Never throw out any coupons thinking you won’t use them! Even if you have coupons for products you know you won’t use, you may find those products on sale or clearance and after using a coupon may be only a few cents or even free! Save health and beauty items for gift baskets. Donate canned goods to food pantries. Sell Cleaning Supplies at a rummage sale. You get the idea.
Watch the weekly ads and stock up when something you use is on sale, and especially when you have a coupon for those sale items. Some stores will let you combine a store coupon with a manufacturer coupon (ie Target and Walgreens). Other stores price match if you bring in their competitor’s ad. Pricematching is good if the original store is out of stock and your coupons expire before the rain checked items come in. It’s also good to save on trekking all over town to get the sales when you could get them all at Super-Walmart, for example.
Ask if your favorite store offers a reward program. Baker’s offers a club card you swipe every time you shop to get their discount prices. HyVee’s checkout spits out Catalina coupons to use on your next purchase when you purchase certain items. Register all of your grocery and drugstore cards at Upromise.com, and they deposit 1% – 5% of the purchase price of thousands of different brands into a college fund for the person of your choice!
Some lucky shoppers get to take advantage of “Double Coupon Sales” or even “Triple Coupon Sales” where the store actually doubles the value of the coupon, up to a certain amount. For example, the store may advertise “Double Coupons up to 99¢!” Any coupon value 99¢ or lower, will be doubled, but $1.00 and up will be normal value. The store themselves eat the doubled value as an incentive to pull in shoppers.
Be sure to browse the Clearance Sections of your store. Target is known for having deep discounts on their end shelves hidden in the store. Also, if your coupon boasts “Valid on ANY size”, buy the trial size! Be sure to calculate if you are getting a deal. Sometimes, it may still be cheaper to buy a generic brand of something, than to use a coupon on a name-brand something.
If the price of a product is more than the value of your coupon (ie Shampoo is 99¢ and you have a $1 off coupon), it is up to the store whether they will give you whole value of the coupon (where you make a profit) or just deduct the cost of the product. Either way, the store will be reimbursed for the full amount of the coupon plus the standard 8¢ redemption fee they receive. So, even though cashiers act like they hate coupons, it’s in the store’s best interest to accept them.
