One of the most frustrating parts of couponing, is printing your shopping list and heading to gather coupons only to find that you don’t have half of them.  For folks that are just starting out, this tends to make you think that I’ve lost my mind and the match ups are terrible.  Before you give up on the match ups though let me explain the real issue… every city gets different inserts.

Not All Newspapers Are Created Equal

The larger the newspaper, the better the coupons.  If you think of them as advertisements, it makes sense.  A company wants to reach more people, so they pay to be in a few larger markets rather than lots of smaller markets.  This means that you need to try and get the biggest newspaper you can get your hands on.  You can get creative with this by finding bookstores, gas stations, grocery stores, etc that will carry the largest paper.  One big warning – you do not want to call and order an out of town subscription.  They will send you Atlanta’s news, but not the coupon inserts.

In case you are wondering the biggest papers in the South are:

Atlanta Journal
Charlotte Observer
Jacksonville Florida Times Union

You don’t really have to take my word for it though.  Every week a number of volunteers from all over the south send in exactly what coupons were in their paper.  Click on a few cities and compare exactly how many red (meaning they didn’t get it) coupons there are.  A new list of regional variations is posted every Wednesday afternoon around 5 pm.  If you don’t see your city listed and want to help, email me at jenny@southernsavers.com.

Did you know that you can also see these differences in the coupon database on Southern Savers?  Head over and select the city you are closest too, and it will show an R next to any insert coupon that you actually got in that area!

How Do You Get A Better Paper?

Supporting newspapers is great and I encourage y’all to do it, but sometimes we need better coupon inserts than our tiny local paper can give us.  If that’s the case, you can order whole inserts online from a different.  Shipping can get pretty steep so I suggest going in with at least one other person to offset that cost.  There are a number of sites that offer this, but just google “Whole Coupon Inserts” and you’ll be set with a number of sites to check out.  Make sure you know what coupons are in the inserts before you order them, so that you know they are better than yours.

Why Do They Make This So Difficult?

The biggest reason, is budget.  Some companies just can’t afford to reach all areas, so they take a cheaper option of bigger metropolitan areas only.  Other companies are really doing market research and want to promote certain products in certain areas.  That’s why we see entirely different coupons and/or coupons with different amounts off.

Read More→