TLC’s, “Extreme Couponing” has shocked everyone with the incredible potential of coupon savings. It has also given people unrealistic expectations and doesn’t represent the majority of couponer’s.
If you want to learn to coupon and save 50% or more on your grocery bill, then I can certainly help! You will not need 60+ hours or more of your time to learn and incorporarte couponing into your life.
Time
Realistically, I spend about 1 hour a week clipping coupons and putting together a shopping list. This is typically for shopping at 1 grocery store and 2 drugstores. How long you spend on this depends on how many stores you shop at and how long you have been couponing. After you organize your coupons it gets faster and faster ! I made a whole section on the website on how to organize coupons. Coupon sites like mine even match up coupons for you which saves you a ton of time! Currently we do coupon match-ups for Kroger, Target, Publix and Walmart. We also do the drugstore match-ups for CVS, Rite Aid, and Walgreens.
How much does it really cost?
The people on the show save a ton of money, but how much did they really spend to get that savings? First of all I would like to say that time is valuable. To have results like they do on the reality show “Extreme Couponing”, you would have to coupon like it’s a full-time job! That’s not realistic to most people including me! I want time to be able to spend with my family. Second, they don’t show how much these people are spending on hundreds of inserts. Many use clipping services which do charge a fee per coupon. Lets say you went to the grocery store and got 1,000 items for $2,000 but with coupons only paid $100. If you paid 10 cents a coupon for 1,000 items that’s 100 dollars in additional expense. So really you spent $200. Yes, that is still a great job, but it costs twice as much as what they are showing on the show! Now don’t get me wrong, I have saved over 80% in shopping trips and sometimes even made money, but it takes time and a little bit of learning. I think everyone can use coupons. It is not true that you can only get processed and junk foods using coupons. I often find coupons for healthy snacks and foods including milk, yogurt, cheese and produce!
Stockpile
Ok, having 100 boxes of cereal in a stockpile is not realistic to me! I have 5 people in my family and couldn’t go thru 100 boxes of cereal before they expired. You will start to notice that sales come in cycles and it’s good to stockpile at that time. I usually buy 5 papers a week because there are 5 family members in my house. If I find that there is a good coupon in a paper of a product we love I might adjust that number. You can also go online and order coupons from places like the Wiz Kidz. Once you get a good stockpile going, you can cut down on the number of papers you buy and be more selective.
Be Realistic
Please don’t expect to save 95% on your very first coupon shopping trip. Most extreme coupon experts did not get to that level overnight. You can certainly learn the tricks of couponing in a year. However, considering sale cycles average every 12 weeks and some coupons are released only around certain seasons, it takes at least a year to create a stockpile diverse enough that you only need to buy when it’s FREE or close to FREE.
We are here to help!! I suggest reading some of the posts in my Couponing 101 before you begin. It covers topics like Coupon Lingo, and How to Organize your coupons. Be sure to subscribe to my FREE email updates to get couponing tips, deals, and freebies sent to your inbox! You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter for up to the minute deals!!
About Me: Hi, I’m Bianca! I am a Christian, Army wife, Mother of 3 awesome kids! All that I do and everything that I am blessed with is because of my awesome God! I am from the peach state of Georgia. I have not always been a frugal person, but when I learned that I could bring my grocery budget from $250/week to $50/week, I was addicted! We now are able to use higher quality products than ever before and for really next to nothing. It is very possible to be frugal and live abundantly without being cheap. I have learned a lot from my sister who still finds the most amazing deals and shares them with me! Our family is on a journey to become debt FREE and I am here to pass on what I learn to you! Come and join us over at http://www.slickhousewives.com
“Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.” ~Matthew 6:33
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