The very, very, very first thing to know about how to save a lot of money is where to find your coupons.  Sales are great, but they’re even better when you can match them up with a coupon and get the items free or almost free!

• The best place to find coupons is in the Sunday newspaper inserts.  You can either have the paper delivered to your door or you can go out and buy it.  I find that in our city, it’s cheaper for me to go and buy it in the store.  I’ve heard that some cities will give you a discount if you order more than one paper or if you’re live outside that city, but I don’t know this from experience.  I’ve also heard that The Dollar Tree sells the Sunday paper for the rest of the week for only $1 (of course!).  Anyway, I buy four newspapers every week.  How did I decide on four?  I buy one for every member of our family.  This allows me to stock up on things…if you only buy one paper, you’ll only have one coupon for a specific item, so you’ll only be able to buy the one you’ll use right away.

• Another place to find coupons is on the internet.  Many manufacturers offer coupons on their web sites.  Coupon Surfer has a variety of good coupons.  There are even sites such as Shortcuts and Cellfire where you can load coupons directly onto your store card.  Then when you buy those items and swipe your card, the coupon amount comes off!  No clipping involved!  In the coming weeks, I’ll be posting lists of what I consider to be great Internet Printable Coupons (IPQ’s).

• At many stores, they have tearpad or “blinkie” machines that dispense coupons.  Keep your eye peeled for these because a lot of times, there will be a sale on these items in a few weeks!

• Another way to get your coupons is through coupon clipping services.  Note that you’re not paying for the coupon (that’s illegal), just for the time and effort of the clipper.  When there’s a really exceptional sale, I’ll order a batch of coupons on ebay on Sunday night and get them on Wednesday or Thursday so that I can use them before the sale ends.  I always make sure to send the seller a note specifically asking to receive them before the end of the week and the sellers I’ve worked with have been more than happy to oblige.

• And then there’s dumpster diving at a recycling center.  I have to admit, I’m scared of this.  I finally found out that there is a recycling center in the Walmart parking lot (don’t ask me why I’d never seen it before!) and got up the courage to try to find some inserts in the newspapers bin.  The first time I went, they must have just emptied it because I couldn’t reach any (keep in mind that it’s illegal to crawl into dumpsters).  The second time, I found about half an insert and then a security car pulled up and the just sat there staring at me.  So I hightailed it out of there and had Chad drop me at the door of Walmart so I could start shopping while he parked.  He said that security car followed him all over the entire parking lot!  So I got some more tips from fellow bloggers and am hoping to have a better experience next time.  But to sum up, that’s an option.  Others have reported that they can get tons of inserts absolutely free this way!

Photo by ninjapoodles

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