Yesterday we discussed what’s a good price for stocking up on items.  Before we move into getting and using coupons you need to realize one thing… buying an item at it’s lowest price and stocking up on it is saving you more than the coupon.  If you don’t have a coupon, you are still saving money to buy it at the best price! If you have a week that you can’t handle coupons, then throw the coupons out the window and just go to the store and buy what’s on sale.

That said, lets find coupons:

Newspaper Coupons:

You have to get the Sunday paper.  About 88% of the coupons out come in the paper.  You want the biggest paper available to you, the larger the paper the more coupons are in it.  If you have an area that is just plain bad, try looking online at the services that sell whole inserts from other regions.

I get my inserts from: Sundaycouponinserts.com

Maybe you don’t want the whole insert, there are lots of ways to get just one or two coupons that weren’t in your paper.  Try looking for that particular coupon on:

Ebay
Thecouponclippers.com

How many papers do you need?

You do not need many.  Remember you are only getting enough of one item to last 6-8 weeks.  You will see it come on sale again and you’ll get the same coupon again, I promise!  If you go over board on papers you are adding stress to your own life.

You do want to get at least 2 papers though.  Most drugstores and a few grocery stores require on buy one get one deals that you purchase two items.  They will allow you to use a coupon on each item though!  If I have to buy two, but they are going to let me use two coupons… I want two coupons.
(Personally I get four each week now that we have 5 kids.  If you don’t have a big family this is more than you need.)

Magazine Coupons:

Pretty much any magazine that caters to women has coupons in it now.  Please don’t run out and get subscriptions to every single one of them just for one coupon for floss.  There are a few that regularly have coupons that you want to watch for deals on (don’t worry when I see deals I’ll share).

Magazines with coupons:

Woman’s Day
Weight Watchers
Good Housekeeping
Ladies Home Journal
Better Homes & Gardens
Family Circle

Printable Coupons:

There are tons of coupons online, yet another reason to not get 1,000 newspapers each week!
There are 4 main sites that offer printable coupons:

Coupons.com
SmartSource
Hopster
Redplum

Each site will let you print 2 of most coupons offered per computer, NOT per printer.  If you have a desktop computer and a laptop you can print 4 coupons even if they use the same printer (this can depend on how you have set up your home network).

You also find lots of printable coupons directly on manufacturer websites and facebook.  Rather than randomly hunting for these, use the coupon database on Southern Savers to get direct links to most of these.

What do you want to print?

Printable coupons do have a maximum amount that they are going release for each offer.  Don’t let this stress you out, and start printing every coupon. You want to follow a few basic rules of what to print right away and then leave everything else there.

• High value coupons – print the minute you see it.  These are relative based on the product, but you’ll know when you see it.  Really good coupons do not last long, maybe 2-3 hours tops.
• Vegetable coupons – Whenever you see green giant, birds eye, libby’s or other vegetable coupons print them.
• Brands you know you’ll use, family favorites etc.

One Tip:  Most store lists are posted to Southern Savers the day before that sale begins.  Head online and print and coupons mentioned in the list the day it posts.  You can come back and coupons ready later, but this way if the printable coupon made something free you can get it before it runs out.

Okay… one more tip: Instead of scouring the main printable sites each day for what is new sign up to get the New Coupon Advisory email.  I send it every Mon.-Fri. and it is a list of every new coupon found that day online and offline.  You can open it, skim it, print anything you want and move on lot faster than clicking through pages and pages of coupon sites. (Oh, and it’s free).

For more information check out:
Gathering Coupons Video
Organizing Coupons Part 1
Organizing Coupons Part 2