Coupons: worth it?

[holyschist]

I'm currently in the situation of not quite making enough to live on with my regular paycheck, but I have some padding from seasonal temp work/freelancing/annual trust minimum distribution, so I'm doing okay--and in a couple months will be refinancing my debt and hence able to actually (I hope) sock some money away for emergencies.

Right now I have Y amount of time at work and X amount of time left over. Into X I am trying to fit (in some order): applying for better-paid jobs, freelancing, having a social life/maintaining my relationship, exercising periodically, and decluttering my apartment/life. I'm thinking about potentially trying to do some volunteering to build up skills to make me more marketable, but I'm not sure about the time investment.

Presently X does not really permit me to get all those things done all the time.

I'm thinking about attempting to save more money via coupons: I don't want to go buying stuff we won't use with coupons, but making more of an effort to use coupons for things we do regularly buy. Right now we're pretty good about using coupons for a) craft supplies, b) one local Japanese fast food restaurant, and c) PetCo, and d) more pricey gift things (e.g. I made some photobooks with Snapfish as gifts, and waited for a 3-for-1 coupon).

What we are not good about using coupons for is day-to-day grocery and cleaning supplies--manufacturer's coupons more than store coupons.

Have any of you found coupons to be worth the time investment? If so, do you have any recommendations for a system to encourage actual coupon use with minimal time spent clipping-and-wrangling?

Have any of you found coupons to be totally NOT worth the time investment? I mean yes, the amount we can save with coupons is minimal next to what I'd make with one small freelance assignment, but coupons are reliable and assignments are not.

Comments

[beatrice_otter]

Question: do you have space to store stuff? Because couponing works best if you buy more than you need right now when the price is right, and store it till you do need it.

Couponing until your grocery bills are almost wiped out would probably take a lot more time than you are willing to spend. However, a moderate amount of couponing can be time-effective, depending on various factors. There are, in most places, websites you can go to that have coupons to print out; I know my friend uses them, though I'm not sure if they're subscription or anything. I'd check those out. Also, do you get a paper or have access to one? Go through it each day and look for the glossy store ads, which usually include coupons. Take out the ads for the stores you use. Then go through the store ads before you go shopping to see if there are coupons for things you a) were going to buy or b) can be substituted for something you were going to buy or c) will be something you will need to buy in the relatively near future and can stockpile.

[holyschist]

I was getting that impression, and no, storage space in our apartment is pretty much nonexistent--I'm trying to pare down somewhat, but even so, I'm not really interested in lining the walls of the apartment with food (and people who get so excited about free shampoo...well, I have short hair and buy shampoo maybe once to twice a year, so stockpiling shampoo would not exactly be huge savings for me).

Hmmm. I may see if I can give moderate couponing a try. A few dollars here and there is still a few dollars.

[sage]

My mother sends me an envelope of coupons once every couple of months, and the cheaper brands of the same item are ALWAYS cheaper than the name brands, even with the coupon discount. The only exception is batteries, but I only use rechargeable batteries and the occasional in-store coupons for $3 off on those makes them cheaper than the coupon Mom sends me.

If you're deeply invested in name-brand groceries, it might be worth it, but if you're buying frugally in the first place, not so much.

[holyschist]

Yeah, at this point I pretty much buy store brand unless it's something I'm very invested in (e.g. yogurt). So sure, I could be using organic yogurt coupons more, probably, but one can only "stock up" so much yogurt with two people (and only one of us actually eats yogurt and doesn't just cook with it). I think if I were going to seriously pursue coupons, I'd have to focus them on meat and produce.

I should probably get a new batch of rechargeable batteries and use them more. My old rechargeables seem to have reachd the end of their lifespan. Thanks for the reminder!

[indywind]

I hope more people will writin with their perspectives, especially if couponing works for them, why and and how. I keep wanting it to work for me, but it really doesn't.
-coupons are usually for value-added products and I usually buy mostly raw materials (a pumpkin versus pumpkin pie filling)
-coupons are usually for specific brands, and I often either can't use that brand, or if brand doesn't matter the nonbrand is still cheaper than the coupon price
-many things I can stock up on and store are not things I need a discount on, they're already mad cheap; things I could use a discount on, I can't store as well (dry beans versus cottage cheese, say)

Surely other people work around stuff like this?

[holyschist]

*nods* I also buy mostly raw materials, or close to (I don't buy coconuts, I buy coconut milk), plus I also cook a lot of Indian and stirfry, where I am fairly brand-specific for certain things (the cheapest brand of coconut milk is usually bad; I don't think anyone around here does coupons for fish sauce). I pretty much buy the cheapest store brand for most things, and specific name brands for ingredients where it really makes a difference for me.

I was thinking I would probably need to do a baseline price comparison for my local stores and then focus any coupon efforts on meat/fish/eggs/produce. Most of the hardcore couponers seem to buy a) cereal, b) dairy, and c) processed foods a lot more than we do, and do not consider things like fish sauce, ghee, and basmati rice to be staples. And they go through a lot more shampoo and razorblades than we do. I'm sort of suspecting that I ought to be buying meat and seafood and more produce at the local Asian market anyway, and see if I can find a good Indian grocery that's not the next town over....

I don't know. I think the way we like to eat and the foods we cook, serious couponing is probably not an option. I'm not going to change my entire cooking style to foods I like less just to save money. But maybe targeting a couple areas of ingredients would help. I'll have to do some research.

[pwcorgigirl]

I don't invest a lot of time in coupon clipping and don't buy the Sunday papers with the coupon inserts because recycling in my town is a pain (we have to drive the stuff to the recycling station ourselves). We do two big stock-up shopping trips per month at Aldi, which doesn't take coupons, so our fill-in shopping is done at stores that do take them.

I check several online free coupon sites for the few namebrand items we use regularly: Smart Source, Red Plum, Coupons.com, Coupon Network, Shortcuts.com. For these, you select the ones you want, click Print and you're ready to go.

We have a customer loyalty card with Kroger, which sends us packets of coupons for store products based on our previous purchases. There's rarely ever one I can't use in one of those packets. I also check the SundaySaver national checklist of weekly ads for stores to see if the coupons I have on hand can be combined with a sale.

All this takes only a few minutes on Sunday afternoon to make up a list, note the coupons to be used, and paperclip them to the list.

Another very good savings strategy for us is to watch for when Dollar General has a $5 off $25 coupon on its website. I stock up lots of non-food items like detergent, toilet paper, cleaning supplies with those coupons, which can be used with manufacturer's coupons.

Also, if you take a prescription medication, check the manufacturer's website for a discount program. One of my meds would have had a $50 co-pay with our insurance. With the discount card from the manufacturer, I got it free for a year. This year I have to pay $20 for it, but that's still a big savings over $50 without the card.

By using all those techniques, my coupon savings were $87.19 in December and $90.01 in January.

[holyschist]

That sounds like a doable strategy for me, with some alterations! We have different stores in our area, but could definitely be more organized.

Actually setting up my stupid printer would be a good start. :-P

[pwcorgigirl]

It's a good idea to check out the different stores because some will be consistently lower on certain products. For instance, the IGA here has great deals on basic cuts of meat, while Kroger's meat is priced way too high. Kroger, though, consistently beats out IGA on the price of canned and frozen food. Aldi is the hands-down winner for great prices on almost everything, but especially on cheese, milk and eggs.

If you have an ethnic produce market close by, those are also great places to save money because they're usually much cheaper than a grocery store on fresh food.

[moizissimo]

I've heard good things about Target - apparently there is a coupon-printing page on their website, so if you make your list, print your coupons, then go shopping, it might work. Apparently Target also stacks coupons, so if you have a manufacturer's coupon as well, they'll honour both.

Alas, couponing isn't NEARLY as lucrative in Canada as it is in the States. If I'm running out of foundation, I'll look for a coupon and wait for a sale, but there is no stacking of coupons, and they tend to be $0.25 off, which feels pretty useless sometimes.

[red_trillium]

It sounds like it would be best to try to coupon for maybe your higher cost items or more regular items.

One of the grocery chains here has a kind of loyalty card. They will send you coupons of things they notice you buy most and sometimes will send coupons for $X off your total grocery bill when you hit certain points. Do any of the stores near you have this kind of thing?

[everythingiam]

Yeah, I have to agree with a lot of people here - generic/store brand is usually cheaper even if you've got a coupon. With one specific exception: if your store doubles coupons. Kroger (and Walmart, I think) doubles manufacturer's coupons up to .99, so coupons often work well for me even compared to the price of generic/store brands. Sometimes they'll even have triple coupon events, though those are as rare and magical as unicorn spit.

Research is often the biggest, most annoying thing about couponing or partaking of 'sales' in the paper. Figuring out when the actual sales are on and being able to match those sales with coupons (and then doubling on the coupons, oh my!) is worth it, though. Learning your store(s) is the biggest investment you can make, really.

Buying in bulk also works a lot for us, too. Do you have a GFS nearby? I buy frozen vegetables on the ridiculously cheap there, and the quality is as good or better than grocery stores. HTH!