Couponing for Dummies, or “Wow, I Suck at This”

Clipping coupons: time well spent or too many headaches?

I recently decided that it is my moral obligation to take up couponing. First of all, my family needs every dollar I could possibly save. But beyond that, I like the idea of making these corporate food manufacturers follow up on their promises. (I love Box Tops for Education for the same reason.)

Couponing is a deliberately complex process, but savvy shoppers have made an art out of maximizing savings, to the point that many actually profit! Unfortunately for me, the art of couponing contains a lot of math. There must be a way to express couponing as an algorithm that takes into account the sales cycle of any given product x, along with the frequency of coupon release, coupon value and doubling policy, supply and demand in any given geographical area…I know there’s more.

And this is at the heart of why I suck at couponing. My mind is just way more literary than mathematical. I have never been able to do even relatively simple sums in my head, and at the heart of it, couponing is a numbers game.

To excel at it, you also have to be good at not only recognizing the coupon item, but staying within the purchasing restrictions. You have to maintain a stockpile of products in your home such that you never have on-the-spot needs and only buy what’s on sale. But I think the number one barrier to couponing for the average household shopper has got to be the prep time.

Last week I sat down and spent a good three hours poring over coupon circulars and signing up for multiple couponing sites on the web. By the time I felt prepared to shop, my office was a blizzard of discarded paper scraps and my brain was foggy from trying to memorize a whole new shopping list.

When I got to the store, I found that the best deals were already gone. Otherwise, I wandered up and down aisles, flipping through slips of paper and squinting at the shelves, ultimately filling my cart with about 75% coupon items. Some things we just needed.

Bottom line: my receipt said I saved $70, but I also spent $100 out of pocket. While I would say that we got more food overall this week than usual, some of it will be wasted just because we tried it for the first time. For example, I had a gag reflex when I got a taste of the “meat” included in a can of ravioli, so I won’t be serving the remaining cans.

Obviously couponing is a skill that takes time to develop. I’m going to keep going, but I realize that I must start very small and build slowly to avoid burnout as well as unintended overspending. So how can one coupon the “Making Bricks” way?

If you do nothing else, I’d recommend visiting your regular grocery store’s website and registering your preferred shopper card. In my case, King Soopers offers a ton of e-coupons that can be loaded on to your card and will deduct automatically at the register. Plus, you can look at the weekly circular online and avoid having yet more paper in your home.

To use e-coupons effortlessly, only load those that are for products you already buy, or that you know you need (say, garbage bags). One thing to remember is that they will supercede any paper coupon for the same product, so if you have paper of greater value, use it before even adding a similar e-coupon to your card.

In the meantime, go ahead and start saving any paper coupons you can find on products you already buy and take them to the store with you every week. You don’t have to flip through them incessantly as you shop, but a quick review at the checkout stand should yield some savings.

To go a little farther and start getting into the spirit of the game, try to identify the best deals in your store each week. These will be items that are already on sale and have a valid coupon associated. The King Soopers circular even notes the sale items that have additional e-savings available. They may not always be on items you need, but when it’s toilet paper, you can’t go wrong. Netting one big score a week is a great shot in the arm for beginners with little free time.

I’d like to recommend the website www.bargainblessings.com for any novice. It contains great “Couponing 101” tips, as well as a database of coupons that lets you search for a particular brand or item.