Coupon interest rises in tight economy

The hard thing with coupons is to not have them "incentivize" spending that would not have happened otherwise! It takes practice and discipline to ONLY clip what will actually bring spending down, but the good news is that once you get to that, it's not hard to keep it up. In fact, if you notice the Sunday coupon supplements over a long period you'll see patterns and repetition by the same companies at the same intervals.

Three other caveats: Often coupons will bring down brand name prices to store-brand level (such as with iced tea bags), and gains from that are questionable. Also, as with many things in society, SINGLE people are often discriminated against, as coupons might apply only to quantities that are just not practical. And finally, you can't use coupons at stores like Big Lots that might be a better deal.

And the bad economy is not only boosting coupons, but also thrift stores. Have been going to those for many years and lately notice a lot more people shopping in them.

How to massacre the English language. " of ones " in the opening line ?

My high school English teacher would be appalled.

I find I save more by buying generic or store-brand products rather than use coupons. I have also gone back to baking and cooking from scratch. No more frozon chicken nuggets, french fries, etc. I now purchase store-brand coffee and cereals as well.
Many times I bring my coupons only to toss them because generic/store brands have a better price and taste or perform the same.

Note to ItsMe. I agree. I saw the "ones" in the opening lines and saw fingernails on a chalkboard. As a former newspaper reporter that stuff drives me nuts, along with improper use of the apostrophe ("we sell new door's) and improper use of "insure/ensure" (we want to "insure" your success). aaahhhh!!!! :)

I use TheGroceryGame.com on a regular basis. I spend $25.00 every two months for four stores. I have cut my family's food and toiletries down by at least half. I have a family of eight so it really helps. This is an example of how much I save. Toothpaste (6.4 ounces) was on sale for $ .99 a tube at Safeway. That was down from $3.00 something (I can't remember the exact price). The information on The Grocery Game.com told me that it was $ .99 and also told me that there was a .75 coupon in the recent paper. I had four of those coupons so I ended up buying four tubes for $ .24 cents a tube. YOU CAN'T BEAT THAT FOR A DEAL! This happens all the time. Terri Gault charges a very reasonable price to do the job for the rest of us. I don't have the time or the energy to pull it all together so I let her do that with extremely satisfying results for our family. Try it! You can always pull out at any time if "it's not the thing for you." There's NO commitment period.

When I was a young wife thirty-eight years ago, I clipped coupons regularly and always took a "calculator" -one of those red plastic price tickers that preceeded the checkbook calculator. If I made a mistake, I had to start all over calculating what was in my cart. Over the years and through various recessions, I clipped coupons and cooked from scratch, but I would get lazy when times improved, and I have paid no attention to coupons or even the cost of items I really liked or wanted -until the advent of 2008.

We live in Alaska, and shipping isn' t cheap, so Alaska food prices are as inflated as gasoline and diesel. Now my family of four is clipping coupons again, and we have learned how to shop all over again. We shop only on the way home from work, and the two stores we frequent are on a direct route, so there is no wasted gas. We don't go for bargains at out of our way stores if the cost of fuel is going to negate the savings. We shop at Costco, and what they don't have at the best price, we get at a chain grocery where we purchased a $330 gift card for $300. We also receive "reward" points and save between 3 and 10 cents on our fuel through the same company's gas station.

We take advantage of items on sale and buy as many as we are allowed on the coupons. If a product is $3 for 6 or $6 for 12, we buy the larger number and stock it in our panty. We buy only products and brands we will eat, but we put the coupons away if a store brand we like is cheaper.

The last time we went to the grocery store, all the sale fliers at the door were picked through -mostly milk and cheese and produce coupons. Yes, lots of folks are now clipping saving. Although it is sad to go through these times again, it is refreshing to see people doing what they can to becme frugal and learning to save and cook again!

To whoever said they save more by buying generic, I hear you. Even with the coupons, the generic items tend to be cheaper. Either that, or you have to buy three or four items to get the coupon price (cereal, for example). Most coupon items I just flat out do not buy. When in the rare instance a coupon is available for Tide Laundry Detergent or cat food, then I clip the coupon. The rest of them do not help me.

I have been a coupon user for years. I try to only cut out the ones for products that I normally use, but am occasionally tempted by new product coupons. You have to use common sense but you can save several bucks each trip to the store. One new product a few months ago was a new air freshener with 3 bottles of scent instead of the norman one bottle. The price was not cheap before the discounts, but it was $10.99 full price. The grocery had it on sale for $5.99....and the coupon in the paper was for $5.00 off on one. My final price was .99 cents! I used 3 coupons (neighbors gave me theirs) and got 3 of them.....I still have one to go!

And the last time I had a coupon for Honey Nut Cheerios, final cost after coupons and store sale was $3.00 for 4 boxes! That is hard to beat!

I play the Grocery Game also. It is SOOO worth it. Smartcookie, I recommend you look into it. I grew up in Alaska, and I'm no stranger to $5 a gallon milk. And that was 10 years ago.

The key is, to combine the sales with the coupons. You are always going to find that generics are cheaper, UNLESS the brand name is on sale. If your store doubles or even triples coupons, you are potentially getting a brand name item for the fraction of the shelf price, and yes, LESS than generics.

Single people being discriminated against? What a ridiculous notion! LOL Plenty of items can be frozen and/or have long shelf lives. And anyway, that is based on region. One region might have a coupon for .50 off one, another may have $1 off 2.

For people who say most coupons are for items they dont use...so what? If you could get a different brand of deodorant or tube of toothpaste for FREE, would you buy it as opposed to paying $3-$5 for your regular kind? Of course you would, no one turns away free. You might even find you like it or *gasp* like it better than your brand. Or maybe you could try something you've never tried before....for FREE. And actually end up liking it!

My opinion is that naysayers just dont give it a chance, or have pre-conceived notions. I used to think that way too, until I looked into it further, and found the Grocery Game. I watched a lady with 4 kids yesterday. She had a cart full of groceries. Her total was $171, after having saved $85. Part of her savings was from coupons. But after looking at her items, I knew I could probably have bought the SAME items when they were ON SALE using my Grocery Game list and coupons, and shaved probably $100 dollars off that bill. I usually save about 70% off shelf price at my grocery store.

No, a lot of the items on there are for hair products I do not use (hair dye, for example) for for kinds of items that I just do not buy (junky snack type foods, cake mixes, and ready to eat frozen junk). It's not a matter of different brands (I'm not very brand loyal on most items), it's a matter of entire classes of products. I still go through the coupon books every Sunday, and I maybe cut out one coupon. I don't know where you are, but I'm in MA and the coupons stink.

I am a Grocery Gamer as well. I had always used coupons to some extent until 9 weeks ago when I learned of the Grocery Game. It has taught me how to maximize my savings with store sales, market trends and coupons!!! I am almost to what we call the "cherry picking" stage and I have cut my weekly budget from about $125.00 a week to about $45.00 a week and most of the time that includes diapers. Some weeks are better than others but when I can walk out of a store with 3 bottles of name brand cleaner for .03 a piece because my list store is nice enough to double/triple coupons then so be it. I don't take a calculator with me because most of the time I already know to the penny what I am going to spend at each individual store I shop at. I choose to shop at 4 stores on my list but I could still save hundreds at one. I used to be an avid "store brand" shopper but now days I am buying name brand cheaper. If for some reason the store brand is cheaper and I like it I buy it. As far as coupons that I don't use at the GG we have coupon trains where we forward coupons that we won't use and receive coupons from someone that didn't want that particular stack. At first yes this all took me some time just to get my coupon binder the way I wanted it and had to do some thinking about some of the stores I was shopping out to maximize my savings. Now days though it's a much quicker process.

Thanks Candace for a very informative article.
Go to moneysavingcoupons.org for more coupons.

Why pay for the GG when you can get all the info for FREE!  You shouldn't have to pay to find the deals as they are all at afullcup.com.  Saving money is just that...saving money.  You would NEVER see me pay anyone $25 to save.  Plus GG will not send you updates on hidden deals as you will find at afullcup.com.

Here is a method that I learned in Utah with the Grocery Guru:

Buy a 3" 3 ring binder. As the coupon arrives, write the initials for the pack (S= Smart pack etc) then the date. Hole punch the coupons and close the binder. When you print the shopping list, it tells you exactly where to find them. 15 minutes before you go shopping, get the coupons, attach to your shopping list, and you can even tell someone else to go shopping for you. If you don't use the coupon, go to where the coupon was and use a paper clip and put it back in the right place for next time. Same coupons come out every 6 weeks, so every 6 weeks you can discard the coupons, or better, cut them out (the ones that haven't expired and go to the grocery store and see if you can get a good deal out of any of them. You will be surprised.)

Online coupons are now in and have much higher values than in the past. Besides normal grocery coupons, I now also look to other type of specialty coupons, such as drug coupons since the savings with one drug coupon alone can be hundreds of dollars per year. For example, I can save up to $100 per year alone for my Proair inhaler by using drug coupons from the site . I also try to buy in bulks, within reasons. Many sellers now use online coupons to attract consumers so it is definitely a good savings technique.

Just want to add the drug coupon site name Drugzoo.com to the previous comment for you to check out.