Pay for Coupons

You may be thinking to yourself, "Why would I pay for coupons when I can get them from the newspaper?"  Here is my logic and while others may not want to do this it is really their choice.

Each Sunday paper costs 2.00 per paper.  Yes, there are coupons in the paper but there may be many coupons that you will not use. You also have the entire paper in which you may or may not read.  Since I will know in advance what coupons will be coming in the papers I will go to the pay for coupon websites and order the coupons that I want and will use and will order multiples of them.  The average price for a coupon is .08-.12 per coupon.  If you buy each Sunday paper you will at least spend $6.00 or if you buy multiples of each paper to get more coupons you will spend more.

I purchase the coupons that I need from these sites ad when I receive them they are already clipped and I can just place them into my binders.

It is up to each person to decide what works best for them.

Meijers

I wanted to share with you how to clip Meijer coupons.  There are two options for Meijer coupons.  The first one is the MPerks.  If you go to the Meijer website and scroll to the bottom of the page you will see a link for MPerks.  You can create an account using your cell phone number.  It must be a valid cell number as you will need to confrm it because after you create the account it will automatically send a text to your cell.  You can clip coupons and when you go to Meijer and before you pay for your items click on the MPerks icon and type in your phone number and items that you have clipped that you have puchased will come off the price.  One thing to note is that I have heard you can stack the MPerks clipped coupons with other coupons and it sometimes does not work at the Ionia Meijers. 

The other option is Meijer Mealbox coupons.  If you go to the Meijer webstie and click on Meijer Mealbox and then scroll to the middle of the page on the right hand side of the screen you will see a blue box.  Click on specials and then click on coupons.  You can print electronic coupons from here.  If you click on specials it will also show you catalinas that you can get.

I will also post coupon lingo that will explain what catalinas are.

Planning

The key to saving the most at the grocery store is to plan for your shopping trip.  No matter where you are from it is important to check your store ads.  After you have completed your lists of menus and items you would like to create a stock pile from you should be checkng the ads. 

In the town of Ionia I can tell you that no store will double coupons.  I have emailed the Meijer Store in our city about this and have not heard a response from them.  The ads that I check each week are for Meijer, Walmart, Family Dollar, Dollar General, Walgreens and Rite Aid.  I will point out that Walmart does not list many grocery items in their ads.

I have learned the following techniques to maximize my savings and I will list those below.

On Wednesday each week or Thursday of each week I check the Sunday Coupon Preview website to see what coupons are coming out in the Sunday paper.  There is a link to this site down at the bottom of the page. 

On Thursday night or Friday morning Meijer will post their ads for the next week on Facebook.  I will check the ads to see what will be going on sale that I typically buy.  I then compare to what sales are going on to what I already have coupons for or ones that I can order online. 

If you are going to order coupons online the best time to place an order is Saturday morning especially if you are planning to buy coupons that are coming out in the Sunday paper.  If you order them Saturday and you are from the Ionia area you should receive them by the Thursday of next week.  In my next post I will discuss the difference between buying the sunday paper for coupons and purchasing coupons.

At times I will revise my grocery list if there is a better deal on the item I need to purchase in the new ad.

You can also view the Walgreens circular in advance by going to http://www.iheartwags.com/.  I have not found a site to preview the rite aid ad in advance.  It is also important to note that Dollar General and Family Dollar do not post new ads each week.

For those who live in the Ionia area, the only places that double coupons are in the Lansing area.  The Meijer stores in the Lansing Area, DeWitt, Grand Ledge, Mason and Charlotte will double coupons up to .50 cents.

You shoud also become familiar with each stores coupon policy.  You can ususally find the coupon policy online at each stores website.  I will also be posting links to those policies.

Also, the Kroger store in St. Johns doubles coupons.  You can also go to their website and clip coupons electronically.  You will need their Kroger card in order to do this which you can pick up at their store.  You can also earn points when you shop at Kroger that will earn money off gas when you purchase gas.  That can be used at the Shell station in Ionia.

Well that is it for now. 

New links

I have posted many helpful links at the bottom of the page. Check them out. If you find other useful links that I should add please let me know.

Great Deals This Week

Here are some great deals this week listed by store:

Dollar General
Bounty Basic 8 pk roll $6.00 - $1.00 Coupon = $5.00 you are paying 0.625 cents a roll
(Coupon is from Sunday Paper that I saved and ones I purchased online)

Meijer
Chi Chi Salsa 0.99 a jar - 0.50 Coupon = 0.49 cents a jar
(ones I saved from Sunday paper and purchased online)
Gatorade 0.79 a bottle - 1.00 off 5 = .20 cents off per bottle - pay .59 cents per bottle
(Coupon is from Meijer Mealbox Coupons)

Walgreens
Small bottle of Dawn Dishsoap = .99 cents per bottle.  Pick up the limit so you have extra on hand

I will post more later.......

If anyone knows of other deals at the stores in Ionia please feel free to share.....

Second Step

The next step that you should do is to plan for your grocery trip.  The one method that I use is to create a dinner menu based on how you go grocery shopping.  Because I only buy groceries every two weeks my dinner menu is planned for a two week period.  This can be done either by paper or on the computer.  I typically use excel to create my menu.  This is the starting point of making my grocery list.  If you are one that is at home for breakfast and lunch you can create those menus as well.  Once the menus are complete I start my grocery list based on what is on the menu.

I will then add other items that I need or items that are on sale and I have coupons for that I want to stock up on.

In my next post will be information on how to check for deals and what you can do to plan ahead.

Stay tuned......

First Step

One of the first steps that one should do if they are interested in couponing is to create a list of everything that they buy at the grocery store.  This will help determine the next lists that you will create.  Once you have a list of everything you buy the next list that you should create is a list of every items that you would always like to have on hand. 

For example, some items that are on my list are: paper towels, toilet paper, shampoo, deodorant, pasta, pasta sauce, soup, etc. 

Once you have these two lists created you will be able to determine the types of coupons that you need. But don't start clipping yet.

Please continue to come back for more information. 

Starting Out Fresh

After watching the show of extreme coupon on TLC I decided that couponing was something that I could do and should do to help save my family money.  So I rushed out that next Sunday morning and bought my local papers and clipped my first set of coupons.  Needles to say I did not save very much money because I really had no idea what I was doing.  So I started doing research on the internet and learned quite a few tecniques on how to maximize your savings when shopping.  I also spoke to many different people on different ideas to save money and spend less at the grocery store. 

I have compiled a great deal of information an I decided to create a blog so that I could share information to those who either want to learn more or how to maximize their savings in the area that I live.  I will share what information and websites that I have found with people and how I go about trying to save as much as possible at the grocery store.

I will also be posting different techiques on how to save money elsewhere as well.

Looking forwared to sharing information with people.

Lori