Saving Money with Coupons- Part 1

In these times of economic uncertain with outrageous gas prices, and people worried about loosing their savings everyone needs to save money. One time to save money is when grocery shopping. A smart shopper uses every avenue available to save money and one of the best ways in the grocery world is by using coupons. When you “really” use coupons you can’t just clip a few coupons from the paper, slap them in your purse, and head off to the store and hope to save tons of money. Most of the time with this method you forget to use your coupons, the coupon expire sand you just wind up throwing them away. (Hint: If you do have them buried in that suitcase of a purse and you realize that you forgot to use them before you get out of the store just walk over to the service desk, explain your situation and they should give you a refund in cash for the coupons.) The main key to success with using coupons is organizing your coupons. There are several ways that can work.
1. One way is to buy a cheap accordion style coupon holder - sometimes you can find these at the Dollar Tree for $1.00 or at Wal-Mart for around $3. This gives you around 13 different categories to place your coupons.
2. Another way is to buy an index card box, get some index card separators, and file the coupons in categories. This gives you more options on the number of categories.
3. My personal favorite, which I must admit is not an original idea, is the one that I use. You get a three ring binder, preferably, one that zips (they can come with shoulder straps and handles). One binder that fits the bill is made by Case It. This product will run any where from $12 to $17 at Staple, Office Max, Office Depot, etc. Next purchase ordinary school dividers for the number of categories you would like to have. These are around .82 cents for five dividers at Wal-Mart. Next you add trading card holders to actually hold your coupons. Can purchase these for around $1.72 for a pack of nine sheets at Wal-Mart which will hold 90 coupons. You put one coupon in each card holder pocket. This makes it very easy to flip through the pages and see what coupons you have available.

I found this idea on the internet while looking for coupons. While I would love to give credit to the orginial person I fear it has been so long ago I can't seem to find them again. Here is a one picture of someone else's book to kind of give you an idea of how it should look. http://i141.photobucket.com/albums/r55/SavingNow/IMG_1798.jpg



Check back for the next post. I will be giving ideas for coupon categories.