The last few days we touched on the whys, the how tos, the whats, and the whens of deal blogging.

Today I would like to discuss the who.

A blog, by definition, is a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer. When you begin a blog, any type of blog, you are the writer. You are the who.

You must give something of yourself to your readers to be successful, in my opinion. People want to know who they are connecting with and have a reason to trust what you say. If you are just going to be someone that slaps up affiliate deal after affiliate deal without “talking” to your readers, do not be surprised if you have very few readers.

How much you share about yourself is completely up to you. I have advised making your personal information private. I am also loathe to tell people to share their pictures or pictures of their children online. Clearly people do, and it is always a personal choice.

There are reasons I do not have pictures of myself plastered all over my blog (well, except the goddess in the header, of course) – I have stalkers, and have had them for years. I could share a pic, but that would be from when I was skinny and pretty and you would not recognize me today from that pic if you saw me on the street.

In all seriousness, there are many reasons NOT to share too much online. There are a lot of kooks out there. So, I strongly urge you to get a UPS box for business purposes and use it to connect with readers, PR people and anyone that may need to contact you via your blog business.

On one level I won’t personally share a pic, but on the other hand I have regular meet-ups, teach classes and will go to conferences and seminars freely introducing myself as Ann from Coupons, Deals and More. I guess I figure once folks meet the Grizzled Coupon Veteran, stalking will never be an issue.

Hmmm maybe I should take up vlogging?

Whatever you do, have a contact on your blog so your readers can reach out to you via email. And for goodness sake, personally answer your email! These are your readers – potential friends and acquaintances. They read you because they like/admire/relate to you and what you write, so have the common decency to answer them and not pawn your email off on a VA or an auto-responder.

So on the one hand my advice is to put yourself out there to your readers sharing your life and your family situation, but on the other hand I strongly urge you to do so smartly and as safely as possible so Freddie Krueger isn’t showing up at your door at midnight one Friday the 13th.

I hope you have enjoyed this series on the who, what, when, how and why of deal blogging. These posts were not meant to stop you from blogging or deal blogging – they were meant to make you realize that blogging is a ton of work, not a get-rich-scheme, and not something you quit your day job to begin. Blog because you love to write and want to help folks. You will be happier without immediate financial expectations.

It seems that what started as an idea for bullet points has become a novella, so I will end this now. There are a hundred million other things to make a successful blog other than the few items I posted this week, but that will get you started – or finished – as the case my be. If you have any other questions about starting a blog, please do not hesitate to email me. I am always happy to help.

The last few days we touched on the whys, the how tos, and the whats, of deal blogging.

Today I would like to discuss the whens.

In my opening post in this series, I told you about the 60-70 hour work weeks I would work when I first began deal blogging. The first year I started blogging I took off one day: Christmas. The second year I was blogging I took off two days: Christmas and the day after BlogHer.

By year three, I was taking off a lot more half days in addition to those two full days off (again Christmas and the day after BlogHer). I have two VAs (virtual assistants) to help me on the blog now, and I, for sanity’s sake, have cut my personal work week down to about 50 hours this past year. And clearly this week I did something completely crazy and went on vacation – and decided not to work through it! That is a first for me.

Will you need to work the same amount of time I did when I began blogging if you deal blog? If you want a following, probably. At least in the beginning. You see, you need to work to get dependable, engaged readers, and once you have a loyal following you need to deliver the goods to those people who now depend on you. Because while you have recreational savers, you also have people who cannot afford to eat without couponing and doing deals. These folks will go to the library and see what you have written that day, be it a deal, coupons or advice. You are helping them to eat. They look to you for support and guidance.

And that is a huge responsibility.

I will never forget my first PM (private message) on fatwallet that said, “Thank you. Without your help my family could not afford to eat.”

And while that PM, and the ones that followed, not to mention the email I receive now, always bring tears to my eyes, I too was once in the same place, so I can totally relate.

So do not toy with people. If you are going to deal blog, unless it is strictly a brag-blog or for your friends and family, know that consistent content is extremely important to your readers.

Do you need to post 50 times a day? That is purely up to you. Can you be a deal blogger with only four posts a day? Absolutely if they are helpful, quality posts. The quantity does not matter as much the quality and consistency. People who read you will come to expect the consistency and know whether or not your blog suits their purposes. Along the way you will learn what does/doesn’t work for you and your readers and adjust accordingly. And when you figure out how to deal blog successfully at four hours per day, five days a week, come back and tell me how!

Tomorrow we will discuss the “whos” of deal blogging.

The last few days we touched on the whys and the how tos of deal blogging.

Today let’s touch upon “what” to blog – specifically if you are deal blogging.

Something I have noticed since the start of Extreme Couponing is a lot of people that began to coupon and hunt deals in the last year are setting themselves up as “experts” and beginning to “teach” classes and online tips about how to coupon, how to shop to save, etc.

This is me after visiting one of those blogs:

The misinformation is astounding. No, you are not an expert at anything after six months or a year. No field, nor hobby proclaims you an “expert” with so little experience. Now, if you are new to the hobby and want to share your hauls, what you have learned, how it works for you, GREAT! And I have to say at least you are shopping and really out there in the trenches as opposed to many other “deal bloggers” that do not shop themselves and wouldn’t know a great deal if it bit ‘em in the hiney. But professing to be an expert… wait a few years and just write helpful posts in the meantime. Your learning experiences, problems and mistakes will not only be more authentic, they will be of greater help to others too!

Another huge “what” in the world of blogging is to remember to write your own material! Do not take someone’s thoughts, ideas, pictures, write-ups, etc. If you did not write an article yourself, do not use it on your blog without permission.

I can’t tell you how often established bloggers need to chase down newbies, who truly just do not know any better, to take down the established blogger’s intellectual property. If you aren’t sure if you can use it – and no, you cannot copy someone’s entire match-up list, coupon page, rebate list or story and paste it to your blog – email the blogger and ask if you can exchange deals. Or perhaps use the top 3 deals and then link back to the original post (this is a very common practice).

Sometimes you see a deal spread all over the blogging world and you would like to post it too. You can chase down the original poster to credit if you like or not (there is a reason that can be tough to do when it has spread, how do you find the original person that started the deal?), but make sure you rewrite the deal into your own words. I can’t tell you how many times I see “And my husband and I took our three kids and …” copied and pasted onto a newbie’s blog when referring to the copied-deal, and the newbie-blogger is a neither married, nor has children! So reword, it isn’t that difficult to do.

And if you see a personal story? That is completely off limits to copy and paste or reword. Ask for permission to use the story, or better yet, explain what it is about and link directly to the story! If you were impressed, others will be too.

If you are ever in doubt about what is permissible to copy and what is not, my wonderful friend Sara writes a blog law series on her blog Saving For Someday. Sara also explains “common use” and what you can/cannot use on your blog via pictures, scans, etc., what must be paid for, and about leaving copyright marks on pictures.

Tomorrow we will discuss the “whens” of deal blogging.

Yesterday, we touched on the reasons to begin blogging.

Today I would like to discuss the hows of starting to blog.

To begin blogging, you need a blogging platform – blogger or wordpress.org are most common. Blogger is free, but google has a nasty habit of shutting down deal blogs as spam. *poof* You can get your blogger-blog back by dialing in and proving you are a human being to google (versus a spam bot), but wow it is terrible to see your work go away even for a few days.

I recommend that you start by purchasing your blog name. Spend the extra money for privacy because if you do not your name, address, zip code and phone number will be out there for the world to see. If you are on blogger, you can upload that name and it will look like you are self-hosting a blog. When you finally make the transition from blogger to a self-hosted blog that transition will be smoother.

If you are not 100% certain you will be blogging years from now, start with blogger. Since it is free, the $50 for a domain name + privacy will be your only real investment. You can easily customize your blog yourself – no need to pay a designer when working on blogger. If you decide in six months or a year that, “Yeah, I like this and I have people who are following my work”, then move on to a self-hosted wordpress blog.

Coupons, Deals and More is a self hosted wordpress blog. What that means is I started a wordpress.org platform, got a theme (Thesis now), and have the entire site hosted on my own server. I began with wordpress as I knew I would be blogging for a good long time. I purchased my blog name through godaddy as they always have a coupon code (I now own 50+ names). You do NOT have to host with godaddy to buy a domain through them. Godaddy is now the largest seller of domain names, but you can buy through any reputable domain register. I did start my blog hosting on godaddy on a shared server. That was not something I would recommend to anyone due to frequent outages and slow load times.

After a while, I had enough traffic rolling in that I decided to move to a different hosting company that has many different packages to choose from. I selected a cloud server, and they would bounce my blog based on traffic. The way a normal server works is 300 sites are crammed on the same machine without regard for space or web-hog considerations (deal blogs are web-hogs based a lot on data). With the new host I was moved around so I wasn’t sucking up speed from other sites or vice versa. Eventually my traffic got to the point where I needed my own server, which is what I currently use.

So now your have your name, your host and your theme. You need to customize it. If you are graphic designer you can do this yourself. If you are not, you will probably need to pay someone to customize your site. Make sure you own your blog design! And make sure you do pay for the pictures that are used in your design unless you drew everything from your own imagination.

Now that you have set up your site, you can begin to blog.

Tomorrow I will be writing about the “whats” of deal blogging.

Sometimes I forget that people have not been couponing and rebating forever. I had a question on how to rebate a few weeks ago, and I explained via email and links. I also decided to do a write up in light of the giant pile I did at the beginning of January – I know you all love pictures!

First let me say that I absolutely hate doing rebates (refunds). I do them because I like the checks, but I dislike the work involved. Over the years, some manufacturers have made rebates easier, and some more difficult. There are several very important components to doing rebates:

• Find the forms. This is crucial, because while there are no-form-needed offers, they are few and far between. I keep a list of printable rebate forms that is quite extensive. Your local grocery or drug store may also have forms – either in the aisle by the product, on a product shipper or on a board or tucked away in a box in the office.

• Rebate form organization. If you are new to rebates, really, really need the money, or just hate slippage (the industry term for unredeemed rebates – what!? you didn’t really think the manufacturers wanted to give you your money back, did you?) read this post on rebate form organization. It will help. A lot.

• Read the form The details on the what, whens and how of what you are submitting must be followed to get paid. Here is a great post (if I do say so myself) on how to ring up multiple rebate products on one shopping trip. Remember, some offers want the UPC, some want the cash register tape, some want both. Some want you to print, some want a valid birth date (liquor), some are only valid in certain states. You are never required to give an email address for a rebate. Write “none” in that spot or use a spam email. I do the same for phone number, writing “none” when asked.

• Purchase the products. I keep a list of what products I need in order to redeem current rebates I am interested in.

• Mail on time. You will receive a “box closed” submission returned to you if you mail outside of the last postmark date or form expiration date (some forms only list one or the other).

• Make copies of your submissions. Read this post for why you should make copies.

And I am also listing this post about satisfaction guarantees for you fence sitters.

Let me show you how the rebate-procrastinator does a lot of rebates at one time:

I lay everything out and start matching up CRTs, UPCs and forms.

This is what a UPC + CRT look like.

I always cross out my card ids and my credit card information. Better safe than sorry in my opinion.

Since I write out all my forms and envelopes at one time, I paper clip everything to the forms so nothing gets lost in the shuffle.

And finally I have a nice stack of rebates to go out. Many require you to fill out even the envelope by hand, so read the fine print careful.

Why do I bother? That little stack will return over $200 to my pocket!

Not a week goes by where I don’t receive a few email asking for help with beginning a blog. Most of the folks have been reading Coupons, Deals and More, learned how to coupon, and now want to blog themselves.

This either means they think I am doing a crappy job and they can do a lot better, or they feel that the field is not super saturated and there is room for their voice.

I am going to go with the latter as it makes me feel better.

If you want to deal blog (or coupon blog if you prefer) to make money, forget it. Do not under any circumstance start any type of blog if you are not doing so to share – be it share your experiences, your expertise, your stories about Aunt Thelma and Cousin Bob – whatever it is, it needs to be about giving some part of you away for free. If money is your primary motivation, don’t even start.

Why, you may ask? Simple. Most bloggers, even deal bloggers, never make a dime of profit. When I started blogging after many, many years on forums, I had an affiliate background. There is so much to learn on how to make money, that it is a good year or so before most bloggers can figure out the “how” of making a buck on a blog. I started making money less than six months in, and that is difficult for most bloggers to do. And by “making money” I mean covering all costs except my time. By year two I was making minimum wage on 40 hours a week – too bad I was working 60-70 hours a week.

If you caught that last sentence, you will notice I wrote “working 60-70 hours a week”. When you start up blogging, like any new start up company, you are the boss. And the sole employee. That means long hours for little monetary reward. If you look at “bigger bloggers” (I consider myself medium sized), they usually have large staffs and seldom write up the deals themselves. They choose a corporate route and basically parlayed their blog name into a company. Do not compare yourself to a “bigger blogger”, and do not expect the same monetary rewards they took years to build to come to you immediately.

It takes years to do what the “bigger bloggers” do, a specific mindset, a willingness to forgo your “voice”, a good PR firm in many cases, excellent SEO and a few other things. If you expect to start blogging tomorrow and get rich next week (or next year), readjust your thinking.

Circling back to why most deal bloggers do not make money – most people do not last six months blogging. It is a lot of work and time. If you have five kids at home, work full time, home school, etc., you quickly realize that, while you would sincerely like to help others, the time spent away from your family is not worth the effort. Your family must come first. So, most blogs do not survive the first six months. And most blogs do not make money before the first year. Since A + B = C, if most blogs begin to make money at year one, and most blogs do not last six months, most blogs do not make money. Please notice the “most”. Nothing is absolute, and it is possible you may buck that trend.

This post is not meant to stop you from blogging or deal blogging – it is meant to make you realize that blogging is a ton of work, not a get-rich-scheme, and not something you quit your day job to begin. Begin blogging because you love to write and want to help folks. If that is a success, then you can transition to professional blogging and all its rewards.

Tomorrow I will give you an idea of the mechanics of beginning to blog, what you need and how you can proceed.

The Novartis Consumer Health OTC Recall made me remember how many expired OTC medications I had disposed of lately. When we get something for free, we tend to stockpile quite a bit of it; sometimes too much.

While gathering from my stockpile for a donation last month, I discovered how many medicines I had in my H&BA closet, and how many were expired. I had to dispose of a lot of expired OTC medications. Most can be just disposed of into the trash. But for best practices, refer to this handy-dandy FTC Consumer Health Information Booklet: How To Dispose Of Unused Medicines.

Seeing all the meds I disposed of, I have decided to keep no more than two alike medications from now on. While getting it for free is great, donating OTC meds can be difficult – I have a battered women’s shelter that will accept them, but no where else. Even if free, it really is a waste to just toss something in the trash unused. From now on, I will be more judicious in my OTC meds “purchases”.

It is that time of year again! Make your 2012 prophecies here!!

I predict …

… the world will not end in 2012.

… Rite Aid’s drugstore program will tank.

… stores will continue to pull back on loss leaders.

… coupon usage will surge.

… we will make the best of it regardless of what obstacles are thrown in our path.

What are your 2012 prophecies and predictions!?

I needed some whipping cream for a recipe, and asked hubby to get some when he went to the store. He told me there was a some in the refrigerator. I said it was heavy cream, and he said “well what’s the difference?”

So I went on a search to find out. It all comes down to the fat content:

• Nonfat Milk: 0%-1%
• 1% Milk: 1%-2%
• 2% Lowfat Milk: 2%
• Whole Milk: 4%
• Half-and-half: 12%-15%
• Light Cream: 18%-30%
This my brother’s guess as to why Tim Horton’s tastes so good. Light Cream is also known as Coffee Cream
• Whipping Cream: 30%-36%
• Heavy Cream: 36%-44%
• Manufacturer’s Cream: 44%+
- This is pourable English double cream (no stabilizers, emulsifiers or preservatives) Upstate Farms does make it. You would have to contact them to see where you can purchase. Same for Byrne Dairy.

FDA milk regulations.

You can use generally heavy cream as whipping cream, but beware of using ultra pasteurized cream as it is heated to a much higher temperature that pasteurized cream. While ultra pasteurized has a longer shelf life, ultra pasteurized is difficult to whip. If you live in a state that only offers pasteurized or ultra pasteurized whipping cream in the dairy department, you might be better off purchasing organic.

Here is a fascinating milk products and production relationship chart.

If you are based in NYS, looking for a particular type of dairy cow product and unable to locate it, you could contact the Cornell cooperative extension for a location near you where to purchase. There is an office in every county in the state.

The holiday season can be a financial challenge for even the most savvy saver. Here are some tips and ideas to save a few dollars on your holiday decor:

• Use natural items found in your backyard – from holly to evergreens, natural or spray-painted with glitter paint, outdoor sprays brought inside can grace everything from tabletops to fireplace mantels.

• Use fresh oranges with cloves for a quick, fragrant decoration tabletop decoration.

• Ornaments inside a glass bowl or, on top of a wooden platter, make for a quick, festive, inexpensive decoration.

• Put a mirror under it! A mirror under sparkle and sparkle – be it paint, crystal, or an ornament – adds reflections and makes everything look festive!

• Wrap empty boxes in traditional holiday wrapping paper for a cute entryway piece. Add a basket of pine cones, and the scent of cinnamon for a warm and inviting holiday entrance.

• Bring three cinnamon sticks, a few whole cloves and a splash of nutmeg along with three quarts of water to a simmer on the stove for a great whole-house holiday fragrance.

• Remember to search stores such as Target, Pier 1 and Kohl’s after Christmas holiday sales for deeply discounted decorations. Store for next year!

What are some of your favorite inexpensive Holiday Decorating Tips and Ideas?

Last May, I wrote a post for people to watch out for thieves. It is time for another reminder.

WATCH FOR COUPON THIEVES! It seems to be an epidemic lately!

Here are some tips to help avoid people stealing your coupons:

• Install carabiner onto the end of your binder, and hook it to your cart while in the store.

• If you use a coupon box, use a strap to secure your box to the cart. The idea is to deter a walk-off.

• Treat your coupons like cash. You would not leave your money in your cart, would you? So don’t leave your coupons unattended in the cart.

• Do not store your cash, gift cards or rewards with your coupons.

• Mark your coupon storage equipment with a Name and Phone Number (use a free google voice number, not your real number) in case the coupon binder/case is recovered outside. Sometimes people are looking for cash and when they see coupons, they dump it.

If you coupons are stolen:

• Report the theft to the store manager, and ask then to review the tapes to see who stole your coupons. While it may not help you get your coupons back, it will alert the store to a problem to hopefully prevent future incidents.

• If you have gift cards, cash, etc you can file a police report. Again it is doubtful it will help you, but it will put the store on notice that they have a thief in their midst.

• Call back to the store and ask if it was “found”.

What are your suggestions to deter or prevent coupon theft?

Coupon Organization Methods

Many of you who have been reading Coupons, Deals and More for years now may have heard this story … at the very least bits and pieces of it, so please feel free to skip the boring parts.

A long, long time ago, I got married at what is quite young by today’s standards. A year after we married, my ex-husband got a “dream” job where everyone thought we would be set for life. His starting salary was $8.88 an hour at the local electric company – and no, that was not great money in the mid 80s.

I was working too, so our income was enough to (barely) pay the bills. I got pregnant with Sonny-boy though, and we decided that when we considered the cost of child care, my staying home made the best financial sense. Child care + travel + clothes + lunch + taxes would have pretty much consumed everything I was making. And, by this time my ex was up to 10 bucks an hour, so we figured by scrimping and moving to a lower rent apartment, we could make due until a better job came up for my ex at work.

The best laid plans …

The better job did not appear as hoped, and our situation was getting pretty bleak. I had always used coupons casually from the time I earned my first paycheck at 17, but now I had to figure out how to get that grocery bill waaaaay down. I started hardcore couponing to get anything and everything I could for free. I would then do the applicable rebate on a product (back then it was easy no cash register tapes were needed, and P&G would pay you four times for the same purchase via their different offers) to get money to pay not only for food, but other necessities as well. There was more than one month that rebate “income” paid the utility bills.

All the extra free items I gathered were then sold at yard sales. Back then I did not have the luxury of donating goods – we needed every penny would could scrape together.

Over the years things got better financially … the ex did get a better job with the company, Sonny-boy went to school and I was able to work part time outside the home. But, I never stopped couponing – not in good times nor in bad. Whether you coupon as “the game” or for dire necessity, couponing does get into your blood.

I am curious – what prompted you to begin couponing?

After our time in South Dakota and our drive over the the mountain, we finally arrived at Yellowstone.

On our drive through the park we did see buffalo, but the ones at Custer State Park were so much more impressive that hubby declined to stop and let me take pics. The distance really was great at Yellowstone.

I did manage to get a quick pic of what may be elk (or deer I donno) … in between dodging the rubbernecking cars and the park police trying to shoo the folks not pulling over.

Our main focus was on geysers though. We saw small ones, percolating ones, small ones blow, big ones blow. It really was worth the trip to see!

The big ticket item we went to see in Yellowstone was Old Faithful.

This is Old Faithful sleeping (probably perking):

And Old Faithful blowing:

(That last pic was taken with a droid! Amazing, huh?)

A few words about Yellowstone: We decided to do this trip about two months ago so there was no room at the park inns. We stayed off site in a Holiday Inn that was $275 a night!! And the internet was dog-slow. The food in town was crazy expensive. I do not think we had a restaurant bill under $30 … and that was breakfast!

If you are planning a trip to Yellowstone, either book a year in advance and get a hotel on the grounds ($150 – $200 a night) and bring all your food in a cooler and eat out once per day, or camp and bring all your food period.

All-in-all we had a very nice vacation. I have now been to 49 states (I am missing Oregon!), and am busy trying to figure out how to plan a trip to that last state without getting on a plane.

Hubby and I left Rapid City to drive to Yellowstone. I wanted to make sure we took a detour though North Dakota and stopped, just to say we had been there. That meant that while the ride to Yellowstone was doable in one day, it would be long, so we decided not to push it. Instead we spent the night in Billings, Montana, and took the “scenic route” to Yellowstone.

And what a scenic route it was!!!

We are driving along and I was saying to hubby “gee, I wonder if there is a tunnel or if we go around?”

Wrong on both counts! We went over the mountain!!

There were these ground squirrels or chipmunks running around begging for food. Hubby found them fascinating, especially how they begged for food off this one guy, and he kept feeding them!

Me? I preferred the view. This picture does not do it justice. It was simply amazing, but cold and windy. While it was 100º everywhere in the country, I had a heavy wool sweater on. The mountain top was about 55º.

Cold enough that the (dirty) snow never did melt…

When we got down the mountain, we completed our drive to Yellowstone.

I have been to nearly all 50 states. I have wanted to go to a few northern states on a long car ride for several years now to visit the states I had never been to. Since I had a conference in Colorado, hubby and I decided to visit his brother (in Illinois), drive on to my conference, and then take a week’s vacation traveling through SD, ND (quick in an out), MT and WY.

Our first stop was Rapid City, South Dakota. We spent several days in the Rapid City area, and do not have enough good things to say about it! It was beautiful, inexpensive and the people were very, very nice.

Of course the main draw is Mt Rushmore.

Now even though I knew that you could not get very close, I still have to say it: What a bust.

Everything is framed for an optimal view, but because of how far away you are it is difficult to get a good perspective on how difficult an endeavor this was. Hubby took that pic above with a zoom lense, but we could have just as easily bought a postcard.

On the way down the hill, you saw George Washington in profile and THAT was when you were impressed. It was closer and you were better able to see just how massive and detailed the carvings are. Too bad I did not have my camera out at that time.

So, seeing how “eh” we were about Mt Rushmore, we decided not to go to Crazy Horse. Instead we went to Custer State Park.

As we were driving to the park (had not yet entered or paid), we were greeted by this fellow coming down from a cliff.

There were two motorcyclists ahead of us that got a tad, er, skittish, and the buffalo gave hubby “a look” as he passed by the car, but I have to say that was probably the highlight of the trip! It was so cool to have a buffalo within arms length!

We drove through Custer State Park for a while, and I swore that that one escapee was the extent of the 1300 buffalo in the park. And as for other wild life? Pffft was what I was thinking, when what should happen, but we rounded a curve and saw 20 cars pulled over for the “mooches”. Even though the signs say “DO NOT FEED THE WILDLIFE” the burros never got the memo and were mooching crackers and vegetables off of the people in the parked cars.

And this guy was serious – he saw hubby chewing so came over to investigate!

Our next wildlife encounter was this buffalo taking a drink of water. We scrambled back to the car when he started stomping the ground.

So why did the buffalo cross the road?

To get to the other side of course!

And he was just the start of the herd of buffalo that was waiting for us:

We did quite a bit of shopping at the Christmas Tree Store, wineries (not grape wine), Sioux Indian store, and several other establishments.

We truly enjoyed our time in Rapid City, and found the state to be very lovely indeed.

The following is a guest post from Kelly of Kansas City Mamas

Peaches.

I love juicy, sweet peaches.

Unfortunately, their peak season lasts for about three weeks in Kansas City. The good news is that when they are in their prime they taste amazing and are dirt cheap. The bad news, you have to set aside time to do some serious canning/freezing to make their awesomeness last year-round.

Canning Peaches

Here are the necessities for canning peaches – peaches, sugar, canning jars and lids, and an ascorbic-acid (darkening reducer). You can either buy an ascorbic-acid (Fruit Fresh) or you can make your own with either lemon juice or crushed vitamin C and water.

Canning peaches is a fast paced process. I recommend reading this canning peaches tutorial before you start and even printing off a copy as a reference if this is your first time canning peaches.

As a novice fruit-canner, there are a couple of steps I wished would have been better outlined.

• Give yourself three hours to can peaches. It is five-step process and shouldn’t be started at 8:00 at night. Unfortunately, once you start, you have to finish.
• Pick firm peaches that have minimal amounts of bruising.
• Don’t be afraid to put peaches back into boiling water if the skins don’t come off easy. It is better to give them a little more time than to mutilate them while getting the skins off.
• Rule of thumb is 3 lbs of peaches per quart jar. This can vary greatly, so it is better to have more canning jars sterilized than less.
• The best time to can peaches is before a meal. As you are cutting them into slices, you will have “pieces” that aren’t fit for canning, but are fit for eating. Since you don’t want to be wasteful, you’ll end up eating quite a few and may end up with a tummy ache. (Have no idea how I know this.)

Final Product

Look at it. It reminds me of my grandmother’s peaches. And while there aren’t twenty-five jars of peaches, there are enough to bring a little sunshine in my life on a cold and gray Kansas February day. And that will be when the work was TOTALLY worth it.

Kelly Snyder is the author of Kansas City Mamas – a website devoted to living well by saving more. She is married to her best friend (Hubs) and is the stay-at-home mama to DS (8) and DD (5). In addition, she believes that life is too short for bad coffee, wine or food (but not necessarily in that order).

Hubby got a new toy a few weeks ago and shesh, what a production that was!

Hubby had a slicer he was not thrilled with. He gave it away, planning to get a new one asap. Well, asap turned into “oops, I forgot” and when he needed it a few weeks ago, he really went looking around online.

He found this company in Texas that was selling slicers on ebay, so he researched, called to confirm his slicer was Italian made (and not Chinese made), and then ordered.

Well, they could not get him (for some reason or another) what he ordered, so they offered him a bigger horsepower one for $60 more. He talked them down to a $30 increase, but the catch was we would have to pick it up. Since their American distribution center is in Niagara Falls (for this Texas company), hubby said ok.

Well through a series of errors on both the company’s part, and by hubby, they ended up having to deliver the slicer to us anyway. It was a real production. (He only paid the $30 increase even though they ad to ship.)

So hubby plans on using this for cheese:

Which he laid it out neatly after slicing:

For easier wrapping.

Hubby did the same for lunchmeat:

Since we will not be cutting copious quantities of cheese, we are OK with just the one blade.

And of course, everything not immediately used was foodsavered for later use. He got the cheese and meat at a local restaurant supply store that is open to the public. The Buffalo chicken in the last picture was only $1.49 a pound! Granted it will take a long time to recoup the slicer cost before saving $5 a pound on luncheon meat pays for the slicer, but hubby is still happy with his new toy.

A few weeks ago, Wegmans had blueberries for $4.99 for two pounds. We did not join a CSA this year, and our frozen fruits and vegetables are running low. Normally blueberries run over $5 per pound (usually B1G1 2/$3.99 in 6oz containers), so I jumped at the $4.99 for two pound price and purchased four containers.

I decided to freeze them, so began by thoroughly rinsing the blueberries in a colander in the sink to remove any debris. There isn’t much by way of dirt or twigs with store-bought blueberries, but hey, you never know!

After that, I soaked the blueberries to remove any additives. A fruit wash and water, or vinegar and water works well.

I dried the blueberries on trays lined with paper towels to remove moisture.

The blueberries were frozen on trays in a single layer.

Afterwards, hubby and I loaded the frozen blueberries into (6) 1 pound bags, and (1) 2 pound bags.

Hubby then foodsavered the bags, and I marked and dated them.

A good book for preserving and freezing is the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving

And now we have enough frozen blueberries to last us until next year!

The following gift ideas were submitted by a Coupons, Deals and More reader that asked me to “protect the innocent, as well as the not so innocent!”

A couple of nights ago, we had a bachelorette party for my 60 year young friend who is getting married for the second time Saturday. Here’s what I gave her – all free items:

We all were requested to bring panties, with the hope that she will get rid of the grannies. Of course mine came from Vickies using the free coupons I sometimes receive.

We contributed to group gifts, the main ones being monogrammed spa robes. So, I got stuff to go with that, all themed.

For her - Excedrin Migrane so “not tonight dear, I have a headache” wouldn’t work.
For him – Excedrin Extra Strength to get ready.
For both – Nodoze – to stay awake.
For both – Spin toothbrushes to be kissable.
For both – Body washes, body sponges, loofah sponge to start……
For both – Candles to set the mood.
For her..maybe him …KY
For both a bottle of wine – used a rebate of course.
To end for her – Tylenol PM
To end for him – Bengay!

It was alot of fun and laughs, and it only cost a couple of dollars for the wine!

Long before Extreme Couponing, free internet coupon acceptance was on the wane in many areas. In my area, neither Wegmans nor Tops will accept free internet coupons, heck they will not even accept B1G1 internet printables!

Much of this goes back 9-10 years when printable coupons first came into vogue. Always looking to save money – and FSIs, magazines prints and home mailing are all costly when compared to having a customer print their own coupon – manufacturers started releasing free coupons as printables.

Well as you can imagine, for a buncha geeks that were used to copying as many Staples, Office Max and Office Depot coupons as they liked and redeeming them, copying manufacturer coupons seemed no different. (The difference was that those stores are owned by the retailer, and accepting or denying a coupon is at the store agent’s (clerk or manager) discretion. The manufacturer has no such B&M and relies on a third party. Well, that and the legal wording on the various coupons. )

It was not long before copying lead to counterfeiting – which has been around in coupon-land since the days of the earliest Xerox, but now it was being done on a grander scale with Photoshop-like programs, and the coupon manipulation was sometimes quite good with dates and denomination changes virtually undetectable. And sometimes it was a lousy scan with a marker change.

The counterfeiters quickly went underground, forming yahoo groups where exchanges could be made. Today groups still exist and I will receive periodic email from readers asking if the free coupon Aunt Bessy emailed them is real or fake. Hint: If you get an email from anyone other than the manufacturer or the manufacturer’s agent with a free coupon attached, chances are excellent it is fake. Delete the email and tell Aunt Bessy to destroy any prints she may have made and to stop forwarding that “great” coupon to people.

So getting back to my title question Do your stores accept free internet printable coupons? What about B1G1s? And if so, which stores?

Last March, hubby bought a 50# bag of onions at Restaurant Depot “because they were a great deal”.

As a follow-up, this is what happened with the last 20# or so…

Hubby peeled them (of course).

He only had to slice them in half because…

He has a handy-dandy dicer. He can dice just about anything with this, but onions are a really good choice. He places half of a peeled onion underneath the press and …

Voilà! Uniformly diced onions.

He places all the diced onions into a bowl so he can scoop them and bag them.

He uses a one cup measurement.

And places two cups per zip lock freezer bag.

Because these onions are destined for stews, casseroles and soups, he did not bother to foodsaver them. He does express all the air out to prevent condensation and freezer burn.

These went into the chest freezer, so hubby stacked them inside a zip lock container for easy storage.

I know some of you have pretty strong opinions against purchasing a newspaper. I am told, “there is nothing I can use” in regards to newspaper coupons quite often. And to that I say a very stern: Hogwash.

Now we all understand that if an area has doubles to 99¢, that area will receive a lot of $1/1 or $1/2 coupons. For areas with doubles to 50¢, you probably see a lot of 55¢ coupons. To enhance savings, people use clipping services, they trade, or they get Aunt Nellie to send them great Florida inserts weekly. *cough*

But, do not unilaterally decide that your area newspaper coupons always stink. They may, they may not. It will vary weekly.

Let’s take for example what I did this past Sunday.

These are the coupons I was able to use from the local 6/12/11 newspaper inserts (in conjunction with sales and rewards not listed below):

Schick Razor $8 – used $4 coupon
Bayer Advantage $3 – used $2 coupon
AirWick Freshener $7.99 – used $4 coupon
Dial Body Wash $2.99 – used $2 coupon
Grain Berry Pancake Mix $2.50 – used $2 coupon
Grain Berry Cereals $2.50 – used $2 coupon
Grain Berry Crackers $2.50 – used $2 coupon
Renuzit Crystals $4.99 – used $3 coupon
(2) Soft Scrub $2.50 – used B1G1 coupon for a $2.50 savings

and I used a $1 tic tac coupon in conjunction with several other $1 tic tac coupons at CVS.

Total saved: $24.50 or over 1000% return on my $2 investment.

And, I still have more coupons from that insert to use at another time.

No my inserts are not usually full of 75¢/1 coupons as I live in a 99¢ doubling area, but we do frequently receive higher value coupons due to this And those higher values really can add up to some great savings!

While I am not suggesting you give up printables, or discountinue buying out of area or trading, I am stating that sometimes your local paper may very well hold great coupons which in turn will make for great deals.

In the early part of the 1990s the Buffalo area did not enjoy double coupons. However, nearby Rochester did. My mother and I had a serious discussion about driving down the thruway for hour to partake of the double coupons savings being offered at Tops and Wegmans that were unavailable to us.

Well, the corporate HQ at both those stores must have had their ears burning, because it was shortly thereafter that Tops started doubling to 99¢ in Buffalo, and Wegmans followed suit almost immediately.

We never did take that road trip.

Now those of you that have known me for many years now know that hubby and I travel often. One of the things I do while traveling, while in the US or in another country, is hit the local grocery store! I absolutely love to see what is happening in other parts of the country. Last summer’s road trip had us starting in Tulsa, and ending in Raleigh with many cities and towns that were in between.

So when Pathmark had a triple coupon event while we were scheduled to be in the Poconos …. welllll we just could not pass up the opportunity! So we didn’t!

We did take one of our three Coleman Extreme 5 Day Coolers. However I decided to concentrate on grocery, rather than frozen or dairy.

Here are several things to consider if you decide to travel for doubles or triples:

• How far will you be going? Is an overnight stay required? That will eat into your savings even if you book via priceline, hotwire, hotels.com or one of the other discounted online travel sites. If you use points, that may make the current stay free but you do lose the opportunity cost of using those points at another time.

• Try and enlist a shopping buddy to go along with you.

• Clip and sort your coupons – and don’t forget them. I did not have the time to clip and sort before we left, so hubby and I spent an hour in the hotel going through 40 pounds of inserts before heading out. (Using the ironing board as a worktable in the hotel really worked!)

• Make sure you have seen an ad before you make a trip. Sure the “good stuff” may be gone if you cannot see the ad a day or two early, but you cannot really decide if the trip will be economically worthwhile without doing coupon match-ups for coupons you have on hand. You also need to find out daily limits. A list is imperative at an unfamiliar store, even if you are familiar with the grocery chain itself.

• Find out how easy or difficult to obtain and/or if it is even necessary to have a shoppers card to obtain sale prices. Going hand and hand with above, you need to discover if the card has daily limits.

• If “purchasing” dairy or frozen, a good cooler like the Coleman Extreme 5 Day Cooler will ensure your products arrive home edible and undamaged.

• Take boxes or bags so as to best utilize the space in your vehicle.

• Map out different stores and the best path to travel from one to the other. If you are unfamiliar with the town, do a google search to make certain the store you are traveling to is in a safe area, especially after dark.

• Bring cash and credit cards. I suggest some cash because it makes multiple, small orders go quickly and I’ve heard of credit card companies disallowing a lot of transaction at the same store within 24 hours.

• Above all, have fun! Sure it is work to drive, shop and coupon, but the feeling of euphoria when you have obtained a lot of great deals can’t be beat!

What other tips do you have for someone who is traveling for doubles or triples?

You see this stack of coupons?

Several weeks ago I got that entire stack for free!

How did I do it? well, as you know there are may ways to acquire multiple coupon inserts. From asking friends and family to save their leftovers, to visiting the recycling center (where allowed) folks have found a lot of places to obtain free inserts.

This lot came from two sources:

Hubby was in Salt Lake City that week. Many areas of Utah do not receive the Red Plum in their newspaper, so they sign up to have Red Plum delivered or their is an area drop scheduled by Red Plum. Hubby happened to be at an apartment complex with a drop, so I asked him to garbage pick for me!

I received my Smart Source from the local free newspaper.

That was a tremendous week with two Red Plum and two Smart Source, I had over 10 sets of inserts (more than 40 single inserts!) and I did not pay for a one!

What creative ideas would you like to share on where you can obtain FREE inserts!?

Hubby is the undisputed king of foodsavering. Nothing comes in this house and goes into one of the freezers without his foodsavering it – well, maybe not frozen vegetables or ice cream, but pretty much everything else!

We recently made a trip to the local slaughterhouse and brought back quite a bit of meat.

So hubby hauled out the old foodsaver:

As well as the bags I bought him as a gift!

And then he chose what meat he wanted to work with.

Since these were simple steaks, it was pretty straightforward. He just place one of each into a bag, and foodsavered:

He uses one steak underneath the other to raise the steak he is currently working on to the correct height. It makes it easier to use your hands to press the button and hold the flap to the foodsaver.

The steak is labeled with date and type and now ready for the freezer.

Some items hubby foodsavers regularly are:

Flour:

And beans and peas:

As well as lard and butter:

The flour, lard and butter we keep in the freezer, the beans and peas in the stockpile. Since I hate the thought of bugs, I definitely am onboard with this habit of hubby’s!

Are you a foodsaver devotee like my hubby? What unique ideas do you have for foodsavering?

I have never considered myself to be someone who owns a lot of shoes. I have a high arch which makes it difficult to just walk into a department store and buy something cute, so when I purchase a pair of shoes they tend to be comfortable, fairly well made, and black.

The other day I decided to go through my dressers and my clothes closet and see if I had anything to donate. My dressers are pretty well organized, and my clothes hanging in my closet are too, so it is a quick process.

This is a picture of my closet prior to reorganization. Needless to say, little organization was necessary.

And here is a picture of the space I have to work with for my shoes. Plenty of space … or so I thought!

This is what I hauled out of there!

While the lighting is not the best in this picture, I think you get the idea.

I threw out two pair of shoes and two pair of sneakers. One of the shoes I tossed the dog had chewed when he was little. I have no idea why I kept them!

The two sneakers were worn down. I like to keep a one pair of old, worn sneakers on hand for painting or garden duty, but since my current pair are being replaced this week, I did not need three old “garden sneakers” laying about.

I also put a pair of shoes into the donation pile. While I like the ones I donated (only worn 4-5 times), the left shoe would always cause my left foot to hurt when I am driving (really strange if you think about it). There was not point to keeping them.

When all was put back in place, I discovered I still have a few too many pairs of boots and shoes, but nothing I really want to part with. I guess I will just forgo any shoe buying for a while…. or maybe take over one of hubby’s four clothes closets? *insert evil grin*

looking to steal your coupons.

It happened again.

Another email from a reader that their coupons were stolen from their shopping cart. She had turned to pick something up off the bottom shelf, and when she back to her cart someone had snitched a good portion of the coupons in her basket.

Why? That is always my first thought when people tell me they had their coupons stolen. Why would someone take another person’s coupons? Oh I had someone dip their hand into my coupon envelope (not a euphemism) before. They took a bunch of coupons, leaving the frees behind. That always made me wonder if it was just a kid being stupid. It did not stop me from kicking myself for leaving my envelope unattended in my cart, and it did not stop me from wanting to kick the bozo that snitched my coupons.

While difficult to prevent all coupon theft, I would suggest if you use a binder installing a carabiner onto the end of your binder.

This will allow you to clip your binder to the cart. If someone attempts to steal your binder, they will quickly realized it is attached to the cart and most likely go looking for easier prey.

I would also suggest you keep your coupon envelope in your purse, and be as diligent with that envelope as you are with preventing your purse from being stolen.

It is really sad that we have to have a conversation about coupon theft, but it is necessary. Do you have any good coupon theft deterrent ideas?

Coupon Organization Methods

I was recently asked about the definition of “gang cutting” so I thought I would post what it really is instead of the incorrect explanations I see floating about the internet.

Gang cutting is a retailer/owner crime. It has zero to do with consumers.

Gang cutting was quite literally a group of people sitting in the back room of a store stacking coupons in piles and then clipping them all at once (like we do for binders) and then submitting these coupons to the clearinghouse (or manufacturer) for redemption. In other words, no purchase was made for the coupon to be redeemed. The store owners got caught when they submitted 100 coupons for widget A and only had ordered an inventory of 10 Widget As (or no Widget As at all). Ie; the request for coupon reimbursement was more than the inventory ordered and sold by the store.

Here is a classic sting case.

If you have access to LexisNexis you can look up past arrests and convictions for gang cutting. They were typically mom & pop stores that thought it was an easy way to make money.

I haven’t heard of an arrest or conviction for gang cutting in years, so I have no idea if it still exists as a criminal activity.

What does this mean to you: it does not matter if you clip your coupons all stacked together, along the dotted line, with scissors, X-Acto knife or the sharp edge of a rock. Gang cutting has nothing to do with a consumer purchasing a product and using a coupon on said product, even if done in quantities of 1000, even if every coupon redeemed by the consumer was cut with a laser beam for accuracy.

I hope this explanation helps.

I currently have quite a few nbpr forms. The dates and requirements for these can quickly become overwhelming, and to ensure I have all my ducks in a row to ring up multiple offers in one shopping excursion, this is what I do:

Sure it is low tech, but you know what? It is a whole lot faster for me to write stuff on a notepad when I am flipping through a stack of rebates than type them into a word doc. I truly believe that low tech can be a great time saver on occasion. I now know what to purchase at the store, and within what dates. These items will be rung up separately, and sent in as soon as I get home. Bwhahahhaa ok, but the CRT will be attached to the form so I can mail out at the end of the week.

Soooo to prevent slippage I sat down to write up my rebates yesterday. I haven’t done the weekly rebates, like I KNOW I should, in a month so there was quite a stack. I am still a copying slacker though – on this do as I say, not as I do. You will be a LOT happier.

In the grocery store, many of you have developed your own coupon-tingle finding coupons in the craziest places inside the grocery store. But what about places other than you local grocer? Do you look for, and locate, coupons outside the grocery store?

Sometimes I have lived in the coupon-world so long that do things unconsciously to aid my coupon habit. Some of the more odd places to find coupons are:

• 7-11 looooooooooooove 7-11! They always seem to have Häagen-Dazs coupons at my local stores!
• Convenience stores – yes I know that is what 7-11 is, but they deserve their own line just for the Häagen-Dazs Some of the best coupons and nbpr forms I find are inside convenience stores. From Yellow Goose to Wilson Farms to Marverick, they all seem to have great coupons not found anywhere else!
• Drug Stores – the shippers and make-up department are great places to find coupons. Also the beauty counter at Walgreens usually has a basket and beauty department clerk is usually happy to share
• Kmart – check the front of the store for a coupon box or look for a coupon/rebate board by the front check outs
• Auto part stores – these are normally auto related (duh) and may only be rebate forms, but when you are in your local or national auto part stores look at the shippers – you may be surprised at what you find
• Liquor and beer stores – this is state law dependent, but check out your local beer and liquor store for no-alcohol purchase required coupons and rebate forms. In states where allowed wine tags are a fantastic way to reduce your grocery bill on items such as eggs, meat, cheese, produce, etc.

Where I never seem to have any luck:

• Target
• WalMart

So, what other odd or strange places do you regularly find coupons? Inquiring minds want to know!

Nearly two years ago I posted picture of my basement stockpile under the very logical title of Coupon Organization.

This morning I went downstairs to check out my Ziploc supply, and decided to take some new pictures to share with you all. If you look at the old link, you will see many familiar items. I have not had to buy cleaning supplies in two years! I am down to my last 4 bottles of Snuggle though, so I will soon be looking for a cheap/free liquid fabric softener deal.

There is some overlap. This is basically a panoramic view split among several pictures.

For those who may be curious the can holder came from Shelf Reliance. It was on sale, I had a $100 off coupon and it still cost over $200! And it was worth every single penny.

If you are wondering what is in the blue bin, it is Nestle morsels, brown sugar and confectionery sugar. I have a true phobia, fear, revulsion – whatever word you prefer – at the thought of bugs in my food. Yet we eat as much organic as possible. Go figure.

Even with this great system, we still have can overflow. It would be a nightmare of disorganization without that organizer.

For all that my other stockpiles can be a disaster, my basement stockpile stays pretty darned neat and organized from year to year.

Word on the street *cough* is that the reaction to the Extreme Couponing show has really disturbed the manufacturers. As in really, really, REALLY disturbed them. There are a number of changes that are being considered to dial-back the massive savings people can enjoy, including the end of National Catalina offers. Apparently one of the manufacturers was unhappy with paying someone a ton of cash (the manufacturer reimburses the store for those Catalinas) to buy their products, and having that shown over and over nationwide, and they want to change how they offer Catalinas.

Safeway has already begun one of the changes being considered on a national level across all manufacturers:

If you have a shopper’s club card, and get an alert for an offer, you are allowed to do that Catalina deal. There is a limit of 4 sets of deals for those who have been offered the deal. If you do not get an alert for a particular offer, you will not receive a Catalina for the offer (note: this is currently limited and not all Safeway offers are like this).

Apparently this will soon be a coming to a store near you for the tiered offers. The National Catalinas are tiered offers (b3 get $1, b4 get $1.50, etc). This may soon be the end of national offers for all.

There are also a few other overreactions being bandied about by the manufacturers including following P&Gs lead to put coupon redemption limits per customer on each coupon. The ones we now see as “limit 1 per customer”? They want to word more coupons like that AND have it hard coded into the coupon (which is a doable beginning this year) so the machine will beep after more than the limit of alike coupons are used, regardless of whether or not the person purchase the correct items.

Believe it or not overreactions like this from the manufacturers have happened before. In the early 90s, a woman was doing a massive rebating business selling forms + (reproduced) CRTs (called complete cash tape deals) and ended up going to jail for it. The manufacturers put a stop to lucrative rebate offers for a number of years after her arrest and conviction. What we see now is a fraction the rebates we enjoyed 20+ years ago, and it was laid at one person’s feet. She wasn’t the only person doing it, I am sure, but she was the one that got caught and blamed.

Apparently the same thing is happening now… manufacturers were vaguely aware that there are “extreme” couponers out there (their definition of extreme and my definition of extreme are not in the same zip code), but never realized people could profit from grocery shopping. Apparently the TLC show brought home to them that getting paid to shop is real, and they are unhappy about this. Instead of embracing the idea that people coupon, the manufacturers are upset and distraught over the situation.

The show has been given 12 more episodes, which I am certain did not please the manufacturers. Maybe TLC plans on dialing it back to the original concept of teaching people how to reasonably save money weekly? Or maybe they will not be able to resist continuing the buzz the show has generated, and we will see even more extreme examples?

Stay tuned, this is going to be a bumpy coupon ride in 2011 as manufacturers, retailers and customers collide, adjust and readjust to the Wonderful World of Couponing. We will see what, if any, of the discussed changes will be implemented.

So, you have planned your shopping trip down to the last coupon. You have written out what you are purchasing, and in what order, and then made certain your coupons are ready.

Now it is time to checkout with your full basket.

It never fails that when I wheel into an empty check-out lane, somewhere around a quarter of the way through my order half the state of New York gets in line behind me. At that point there is nothing I can really do to help those folks, except inform that person I have a lot of coupons and they may want to find another lane. Normally, people stick around. They truly want to see how low a grocery order can go.

Occasionally I have a grouch that complaints, stamps and stomps about “those damn couponers”. If directed towards me, I have been known to say, “I’m sorry you’re inconvenienced. Would you prefer to give me the $100 I am about to save so you can get on your way quickly?”

Not only does that response silence the grouch (fast), but it causes the check-out clerk to smile.

I seldom worry about one or two item people in a grocery store because of how our local stores are laid out – Wegmans has two or three 15 item or less lines always open, and Tops has four to six u-scans in addition to a 10 item or less lane at their stores. People with small orders can get out of my local grocery stores very quickly.

Now in my local drugstores, lines develop quickly. The managers open lanes as soon as they see a back-up. However I do normally allow someone with one or two items to go ahead of me if I have no begun the check-out process. There is little I can do in the midst of an order though.

Just remember when you go to check-out that you are just as entitled to check-out time as a person without coupons; so stop worrying about holding up the check-out lane! It is YOUR money you are looking to spend (whether through coupons, RR, ECB or +ups, it is all a substitute form of currency), and no one else has a say in that process. Do not ever let anyone pressure you into hurrying your check-out experience. Haste makes waste and in this case, you would be wasting hard earned dollars.

For more library reading, click here

Couponing is many things to many people. Some folks use it as a way to stretch their budget or a way to make ends meet. For others, it is a way TO eat. And for some people, it is a “game”.

I have fallen into every one of those categories at some time in my life. I first got into couponing because it was a way to stretch the budget when my first husband and I were newly married. At some point, when lay-offs happened, it became a way to eat. No couponing? No dinner. At this juncture, couponing is more of a “game”. How low can that bill go!? Couponing is truly a way of life for me.

Ultimately, couponing is whatever you make of it. Only have 30 minutes to spend printing and gathering coupons? That’s a great use of half an hour. Can’t afford to eat (or do laundry or wash your hair or… yes, I’ve been there), couponing becomes a part time job to pay for life’s essentials.

Now there is one BIG caveat to all this… your local retailer.

In my area the grocery stores do not put forth great sales. Occasionally they have a “Run! It is a loss leader!” deal, but those are few and far between. So, I’ve adapted. My H&BA is all free. My cleaning supplies are free. Any free food items I can get at the local drugstores, I do. As it became more difficult to save 75% at the grocery store, I just figured out how to save 75% – 100% at the drugstores.

Now if you have great local grocer sales, your grocery store may be your main stock up destination. If this is so, I do urge you not to forgo the drugstores and all their free goodies, however.

And here is one big myth about couponing: You need double coupons to really save.

Baloney.

I could not get everything for 90% – 100% off at the drug stores if that were true. Heck Publix and Jewel have some the best loss leader and stock-up sales available. While double coupons can help, they are not the only way to have cheap grocery orders. Take this from one who does have doubles but has difficultly getting copious quantities of free goods at the local grocery stores.

Here are a few articles you may want to read if you are just starting out:

• How To Begin Couponing
• Flying Under The Radar
• How To Determine The Best Deal Scenario
• How To Save Money On Produce
• Cutting Meat Costs
• Keeping Track of Your Savings
• Price Books
• What To Clip?
• Where Do You Get Your Coupons?
• The True Cost of Couponing
• Coupon Organization Methods
• Prep To Shop
• Why Shop on Sunday?
• My Dirty Little Secret
• Stockpile Organization
• CVS Tutorial
• Rite Aid Tutorial
• Walgreens Tutorial

As a matter of fact, the Library category has a lot of informative reads (if I do say so myself).

While I am not an especially frugal person, I do have my cheap idiosyncrasies.

A few years ago at a 75% off Christmas clearance at Target, I picked up holiday boxes of Kleenex. Now packing away these discounted boxes for use the next year is reasonable, normal even for people who like to shop the sales and prefer never to pay full price for anything.

But what I do that is a trifle, er… cheap, is I pack away the open boxes. In other words, there may be a few tissues removed each holiday, but instead of allowing these exorbitantly high priced open Kleenex boxes to remain out until the tissues are gone, I pack the open Kleenex box away and replace it with an cheap, non-holiday box. I figure at this rate, the original open boxes (there are 3) will last 4-5 years.

Got any cheap tricks you would like to share?

So you got $376.56 worth of stuff for “free”.

But was it really and truly free?

You incur costs for car wear and tear, gas, time and the costs of the coupons themselves, whether ordered or purchased with a newspaper.

Oh don’t get me wrong, I think couponing is the greatest hobby in the world. I always have. What other hobby “pays” you back with potential profit?

I always look at it this way:

• I’d go to the store anyway, so gas and car wear and tear is something I would normally incur, it is not an additional cost.

• My time has value, but again I’d have to shop regardless of whether or not I had a coupon in my hand. Yes it does take time to clip coupons and get the list together – but is it worth it to save $100? You betchya.

• Cost of coupons. And here we have real cost that is seldom counted by many couponers.
• There is dumpster diving for coupons which is free (except for time).
• There is getting your friends & family to save their inserts for you, which is free.
• There is buying individual coupons which is an easy computation… you paid 5¢ for the coupon + 10¢ for the product, so the true cost is 15¢ (plus postage)
• There is buying newspapers, although you can offset some of these costs with rolling RR, or using your Rite Aid 20% discount and +ups, or paying with ECB. You do lose the opportunity cost of rolling those rewards into more rewards while gathering more free items, however.
• There is buying whole coupon inserts… and this one is tough. If you pay $18 for 10 sets of inserts (including postage), you have to use $18 worth of coupons before you break even.
• Adding the cost of any coupons you may buy to your yearly bottom line will give you a more accurate picture of you total savings.

So while couponing is a wonderful hobby, approaching it from a business perspective do realize you will most like incur costs. Think of it as “the cost of doing business”, but remember, these are costs where the return is immediate and very gratifying.

Last week, I asked for end of your totals. During the course of the discussion, Jennifer asked a very interesting question, one that has plagued couponers for years:

When you track your percentages you obviously need to know the orignally cost and then the sale cost after you have used coupons.

2. Do you count your +UP rewards as coupons in your tracking? If so, is it a separate column or in with your MC?

My response was as follows:

Jennifer what do YOU want to track? Regular retail, sale price, amount paid? Since you are new to this, I think that would be beneficial on some level – you will be able to see what the lowest sale price and at what price point you are willing to “buy”.

Ann

I firmly believe that anyone just beginning to get serious about saving and couponing should keep a price book for a minimum of two years. Yes, it is a lot of work, but a price book will prevent you from overpaying, and it will help you to recognize the minimum amount you need to buy on a “stock up sale” to get you to the next “stock up sale”. This is especially important with a frequently used household item that may never have a coupon. A great sale is the best you can hope for in some instances! Since sales are so regional, a price book will also help you become familiar with the sale-cycles of your local stores.

However, I do believe that keeping track of your totals and including the retail price of the item could be a shortcut to tracking prices.

For instance to track saving:

Amount due, coupon total, amount paid, tax

This will give you the basics of the amount of the order (after card if applicable), the total amount of coupons you used, the amount you finally paid, and ho much of that was tax.

A better minimum option might be:

Amount due before card, amount due after card, coupon total, amount paid, tax

What neither of these options will give you (obviously), is the items you purchased, their retail price or how much was paid for with reward coupon (+up, RR, ECB or gift card from a prior deal), and how many reward offers were earned.

By expanding to include these columns (product, retail price, reward), you could get a truer picture of what you are “buying” and what you are saving, and how much work you are putting forth to make these savings happen.

When I tracked my first 10 years or so, there wasn’t a Rite Aid +up, Walgreens RR or CVS ECB to earn or use, so I could not have used those columns. Also, there wasn’t a shopper’s club card to break out to even those totals until the early 90s (grrrr Wegmans), so that column was not applicable either. When I began it was:

Subtotal, coupon total, amount paid.

The same sales ran over and over, so keeping track of sale-cycle items wasn’t difficult.

I also did a LOT more rebating back then, because until the early 90s rebates were plentiful and paid well (grrrr P&G). Whatever my OOP costs were, they could be reduced by 100% or more (coupon moneymakers) when that rebate check arrived. It was delayed gratification as opposed to the instant gratification we have at the cash registers today.

So, what columns do you use? How do you keep track? Excel spreadsheet or a 3×5 card? Any input would really be helpful, especially to those just starting out!

There was a McCormick 75¢ manufacturer coupon that come out in the 1/2/11 inserts. I am getting 14 of these coupons, and I want to use them if there is a great deal on McCormick spices. But on what I wondered?

As you may or may not know, I do not cook. Ok, I hardly ever cook. And when I do, it is very plain. I cooked like that for nearly 20 years, and it was hard to change my habits when I met and married hubby.

As you may or may not know, my hubby LOVES to cook, and he is very good at it. He has a collection if spices like you won’t believe! Now, you may have heard me complain once or twice (ok, a million times) that hubby is not very organized. I’m poorly organized, he makes me look like I have an organizational compulsion. His lack of organization (as well as mine) spills over into nearly all aspects of our house, but the place we have the most er, “friendly” discussions about the lack of organization in our home is the kitchen.

That is because while hubby loves to cook, he really only has time on the weekend to do so. He’ll prepare four meals and I can usually finagle one night for leftovers which leaves me two nights to cook.

And it is VERY difficult, not to mention time consuming, to cook when the last person cooking *cough*hubby*cough* does not put items back in their proper place.

So, with hubby OOT I took the opportunity today to organize the spice rack (I left his Indian spices, which are in a neatly labeled storage container in the pantry). We use the lazy Susan in the corner of the kitchen to house our spices. I swear if I ever get to redo a kitchen, I want something like this for the pantry, and a smaller scale version for spices.

This is our lazy Susan “spice rack”:

I hauled everything out of the spice rack and onto the kitchen island. I wanted to see what it was we actually had on hand, what we needed, and what we had copious quantities of.

Is that insane or what? There was a row in the middle that was just various types if peppers!

And this is the portion of that mess that I use to bake with (to be fair, I have items like baking soda, powder, chocolate and sugars in another cupboard):

The rest is alllllllllll hubby’s spices.

With everything on the island, I wrote up what we had and what we needed. I used a spreadsheet and sorted by type and alphabetical order. It now looks like instead of 14 coupons, I needed three coupons.

I then put everything back, and faced all the spcies off so “we” (ie, me) could find what “we” were looking for.

Now to be quite honest, I face-off the spice rack at least every other month. I try and keeping baking together, Italian spices together, the Cajun together, etc. However when hubby uses a spice, IF hubby “puts it away”, it is plopped on the top shelf of the lazy Susan without regard to grouping. This drives me nuts! So, every 6-8 weeks I haul it all out and regroup and reorganize. grrrrrr The difference this time is the list, and the list is for my shopping benefit so I do not overbuy, or purchase the wrong item.

I do not think anyone noticed, but I added text alerts last week as a feature from Coupons, Deals and More. This morning, as I was finding the deals and seeing whether double dips worked, you would have found out as early as 8:10 am eastern if you received text messages from me!

Here’s what went out via text message this morning:

CVS: 75% off toys in Christmas aisle (excludes Barbie)

Rite Aid: AirWick IS double dipping, $20 +ups for $30 AirWick

Rite Aid: Christmas 75% off

Walgreens: check make-up and hair for 75% off, plus 50% off fragrance gift sets

These are NOT going to be on twitter, via email or facebook. This is for this-is-happening-NOW-jump-on-it items, or freebies I think will expire in 2 1/2 seconds. I will tell you that most of these texts will go out Sunday morning while I am shopping.

So how does this work, well type in your recipient box (who you are sending to) on your smart phone:

40404

Then type this in the text area (message box):

FOLLOW CDandMore

Then hit send.

That’s it! When I send a text, you will get it.