A few months ago, I wrote a short How to Begin Couponing post. Continuing on with beginner advice, a question I often receive is “What coupons should I be clipping”".

My response depends on what the goal is for the person asking: Hardcore couponing or reducing your food bill 20-25% while still being brand loyal, or just learning to coupon.

Why the difference? Well some hardcore is not going to care about brand loyalty at all. The main goal of a hardcore couponer is “If it is free, it’s for me!” And they want the stockpile to prove it. The goal is to never have to purchase anything for more than pennies again. While this goal is not always achievable (we all have to work with local market/retailer constraints), it is the goal. Many hardcore couponers will clip every single coupon in the inserts and file them for later under the heading “hey, you never know”. Printables, due to ink costs, are done more judiciously.

If you are just looking to save a decent amount but are brand loyal, the task is actually more difficult. If you love, love, LOVE Jif peanut butter and will only buy that brand, you may have a difficult time of it. Jif seldom puts out coupons. On the other hand, Skippy puts out frequent coupons, is frequently on sale, and will have Catalina or mail in rebate offers.

So until you have the chance to build you own Price Book and recognize reoccurring sales, what coupons should you clip or print if you do not have the time nor inclination to clip and sort every coupon in the inserts?

B1G1 Coupons

B1G1 coupons are great to use at the three major drugstores as they all run B1G1 sales and they all have a policy of accepting B1G1 coupons when only bringing two B1G1 items to the register. This results in two free!

High Value Coupons

High value is relative. The Glory 90¢ is high value if you have double coupons to 99¢. This makes it $1.80 off each item. Others consider $1 coupons high value, or $5, or $10 coupons. (As a quick aside: have I ever seen a 99¢ manufacturer coupon in national release? Nope. Special K put out a 93¢ coupon in 1993, a 94¢ coupon in 1994, a 95¢ coupon, etc but they did not put out a 99¢ coupon in 1999.)

And do no worry of it is some crazy product like the $30 Bayer Meter coupons. You may not need 50 meters, but you can donate them. And that $30 coupon? It ended up being huge money makes (ok free-stuff-makers) at Walgreens when we were all “paid” $5 and $10 in register rewards to take each one out the door.

Frequently Purchased Items Coupons

Now if you have a dirty little secret, of course you are going to clip as many of those coupons as possible. But, by frequently purchased I mean this: Your family seems to go through a ton of laundry detergent. Purex or Wisk or All may not be your favorite detergents, but they have $3 coupons so you clip them. Laundry soap is laundry soap (barring allergies), so clip those frequently used product coupons.

Many of the frequently used product coupons overlap the high value or B1G1 coupons category.

It will become much easier to decide what to clip as your price book becomes larger and you get a “feel” for what frequently goes on sale or sells at a low price. If you are concerned about throwing something away before that feel develops, well you can always use the lazy method of coupons organization and keep your inserts whole.

So you want to start to coupon and save money!? YAY! You may have a question or two or six hundred fifty-three on how to proceed. Everyone takes a different path to learning, and everyone has a different reason to coupon, but many folks may not know how to begin. What do you do? Is it as easy as buying a Sunday newspaper with inserts or printing an online coupon and walking into a store?

Actually, it is almost that easy to begin.

My advice to you if you are just starting out is to do a bit of research on your own.

• Check your local newspaper to see what day they carry coupon inserts, Saturday or Sunday. Check if your local paper has the Smart Source and Red Plum inserts. Also check to see if they carry the Proctor & Gamble insert. In some areas the Red Plum and P&G (Proctor & Gamble) arrive in your mail. My recommendation is not to start with more than four newspaper inserts your first week. You want to ease into this, not burn yourself out within a month. If your area has several large newspapers available, check the prices of the papers and look at the denominations to see what newspaper is the best deal. If you are lucky enough to live in an area with Hispanic newspapers, they are free and have inserts that are as good as, or better than, the paid newspapers.

• Find a great printable coupon source!

• Check the policies and procedures of your local grocery stores. Do not forget smaller area stores as sometimes the locally owned chains have the best prices or loss leaders. See if the store doubles coupons. Does the store require a shopper’s discount card? Sign up for your local store’s email alerts. You never know what a store might send!

• Find out what drug stores are in your area. If you have Rite Aid and CVS, you need to sign up for their shopper’s card. Read the Rite Aid Tutorial the Walgreens Tutorial and/ore CVS Tutorial for a basic working knowledge of these drug stores.

• Find 10 bloggers to follow. Ideally, a minimum of two or three should personally write up the deals for stores in your area. The reason I say personally (as opposed to trading with someone or paying someone to write the posts), is because you want a blogger that has working knowledge of the policies, procedures, nuances and sale history of those stores. You want to follow at least a few people who have a through knowledge of the store until you gain your own working knowledge of that store. Until you are an expert, you want to rely on someone else’s expertise. Make certain that those bloggers are willing to answer your questions too. It will not do you any good to read a deal write-up you do not understand and have no one willing to explain it to you! That will lead to frustration and your quitting before you’ve begun.

• When you read a deal write-up, understand that you must double check your prices and sale fliers as all the drug stores and every grocery chain will put out regional ad in different areas of the country. Until you learn your region, double check – heck, even after confirming your flier regions, double check!

Deciphering couponing abbreviations and acronyms can be difficult. Here’s a cheat sheet.

• Do not worry about Coupon Organization until you have a few weeks worth of coupons and you know you are going to stick with this. If you are still couponing after a month, it is time to pick a method. Don’t worry if you need to change methods. Heck, I’ve been at this over 25 years and I’ve changed my coupon organization method dozen of times! You’ll know what works for you because it will be the method that allows you to find coupons easily while causing you the least amount of stress organizing.

• Here’s a few tips on how to prepare that first coupon shopping order.

• Read through my library topics. Some of those posts, believe it or not, are reeeeeaaaalllly informative. I know. Shocks me too.

• Take it slow. You may not be able to save 95% on every order to start, and it may be a few months before you can get hundreds of dollars of groceries for free, but it will happen.

The first few weeks you are learning, not necessarily stockpiling. Keep the orders small if possible so you can learn that yes, this worked! and no this didn’t!
Don’t run into Walgreens and try and roll 20 Register Rewards, you’ll just end up frustrated.
Do one organized order, two at the most.
Check your receipt to make certain all went well.
Go out to your car, and deposit your bag(s).
Regroup.
Now if you want to go back and do another order, go ahead and go back in the store.

How do you approach your couponing? As a hobby? As a necessity? As a business? Or as a game?

Casual Couponer

Are you a Casual Couponer? Do you clip coupons for “items you buy” from one weekly newspaper and/or magazines, and hunt for printables once in a blue moon to correspond with a hot sale or a need based purchase? Do you typically save 15% or less off your grocery bill? Do you shop the sales at the drug stores, but do not stockpile madly because you do not see the value?

A Casual Couponer enjoys saving but may not see the worth of stockpiling or hardcore couponing. Or the Casual Couponer is so short on time that a 10% – 20% weekly savings is the best they fit into very busy life, and the casual Couponer correctly thinks that some savings is always better than no savings. Or, a Casual Couponer has diet restrictions for either themselves or their family and find coupons difficult to come by with their dietary needs (these folks can typically be turned into Hardcore Drugstore Couponers).

Necessity Couponer

These folks basically must coupon to eat. They may/may not enjoy couponing and rebating, but regardless of the emotion attached to saving via sales, coupons and rebates, for Necessity Couponers the need to save is just that – an economic pressure of circumstance. Period.

Hardcore Couponer

These folks have figured out, and absolutely love, the “game”! Hardcore Couponers may have a stockpile to survive Armageddon, buy (or even better, get for free) 20+ papers per week or faithfully order from a coupon clipping service, and take a few of every tear pad “just in case”. They have the Coupons, Deals and More Printable Page set as their homepage, and they search coupons.com and smartsource.com several times a day for additions.

All their friends and family have bulging pantries and will not need to pay for shampoo or body wash until 2014. The local food pantry and homeless shelters know them by name because they donate so much! Hardcore stockpilers may/may not have an economic need to coupon or send for rebates, they do it for the (cheap) thrills!

The Judicious Couponer

The Judicious Couponer knows how to hardcore coupon. The Judicious Couponer may even be a former Hardcore Couponer. Due to time constraints, lack of room, and/or energy, The Judicious Couponer no longer chases every deal. These shoppers typically go through lifestyle changes including the children moving out, the start of a new job cutting into shopping time, or an illness. The Judicious Couponer may have also decided that chasing every deal is too aggravating due to store personal. The Judicious Couponer can turn into a Hardcore Couponer at anytime, but s/he is taking some time off from hardcore couponing for one or many of a multitude of reasons.

There are all sorts of reasons to coupon and rebate, and many folks fall in between these categories. So where do you fall on the spectrum? A Casual Couponer? Hardcore? Do you need to coupon? Like to coupon? Is this an obsession? Or are you one to sit back and determine if a deal is worth the chase? Or, are your couponing habits some combination of all of the above?