Couponing...I'm a little obsessed. Have you guys seen that crazy reality TV show on TLC Extreme Couponing? LOVE! This show makes me coupon crazy! I look at these people and think, "Get all my groceries for free? Sounds great! I can do that!" It made me really jealous at first and then really thinking about it. I had been talking it over with Steve for a while and he finally said, "Why don't you just do it!?"
So I am going to try it out. I don't plan to get 250 copies of the newspaper or pay to have coupons clipped and sent to my door so it won't exactly be "extreme couponing". Thanks to the policies of our local supermarkets in St. Louis (their doubling policy sucks!), I doubt I will ever be able to do any of the crazy grocery trips you see on that show where you save 90% off your bill. But I mean, it is reality TV right? That's not realistic to save that much I don't think. But I think I should be able to save my family some money and learn more about this crazy hobby. So here we go...
Now, I'm not going to lie, at first I was super intimidated. I thought how the heck do they do that!?! But thanks to the glory of the internet you can really look up anything. So I researched couponing and found tons and tons of sites to help me. My two favorite are The Krazy Coupon Lady and Couponing 101. They both have user friendly tutorials for how to get started located Here Here and Here. I studied up on the basics of couponing by reading their tutorials and tips and just generally clicking around on their websites. They have really great how to's and FAQ sections that break it down so it wasn't hard to understand the basics pretty quickly.
But since the ladies running these websites aren't local, I needed to find a resource to our local grocery stores. Luckily the internet saved me again. Actually Couponing 101 has a list of couponing websites by state. There are a few on there for Missouri. By far my favorite is Clippin' With Carie. She is so quick on posting updates and deals with the current store ads. Its really great. Plus, like I said, she is local so you know she will have the best deals that are happening in St. Louis.
Using Carie's website it really is super easy to coupon. She breaks down the ads for your favorite stores this week and matches them up to coupons from your newspaper. She also finds internet coupons that match too. How easy is that!? (Side note, I LOVE internet coupons. They are so easy to use, just click and print. And you can often print several copies of one coupon! Sweet!) I mean that is really the gist of this couponing thing: Find a good deal, match it up with a coupon or two and go to town.
So even though I am just getting into this couponing thing, it is really addictive! I have done a trip to Target and one to Schnucks so far and have been really proud of some of the deals I was able to find! Of course, since I am just starting I wasn't able to save beaucoup bucks...yet! Plus we don't have anything on hand at home so I had to buy some things that we absolutely needed at (gasp) full price! But I did get about a 30% savings at Target on my first try (about $23 bucks) and a 15% savings at Schnucks this week (about $14 bucks). So, not too bad in my book! I'll let you know how it goes in the future!
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