Nice savings! Now show me how!!

I am just going to dive right in here. Again, this is how I do it. Find another couponer, and I am sure they do it differently.

1) What are the tools that I need to coupon successfully?

• Rewards card. You can not get good deals with out a customer loyalty card. CAN NOT. They are free, and take about three minutes to sign up for. If you don't have time to do that step, just leave now.
• Store circular. Every store in the area mails these out. The mailed circulars almost always have coupons in them that are not available in the circular you can get in store. If the store you shop at doesn't mail you a circular, contact them. Trust me, they will be more than happy to add you to their mailing list. "And would you also like to sign up for our email list? How about our monthly emagazine? We also have a wonderful semi annual newsletter..." The answer is always yes. Any time a store wants to send you stuff, you say yes. A little fluff mail here and there will be rewarded with bonus coupons that aren't available any other way.
• A computer with internet access and a printer. I do not buy the Sunday paper for the coupon inserts. Ever. Do I sometimes miss deals that can only be achieved with Sunday Newspaper coupons? Yep. But not often. And certainly not often enough to buy the newspaper. Instead, I opt to print out my coupons from the internet. 95% of my coupons come from www.coupons.com . The other 5% come from the actual websites and facebook pages of product companies. 
• Facebook. No. Seriously. Would your kids eat Eggo Waffles three times a day? Does your husband refuse to use anything but a Mach5 razor? Well, get on facebook, find the page and like it. Companies are always offering coupons for their products. When one becomes available, snag it and print it. You can use it right away, or hold on to it to see if it comes up for sale in the future. It's a fun game. "Can I stack this coupon with a sale price, before it expires?" Don't judge my definition of fun. 
• Time. Yep. Pretty obvious. Couponing to this level takes time. In the begining, it takes lots of time. But remember to think of your savings in the terms of real money, and you will see that you are in fact being paid for your time. If I spend three hours doing this, and save $210, then I actually earned $70/hour of coupon work. 
• An open mind, and a good attitude. I have nothing clever to say about this. Keep positive about the whole situation, because when the cashier is amazed and begging you for secrets, you will feel like all this work is worth it. 

2) Get a little organized.

• Realizing big savings consistently, means that you will have to sometimes buy 10 of one item. This trip alone, I bought 12 boxes of oatmeal, 12 boxes of rice, 5 bottles of juice, and 68 cans/containers of soup. These items were available at ridiculous prices, and when I added my coupon savings to them, I got them for very cheap, or free! Do you have someplace to keep 68 cans of soup? If not, start looking. 
• But, can't I just buy 4 cans of soup? Yep. But instead of saving 85%, expect to only see 33%. It all has to do with how deals are stacked. And I promise I will explain to you exactly what I mean. 
• Don't just organize your pantry/kitchen/storage shelves. You need to organize your buying patterns. This shopping trip was all about pantry stock up. Non-perishables, and foods with long shelf lives. This trip alone will provide 120 breakfasts (12 boxes of oatmeal with 10 servings each box), 90 quick heat and eat lunches, and 24 dinner side dishes. 3 weeks ago was freezer meal day. I bought potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, apples, onions, peppers, chicken, pork, beef, and ground hamburger in bulk portions. I spent $150 and three hours prepping, packaging and freezing 20 crockpot dinners. The bonus, each crockpot meal is actually big enough to get 4 adult sized portions, and two kid sized portions. So my 20 dinners turned into 40 dinners, for $150. Why did I take that little detour about freezer meal day? Because on freezer meal shopping day, I used almost no coupons. All of my savings were from sale prices on the items I was buying. I really try my hardest to only buy meat once a month. Doing that allows me to buy in bulk, and get the club pack discount. 

Let me simplify that a little with some solid numbers. Our grocery budget is $150 per week. so essentially $600 per month. Groceries include food, hygeine products, laundry products, disposable diapers (only for daycare, we cloth diaper at home), and paper products. So let's look at how we handled the last four weeks.

1. Pantry Stock Up + weekly staples: $150 budget, $75 spent. (extra $75 left over)
2. Paper products and diaper stock up + weekly staples: $150 budget, $60 spent. ($85 left over)
3. Laundry, hygeine products + weekly staples: $150 budget, $60 spent. ($85 left over)
4. Meat and Produce + weekly staples: $150 budget, $150 spent. ($0 left over)

Weekly staples in our family are 1 gallon of Whole cow's milk, 1/2 gallon almond or coconut milk (whichever I can get a coupon for), 5 bananas, 16 gogurts, 3lbs grapes, 5 apples, 1 box french toast bites, one box frozen waffles. 


Weeks 1,2 and 3 I came in under budget. Yay for me. Week four, I used every penny of my budget. But that is why I do the crazy stock ups on other things. It gives me the wiggle room. Overall, I am $245 under my monthly budget! If I can do that every single month, that is almost $3,000 in savings for the year! That is a pretty spectacular vacation right there! If you use coupons on the products that you CAN use coupons on, it won't matter even if you pay full price for the things that just don't have coupons (like organic produce)!

So stop for a moment, and figure out these four things:

1. What is your weekly budget? (not sure? well what do you spend on average now?)
2. What is your monthly budget? (just multiply your weekly times 4)
3. What are your weekly staples? 
4. WIll you be grouping your purchases? (pantry one week, paper products another week, etc)

So we have organized our pantry, we have organized our buying patterns, now let's organize our shopping list.
     I use a spreadsheet on excel. I find it is the easiest way for me. I can add items, move items, and delete items quickly. The computer will do all the math for me, so I don't have to think about that. I said you can just handwrite out a list if you like, but really I don't recommend it. When you are trying to keep track of 170 items, a handwritten list is not your friend. Some aspects of couponing are "delicate" for lack of a better term. If you forget one item, or grab one extra item, it can cost you tens of dollars, if not more.
Here is a template for my spreadsheet layout. You should be able to save it to your excel and edit it, or just print it out. Or just copy it. It's nothing fancy, but you can see what I keep track of.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OvVx-gCVmia1elJT_gqCBlEqEC95-4yW8EUM32grxuE/edit#gid=629254266

3) Okay, let's get started!
I have said it a million times before. There are a million and one coupon sites out there. When i am planning my shopping trip, I always start at the same place.
 http://www.livingrichwithcoupons.com
This is by far the best site. They do all the coupon match ups for you.

You can look at specific store deals.
http://www.livingrichwithcoupons.com/store-deals

You can search their coupon database to find a specific coupon. http://www.livingrichwithcoupons.com/lrwc-coupon-database

They have a great dicitionary of couponing terms.
 http://www.livingrichwithcoupons.com/2009/05/what-in-the-world-are-they-talking-about.html

Click on one of those links. Go to the website and look around for a few hours, and then come back to see me. Let's think of this as homework. Come back to me with questions, and post on the group page. This will be a great chance to get a dialogue going.