there is not a huge variety of coupons in my local newspaper. Most of what I get is not for items I use, so I would like to trade for the ones I do use. Any advice for a beginner would be greatly appreciated.
By Rhetta Domingue from Lumberton, MS
There's a couponing/rebate website called refundingcents.com that is excellent for what you need. Also you can get coupons that you do use by paying a fee to the seller for the cost of cutting and processing the coupons on ebay.com.
You 1st need to build your reputation. Go to hotcouponworld.com. In the forums section you can register and go to the trades section.
Make a list of coupons you have to trade and a list of coupons you would like in return. Post that on the trades section.
One way to build your reputation is to offer ROAK (Random ACT Of Kindness) Offer coupons free of charge in exchange most people will rate you as a trustworthy trader. The more trades you do the better your reputation and the easier it is to do trades.
You can also join a coupon train. The train starts with a conductor who has people sign up for the train. The conductor makes a list of names and addresses of each person who has signed up. They send and envelope with 50 or so coupons to the 1st person. The 1st person takes the coupons they want and replaces what they took before sending it to the next person. It goes through the list until it is returned to the conductor by the last person. After it has run a full round each member can decide if they would like to get off the train or keep on riding another round.
I have been on good trains but I have also been on trains where people are jerks and just put in coupons for things like hemorrhoid cream and flea powder etc.
Rhetta, They (Thrifty fun) has a coupon swap on their website. I too am from a small town in Mississippi, so I know what you mean. Good Luck!
I want to know how to coupon. Can anyone offer some tips? Thank you.
By Kimberlly
I've been reading a lot about coupon clipping and stacking coupons. Does anyone in the Pittsburgh North (Cranberry Twp/Butler PA) know of a good place to start grocery shopping? I just can't seem to figure out how to get all the good deals I hear/read about. Thanks!
By Lisa from Cranberry Twp, PA
I need lots of help with couponing 101; anybody willing to help?
By Amanda W.
This tip for people who use coupons. There is a website called couponmom.com that you can print coupons on.
This is a page about combining coupons. If you take the time to get organized with coupons and rebates before you shop, you can save a lot of money. Coupon stacking is when you use a store coupon and a manufacturer's coupon on the same item, which typically results in a very reduced price once they are both applied. Here are some tips for how to best combine coupons.
To save some money at the dollar store, keep an eye out for coupons you can use when you shop there. This is a page about using coupons at dollar stores.
Having more coupons to use will definitely give you more opportunity to save money when you shop. This is a page about how can i get more coupons?.
ThriftyFun is one of the longest running frugal living communities on the Internet. These are archives of older discussions.
I use coupons every week at the grocery store, but often times I feel like a complete failure when I walk out with a $70 or $80 bill for what I purchased and only saving about $4 - $8 in coupons.
This is a tip for shopping with Target coupons. Some people do not realize that you can pair their in-store coupons with manufacturers' coupons.
