The 5 Steps Of Extreme Couponing

There are some who consider that “extreme couponing” is anytime you can get something for free with a coupon. Yet for others, extreme couponing is learning the hacks and strategies of coupons, not just to get a few items for free, but to build stockpiles of products that were free or nearly free.

Read Free With Coupons for an introduction on coupons and to learn some the expectations you can have with extreme couponing. If you’ve already decided that you want to get started with Extreme Couponing then you’ll find the following five steps useful.

Here are the 5 steps of extreme couponing:

  1. Hunt for coupons
  2. Learn the various coupon strategies
  3. Become familiar with coupon policies
  4. Find out when local stores have sales and promotions
  5. Organize, plan and execute

 

Coupon Hunting – Where To Find Coupons

Coupons are distributed through multiple promotional channels, including circulars, direct mail, multiple in-store locations, email, social media, mobile phone apps and rewards cards. The Free With Coupons page has a comprehensive list of where you might find coupons, but here we’ll go into a little more detail. Also, while that page lists almost every possible place to find coupons, on this page we’ll focus on the resources that are more applicable to common extreme couponing. This includes resources that mostly offer grocery coupons, not local restaurants or home services. Therefore resources like ValPak would not apply as much. Although it is important to be alert for good deals wherever they may be available.

Coupons are generally distributed by manufacturers, retailers and third-party coupon distributors. They each have their own channels of distribution, although the coupons often end up in the same place. For example, Walmart (a retailer) and Redplum (a third party coupon distributor) could both have a circular in the same newspaper.

Procter & Gamble is a company that owns many brands such as Gillette, CoverGirl, Braun, Olay, Old Spice, etc. Each of these brands have multiple product lines. Gillette’s website showed multiple different razors, shaving creams, deodorants, body wash, etc. Procter & Gamble and Gillette each have their own websites, and each website has a link to coupons and promotions. A particular brand’s products usually have their own web pages and some of these pages may have coupons.

There is some physical clipping involved when the coupons are found in printed circulars and newspapers, but there are other ways to “clip” or collect coupons when they come from different resources. Some resources offer printable coupons online. Sometimes you will need to manually add coupons to a rewards card online, sometimes coupons are automatically added to rewards cards. When collecting coupons on a mobile phone app you can simply show it to the cashier at checkout.

There are multiple places in the store itself where you might be able to find coupons. These include the store entry, coupon kiosks, coupon dispensers next to the product, and coupons printed at checkout. For additional deals you may also find coupons on product packaging or on the back of your printed receipt, but these will not be used as much for extreme couponing.

Here are some of the more popular resources of coupons:

  • SmartSource
  • Redplum
  • Procter & Gamble
  • Catalina Coupons or in-store coupons
  • Coupons.com
  • Retailers like Walmart and Target
  • Manufacturer, brand or product websites

 

A more extensive list of internet resources is found on the coupons directory.

Most extreme couponers would not be satisfied with the handful of coupons that they get in their own mailbox or with local newspapers, so here are some extreme ways to collect more coupons so that you can get more freebies and deals:

First, subscribe for your own paper at a discount. Then collect additional newspapers from family, friends and neighbors. Buy additional newspapers at the dollar store. Get newspapers at the airport, often for free and sometimes they have the inserts. Even when a newspaper is expired, the coupons may not be. Try to make deals with local store managers to see if you can offload their expired newspapers from them.

Dumpster dive for newspapers or the coupon inserts.

Start a group or club where you can trade and exchange coupons with friends. Try starting a coupon train. Or offer to give your friends some of the freebies that you find if they give you all of their coupons regularly.

Buy coupons on ebay. Sometimes people might sell them just to generate positive feedback. (In that case it would be nice to leave good feedback)

There are coupon clipping services like The Coupon Clippers that charge a fee to clip coupons and send them to you. This might be a resource to save until your skills are honed.

Many of the resources that offer rebates may also be useful for finding coupons. Many shopping deal aggregator sites like dealigg might list items you can get for free with coupons. There are also community-edited and user-edited websites that list coupon deals. Coupon strategist and tutorial sites, like CouponMom.com, will not necessarily offer unique coupons, but they will explain where to find them and even how to use them effectively.

Learn The Various Strategies for Using Coupons

Learning the various strategies for using coupons will help you use them effectively. Here are some of the more common strategies:

Multiplying Coupons – Once again an extreme couponer isn’t satisfied with the handful of coupons one might receive in the mail or home-delivered newspaper. They get multiple coupons so that when they find deals they can multiply it. For example, if a bottle of ketchup is free with a coupon, why not get 20 of them? That way you know you’ll have enough ketchup until the next time it becomes deeply discounted.

Coupon Stacking – Stacking is when you combine coupons or use multiple coupons to purchase an item. Often this can only be done when you have a manufacturer’s coupon and retailer’s coupon. The retailer probably won’t let you stack multiple retailer’s coupons.

Combine BOGO sales with BOGO coupons – A buy-one-get-one free sale combined with a buy-one-get-one free coupon will get both items free depending on how the sale is calculated at the checkout counter. Ask the service desk if buy-one-get one free sales are calculated by charging full price for one of the items or half price for both items. If they charge half price for both items then you’ll need two coupons to get them free.

Competitor coupons. Some stores, like Walmart, will accept competitor’s coupons, and they may have sales at different times than their competitors.

Double and Triple Coupons. These are events or special days offered by some stores where they will double or triple the value of the coupon at checkout. Stores that double coupons.

Any size items or trial size. If the coupon doesn’t specify the size of the item then get the largest size you can get for free. Sometimes the travel size will be smaller and cheaper so you might get that size for free with the coupon. The dollar store often stocks different sizes than other retailers. Some stores have a trial size section where they place items in larger packages.

Buy multiple smaller packages to make the prices match the coupons. If you have a dollar off coupon, get the dollar-sized package. Some products, like items sold from the seafood counter, butcher, deli and bakery can be made to order.

Combine coupons with clearance items. Clearance items are usually older non-expired items, items with cosmetic defect in the packaging, items that are overstocked, or items that are going out of season (see when stores have sales below). Clearance items are placed in their own display or section in most stores.

Rain checks. If an item is on sale and they don’t have it in stock (or enough of it in stock) then go to the customer service desk and ask for a rain check. They will give you a voucher for that product at the sale price which doesn’t expire for at least a year and it can be combined with other offers. That way you can still combine your coupon with the store sale even when the product is out of stock.

Preorder. If you know you’re going to be buying in bulk you can preorder the item and avoid the rain checks.

Expired Coupons. It’s rare, but there are some stores (mostly in the Midwest) that take expired coupons.

Rewards cash. Rewards cash is offered as store credit when you buy specific items. They are more common in drug stores than grocery stores, particularly CVS and Walgreens. Rewards alone are not actually free, but they can be combined with other offers to get even more items for free. Here is a scenario: you have a $1 off any Snickers candy bar from the manufacturer. Take that coupon to a CVS pharmacy where they’re offering $1 in rewards cash every time you buy a Snickers bar. You purchase a $1 Snickers bar, use your coupon to get it free and you get the rewards cash for free that can be applied towards any later purchase. Read more about Rewards Programs. Rewards cash is also similar to Rebates.

Become Familiar With Coupon Policies:

It would be nice if we could use coupons however we wanted, but of course there are limitations. Here are some common restrictions of coupon policies.

They flat out state that you can’t use one or more of the strategies above.

They don’t accept mobile phone coupons or coupons printed from the internet.

They double coupons up to the price of the item (not true doubling). Example: You have a $1 off coupon for a product that is $1.50. Instead of doubling the coupon to $2 and paying you 50 cents to buy the product, they only “double” the coupon from $1 to $1.50.

They only double the first of “like” coupons, meaning if you have two of the same coupon they will only double the first one.

They have limits to the amount of coupons you can use or the amount of products you can buy or an overall price limit. Some extreme couponers go overboard when they find free deals. Instead of using one coupon for one free bottle of mustard, they somehow get their hands on 20 coupons and buy 20 bottles of mustard. When they do this for multiple products, like say 50 products or more, they arrive to the checkout with 5 or 6 baskets full of food and try to take home over $1,000-worth of food for free. These restrictions would limit that.

Stores may limit how much time you can spend at the checkout. For example they won’t allow you to buy so much and use so many coupons that it takes an hour or more to check out.

Many grocery store scanners have a 1,000 scan limit. That includes the number of items scanned and the coupons scanned. You can get around the 1,000 scan limit by dividing your order into multiple transactions OR the manager can sometimes override the 1,000 scan limit OR the cashier can manually enter the coupons instead of scanning them. If you know you’re going to have more than 1,000 scans it would be courteous to plan accordingly and divide your order into multiple transactions.

Find out when local stores have sales and promotions

All stores are slightly different when it comes to schedules for sales and promotions. Even branches within the same chain of stores within a couple miles of each other may differ. So couponers must check with each of their local stores individually. The following are some general patterns which stores follow.

Products often go on sale 3-4 weeks after coupons have been distributed for those products.

Most products are sales priced at least once every 3 months. In other words, sales for most products are rotated about every 12 weeks.

Brand name product coupons appear quarterly on average.

Buy within season for produce. Produce is cheapest at the peak of the season. The price for produce out of season is usually 3-4 times higher. Save more with produce by buying in season and then freeze or can it for use during the off season. The Cheapest Fruits and Vegetables Month by Month.

Companies have to pay for shelf space and prominent displays within the store. Products go on sale or moved to the clearance section to make shelf space for new products, new flavors and products in new packaging. This is the key to understanding seasonal sales cycles.

Holiday-specific products go on sale at the very beginning of the season and even more so after the holiday is over. Turkeys usually go on sale before Thanksgiving. Clothes and decorations go on sale after Christmas. Candy is dirt cheap starting at Halloween midnight.

Turkeys at thanksgiving are considered a “loss leader”, or a product priced so cheap it doesn’t make profit by itself, but it gets people in the store to buy other products.

Common holiday and seasonal promotions are the Super Bowl, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Back to School, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Halloween, and the December holidays. (See common sales by month below)

Products in packaging related to a season, holiday or event go on sale after the season, holiday or event is over. Products featuring the Super Bowl will go on clearance the Monday after the Super Bowl. They want to clear space for the products in the new packaging.

Ice cream goes on sale at the end of winter to make space for new flavors at the beginning of summer. When the old flavors and packaging becomes dirt cheap then use rain checks to get sale prices on the new flavors and packages a couple weeks later. Guide to Sales Cycles for Rock Bottom Prices.

Common sales by month:

 

Sales cycles are not exact and each store may differ slightly. That’s way having a system for organizing coupons is helpful so that you can be ready to use them when you discover store sales through weekly circulars.

Organize, Plan and Execute Your Coupon Strategy

There are multiple ways to organize your coupons and plan your shopping, and each person has to figure out a system to match their own personal style and their local stores’ promotions.

Some websites do all the all the organization for you. They know your local stores and what sales are going on. They have a catalog of coupons that you should be receiving in the mail and they have coupons online that you can print or send to your mobile phone. With these services all you have to do is go to their website, look at the current sales and the coupons they’ve matched with those sales, choose what you want, print what you need, clip the coupons and then go shopping. Some of these websites charge a small fee. Others, like CouponMom.com are free.

I suggest using one or more of these services and then becoming an expert yourself. That way you get all the deals that you find and all the deals that they find. You can also form a club or group to combine your resources and discoveries with friends, family and neighbors.

There are multiple factors that you need to consider when forming your own system. The coupons need to be accessible, arranged in order to avoid expiration dates and maximize savings with local sales. Many sources suggest placing coupons into categories like meat, cereal, hygiene, etc. Common items that are free, like toothpaste, get their own category (Broad and detailed categories to organize coupons).

One of the more common tools of organization is an accordion folder. Some couponers also use shoe boxes, folders with sheet protectors or baseball card inserts, entire file cabinets, and coupon organizing software. Read more about coupon binder tips and coupon orgainizing tips.

When clipping coupons, use a paper cutter to avoid carpel tunnel and blisters that you can get from using scissors.

Some couponers absolutely do not shop with their children, especially those children who have to have what they see in the store immediately. When their children are old enough, many parents teach extreme couponing to their children and get help from their children to maximize savings.

If you want to reduce costs of printing online coupons, part of your system will be to keep track of the coupons that can be sent to your mobile phone or uploaded to the store membership card. 10 Ways to Cut the Costs of Printing Coupons.

There are more tutorials on organization in the coupon directory.

Once you have your own system of organization, strategically combine your coupons with sales at your local stores and execute your plan to get freebies!

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