Coupon Mom Gives Tips To Consumers When Grocery Shopping

Coupon Mom Gives Tips To Consumers When Grocery Shopping-We are all about saving time. As Moms of two young children we need all the help we can get in the "making life simpler" area! This system, called Coupon Mom, will help you save time AND maximize savings.

Why would I want to save ALL the coupons and what should I do with the ones I won't or don't use?

Glad you asked! First, being frugal is sometimes about being flexible as well. There are some things we wouldn't normally buy but are willing to substitute when the price is right! For any economists out there... this would be a "substitute good". Having the stash of misc coupons helps us get the most for our $$ when we are willing! In addition, you can help military families stationed overseas by saving and sending your unused or expired coupons. We can help them and thank them by offering a small substitution for the great deals they could get here in the states!

Here's how the Coupon Mom system works:

First, gather your supplies

You'll need a 3-ring notebook or box with hanging file folders (or you could utilize a expanding file folder) for storing the weekly coupon inserts. We use 1-1/2" or larger 3-ring binder

Page protectors - 2-4 inserts per week, and you'll likely keep each insert for a minimum of 6-8 weeks so you'll need somewhere in the neighborhood of 24 plus a couple for sales ads

3-4 sheets of baseball card holders (9 per sheet), for any loose coupons, which will hopefully never be too numerous

one set of write and erase tabs, for any printables (e-coupons) you print and don't use right away

one package of small labels (address size is large enough)

one package of 3x5 or 4x6 index cards, for noting the coupons you've used from each insert (or set of inserts)

After you gather your supplies (it shouldn't cost more than $5-$10 if you have to buy all of this brand new and hopefully you can find everything you need around the house!), you will want to label everything (however you see fit). We used small address labels to put categories on each of the baseball card pockets and then wrote A-Z categories on the blank tabs.

When you get your Sunday paper you will follow the steps below:

1) Remove relevant store ads and coupon inserts and date the inserts with a marker on the front. You will put the date and the code for the insert distributor (see "key" below), (i.e. "3/2 SS")

2) Slip the inserts into a page protector. Note: you may opt to use the address labels to label the outsides of the page protectors instead of writing on them.

3) Slip all the store ads into a single page protector at the back of your notebook. You will want to keep the Sunday ads separate from the Wednesday ads (if your area has both) for ease of reference.

It may be helpful to you if you glance through the coupons and the sales fliers each week but you DO NOT need to clip the coupons (YET)!

So, how do you know which coupons are in which ads in each part of the country?

This is the really great part of Coupon Mom's system! She keeps a database of all the coupons distributed in each insert each week and has them listed by state! Each Saturday afternoon Coupon Mom's Coupon Database is updated with all the new coupons that will be out in Sunday's paper.

Coupon Mom Gives Tips To Consumers When Grocery Shopping