Favorite Stores
I'm going to assume that most of you live in the same general area that I live and that you will want to know what the best deals are and the best places to shop in western Washington are. I have found the places where I do the best are:
Grocery
Albertsons
Winco
Fred Meyer
Daily needs
Rite Aid
Walgreens
No, I don't need to go to 5 different grocery stores each week to get the best deals. Usually each week ONE of those stores will have the best sales going. Occasionally another store (like Haggens or Safeway) will have a killer deal going on ONE item and I may take the time to go there and stock up on that. But otherwise going to Albertsons once a week is usually enough.
I suggest picking ONE grocery store and ONE drug store to get started. Learn there and then branching out to other stores is easy. I find Rite Aid to be the easiest drug store for new coupon users. Find a blog for each of the stores you visit and watch for them to post the good deals. Get your coupons together, and head to the store to copy their deal.
These are the sites I visit regularly to help me find the BEST deals. I usually pop onto each site once a day to gather ideas, make a list, and find coupons.
Printing Coupons
www.target.com
http://www.redplum.com/
Drug Stores
I find this to be the best site for getting a preview of the upcoming flyers and also seeing what kind of deals are going. She also has a site called
www.iheartwags.com for those of you that love Walgreens.
I think the best Walgreens blog is www.wildforwags.com.
www.totallytarget.com is an awesome site for all those Target deals out there.
Database
There will probably be a time where you need something and you want to know if there is a coupon out there to get it for cheaper. There is a website that I use for their database. Just go to coupon tab, then in the drop down you will find the database choice. Then just type in the product you are looking for and it will let you know if there is a coupon out there, what type it is (printable, from the paper, etc) when it expires, and how to find it. If it is a printable coupon it will even give you the link to print it out. It's fabulous and a great time saver when you are trying to do matchups.
Grocery Stores
These are a little harder to find good blogs for and fortunately once you get a good stockpile of items you don't really have to depend on the grocery blogs as much. The grocery store just becomes your place to buy produce meat and other good deals as they appear. But for a little guidance you can check these blogs out from time to time:
Other websites
I don't use these ones very often but I know some people find them very helpful so I'm including them here. I'll add more as I find them.
www.thekrazycouponlady.com
Coupons with Coffee
Simple2Save
and my friend Shelly's website that got me started in couponing:
http://www.couponingwithconfidence.blogspot.com/
Favorite Videos:
When I first started I found a couple of videos that really helped me understand the process. Invest the time to watch these and you'll walk away with a better understanding of how coupons work and how they can help you and your family!
Southern Savers: Getting Started Part 1
Getting to Know Rite Aid and Walgreens
First thing....sign up for a wellness card at RiteAid. It is a must if you will be shopping there.
There are two stores that I shop at that give additional rewards on some products for buying it from them. Those two stores are RiteAid and Walgreens. Basically, each week in their flyer you will find not only their sales but you will see a little notations that says: Plus $1 UP (or however many they are offering) when you buy this product. This UP reward is something that will print on the bottom of your receipt after you purchase this item. You can use this UP reward like cash towards your next purchase. I love to find things that are sale, I have a coupon for AND generate an UP reward. Then the next time I am shopping at RiteAid I try to use that UP reward to buy something else that generates an UP reward which means less money out of my pocket AND keeps rolling over the UP rewards. The UP's are expire after two weeks so it's good to keep turning them over. Some people will break their purchases into several small transactions to get as much product in one shopping trip with as little money out of pocket.
This may not be a GREAT example because this person had some UPS to start with but I wanted to give you an example of what it means to ROLL your rewards to walk away with as little OOP (out of pocket) as possible. And yes, doing this can mean a little more time investment and planning, but is often well worth it to walk away with low OOP expenses.
One other thing to know about RiteAid is that they also have a program called Video Values (VV.) This is where you watch some add like videos they have and then you can use these coupons on products in the store. You can stack these WITH manufacturer coupons AND in store coupons. They can be a pain to take the time to watch but can also be a money saver if you just do it.
Walgreens has a similar program. They do not have a rewards card and their rewards are called Register Rewards. Their program can be a little bit more complicated. For instance if they have diapers on sale for $5.99 and it generates $1.50 RR (register reward) to use on your next purchase and you want to do this deal 5 times to stock up on diapers there are some things you will want to know.
#1. You will have to do each diaper purchase with a different transaction to get all of the RR to print out. If you do them all in one transaction it will only print 1 RR.
#2. If you use the RR to buy the same item you just purchased to earn the RR it will not print out another RR. So if you buy the diapers, earn $1.50 and try to use it towards another pack of diapers it will not generate another RR.
#3. Register Rewards act like manufacturer coupons. This gets complicated so hang with me on this one. At Walgreens, you can only have the same number of coupons as you have products. So let's say you have $5 in RR. You want to buy an item that costs $10. You also have a regular coupon for that item that you want to use. Because you are buying ONE item you can not use both of the manufacture coupons on that one item. To get around that you can pick up a small candy or other sale item so that when you go to the register you have TWO items and TWO coupons. This small items is known as a "filler." It's a really difficult concept to explain so if you have any questions please don't be afraid to ask. Below is an example of a transaction where I needed to use a FILLER.
I had a $9.00 register reward I wanted to use to make my diapers FREE
Diapers were on sale for $6.99 each and I had a $2.50 coupon to use on each of them. So I had two items and two coupons. So in order to use the third "coupon" (remember at Wags they consider the RR a coupon) I had to throw in a small item. Then I had three coupons and three items.
