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

[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.