Mastering Coupons (Without Being a Coupon Nut)

I used to think that clipping coupons was a giant waste of time. “Coupons encourage you to buy extra junk that you don’t need,” I thought to myself whenever I saw a batch of coupons from the newspaper.

Then I had a baby, and I discovered the true value of coupons. Hint: if you buy diapers, baby food, and formula over and over again, coupons for diapers, baby food, and formula are as good as cash. It didn’t take long for this to spread out over our other purchases and now we have a nice hefty envelope full of coupons that we take on grocery ones with us (another tip: keep an envelope somewhere handy to keep coupons in so that if you see a useful one, you can just toss it in the envelope and look at it the next time you go shopping).

Here’s five quick ways to find coupons without burning a bunch of time hunting for them:

1. Pick up a copy of the Sunday edition of a major newspaper. There’s usually a few included sections of solid coupons. Clipping the useful ones takes just a couple of minutes.

2. Visit the website of your preferred grocery store chain before you visit. Many of them have coupon sections. I usually shop at Hy-Vee, which has a great coupon section.

3. If there’s something you buy a lot of, Google for it and add the word “coupon.” You’ll usually find something in the first few links. Around here, we buy a lot of Gerber baby food and Pampers diapers, so Googling for “Pampers coupons” or “Gerber coupons” usually points you to coupons or an easy method of getting them (like filling out a form or something).

4. Print multiple copies of any coupons that really wow you. We like to make frozen prepared meals about once a week, because we’re often stretched for time as it is and they are extremely easy to prepare. So when we found a $3 off coupon for Bertolli frozen dinners (which are quite good and very easy!), we printed a bunch of them and take one with us during each store visit.

5. Keep an eye out for double or triple coupon days at local grocery stores. There are a couple grocery stores nearby that have regular double coupon days; you can find out when they are by checking this list and then seeing if any of their chains (or subsidiary chains) are near you, then ringing the store to ask when they do them. Here, two different stores have double coupon days on different weekdays, so I often plan my shopping around these. I often get stuff for free (or very close to it) with double coupons - just yesterday, in fact, I got twelve containers of Yoplait yogurt (a popular item around my house) for four cents apiece.

I’m In Big Financial Trouble - Where Do I Start?

Several months ago, I sat down with my finances and took a good hard look at things. I was in approximately $10,000 of credit card debt spread out over three cards, and that’s not counting my student loans or vehicle loans. I also had no money in savings and - even scarier - I wanted to buy a house within the next two years, even though my finances were screaming “no way!”

It was very intimidating to look at my finances in this way, and it made it clear to me that I needed to make some major changes in my spending and saving habits.

The first thing I did is I made a list of every single thing I had to pay out each month using Microsoft Excel (you might want to use Google Spreadsheets; it’s free and quite useful for tasks like this one). I made four columns: the name of the bill, the amount of the bill, whether it is essential or not (I used “Y,” “N,” and “?” for this one - and I used “Y” for any bills that were loans that I couldn’t just cancel, and I used “N” for non-essential things like my cell phone and Netflix), and if it is a loan, what the percent interest is.

I went through every one that was non-essential and asked myself if I really needed this service or not, or if I could get a reduced plan. I wound up cancelling several services (Netflix; a web hosting service I wasn’t using; World of Warcraft) and reducing several others (a smaller cell phone plan; a reduction in my cable package). In the end, I cut my monthly spending by almost $200, money I could use to help myself get out of debt.

I then went back to my essential bills and looked at the loans carefully. My goals were to reduce or eliminate these while getting some padding in the bank. I decided that my focus should be on paying off any loans that were more than two percent higher than what I could earn with an ING savings account, then I would begin putting a set amount into ING each month and pay off the remaining loans at a rapid rate. I had three credit cards with an interest rate over 10%, so I decided to direct that extra $200 each month into paying those off immediately, starting with the one with the highest rate.

It only took a few months of dedication to this and the balance on my first one vanished, so I was able to remove a bill from my list and dedicate even more to paying off the other credit cards. Thanks to the spreadsheet (and many of the other things suggested at The Simple Dollar), I am now free of credit card debt.

The first step is simply sitting down and being honest with yourself: you’re drowning in debt, but you also have the power to pay it off.

Public Domain Remix

This is an attempt to remix public domain works with a new website, new theme but substantively the same content. Experiments are good right?