In the past, I’ve mentioned a lot of disparate facts about how we collect and use coupons, so I thought it might be worthwhile to show off our entire coupon organization system so it’s clear how we do it. Because of this system, the only time we really invest in coupons is a bit of spare time during Sunday breakfasts, some late evening idle internet surfing, and a few extra minutes when assembling our grocery list, and we often save $30 at the store because of coupons. Our system is not one of those complex and obsessive ones that tries to squeeze out every nickel - it’s merely the methodology we’ve found that gives us the maximum bang for the buck.

Here’s how we maximize our coupon value, from top to bottom.

Meet Our Coupon Binder

The best place to start is the centerpiece of the system: our coupon binder.

It’s actually just a very cheap photo album with clear pockets and a binder that allows you to move pages around as you wish. Whenever we have a new coupon to add, we just toss it in the binder in the appropriate place.

Appropriate place? We sort our coupons by one criteria and one criteria alone: by expiration date. This makes it easy for us to quickly find and eliminate the expired coupons and also keep tabs on the coupons that are getting close to expiration.

Here’s a peek inside the binder.

As you can see, the coupons each have a pocket to themselves, so we can quickly flip through the book and find what we want. We keep multiples of the same coupon in the same pocket. Thumbing through reams of coupons is a giant waste of time and drastically reduces the cost-effectiveness of the coupon clipping time investment.

The Coupons We Clip

We have a pretty simple set of criteria for clipping a coupon.

First, is it something we’re sure we’ll use? If so, we’ll clip any coupon for that item.

Second, does the coupon have a face value of $1 or more? These are coupons that are usually used as part of a large marketing campaign for a specific product and are ones that are often paired with a sale in the store within the next month or two (the one month coupon strategy at work). If we might use the product (in other words, we use that type of product, but not necessarily that brand), we’ll clip it. It’s because of this that I’m currently using Herbal Essences shampoo and Old Spice body wash in the shower, for example - I wouldn’t normally buy those brands, but clipping big discount coupons and waiting for a sale made the items very cheap.

Third, is the coupon for an item that’s often cheap or on sale anyway? A good example here is breakfast cereals (which is why you see the Honey Nut Cheerios coupon in the binder above) - they’re usually low in price and regularly go on sale, too.

If a coupon hits one of these categories, we clip it. This means our binder is often close to full and we often toss about half of the coupons we clip, but the other half really save us a lot.

Where Do We Get Coupons?

On Sunday mornings, I usually clip coupons from the Sunday paper at the breakfast table while everyone’s eating breakfast. I’ll just quickly go through the coupon sections, cut the coupons we want, and save any store flyers I see (they’re important later). This is a minimal time investment, because we’d all be sitting there eating breakfast anyway, and it’s a good opportunity to teach the value of living frugally to the kids.

If the Sunday coupons are exceptionally good, I’ll go to the local convenience store really early on Monday morning and ask the cashier to let me pillage coupon sections out of the old Sunday papers. I’ll score ten papers’ worth of flyers and cut the goodies out of them the following Sunday.

On lazy evenings, my wife or I will do some web surfing, finding coupons at places like Coupons.com and Target.com. The latter is especially nice because you can use the Target.com coupons and manufacturer coupons at the same time on purchases at Target, so you can get stuff for free sometimes if you plan carefully.

If I identify some truly exceptional coupons (for example, not long ago I had coupons for $2 off a jug of V-8 Fusion - that’s the 100% juice V-8), I might hit up a coupon broker to send me a bunch of copies of that coupon. I just Google “coupon broker” and then pay someone else a few cents to dig through their flyers and clip the coupons for me.

That’s all we do. It takes very little time in a given week to collect all the coupons and toss them in the binder.

The Pre-Shopping Ritual

Each Friday evening (or sometimes Saturday evening), we’ll assemble a grocery list. We usually make up a meal plan for the next week, make sure we have everything we need for all of those meals, and then check on the status of our household staples (toiletries, milk, flour, etc.). This gives us the backbone of our list.

A note on the meal plan We usually base our meal plan on the flyer from the local Fareway - our preferred grocery store. We get the Fareway and Hy-Vee flyers (the two main local grocery chains) in the mail each week and then use them to prepare a meal plan, usually preferring the Fareway flyer (because it’s basically lower on almost everything, as we discovered after some careful pricebooking). We just identify the fresh items on sale in the flyer and then try to base meals around those fresh items.

We also go through the flyers and look for obvious loss leaders in the flyers. What items are on sale that are low enough to seem genuinely surprising? We try to match these up with coupons we have, so that if we add an extra item to the list, we’re adding something that’s only going to cost pennies and is sometimes free.

We then pull out all of the coupons that match up with items on our list and then put them in a few pages at the back of the binder for easy access when shopping.

The extra time added to our shopping planning by coupons is maybe ten minutes, tops. We put probably half an hour total into our shopping preparation, but our whole preparation plan saves us about $50 per grocery shopping trip, so it’s time well spent.

While In The Store

We take our coupon binder with us when grocery shopping, but we primarily just stick to our list. We do keep our eyes open for any unadvertised in-store specials - every once in a while, we’ll find one that matches up well with a coupon in our binder and thus we grab it immediately. Aside from this, we just follow the shopping list, then pull out all of our coupons from the back pages of the binder at the checkout aisle.

Our time actually in the store is vastly reduced compared to the time we’d spend without any preparation. The time savings here mitigates the time investment made with the extra planning.

Is It Worth It?

Two weeks ago (the last “normal” week around here that didn’t involve a weekend camping trip or other chaos), I kept track of the time spent with couponing. If you count the time spent at the breakfast table clipping coupons as time spent just couponing, we spent 23 minutes on coupons alone that week, and an extra 14 minutes on preparing a grocery list and meal plan, giving us a total of 37 minutes spent planning our weekly shopping trip. When in the store, we saved approximately fifteen minutes because we had a tight, clear shopping list to follow, so our total time lost to the coupons was roughly 22 minutes for the week.

The savings from the coupons alone was $21 on our final receipt, a slightly below average week. That means our “wage” for clipping coupons with this system was $57.27 an hour after taxes for the given sample week.

In reality, our savings from investing the time to properly plan our shopping was significantly higher than that, even. By sticking to a shopping list, we avoided many impulse buys. By planning our meals in advance in accordance with the fresh items on sale, we pocketed even more savings on our food purchases. These are additional savings that I’m not even attempting to quantify, but both are real and quite tangible.

Couponing is clearly worth it in our case. The relatively small time investment it adds to our shopping is well worth the real cash savings we realize from our system.

Let me address a few of the usual coupon complaints.

Couponing is stupid because you’re not buying fresh, healthy food. We rarely use food coupons at all, and when we do, they’re usually for breakfast cereals like Cheerios, frozen vegetables, yogurt, and occasionally ice cream. The vast majority of our coupon clipping is for hygiene items (like shampoo, soap, razors, etc.) and other household items (like dishwashing detergent, etc.).

For example, if you look at the picture of our coupon book above, you’ll see six coupons: one frozen yogurt coupon, one Cheerios coupon, one Ziploc baggie coupon, a toothpaste coupon, a body wash coupon, and a facial cleanser coupon. Not exactly a big pile of junk food - and we still save a lot at the store. Our actual meal planning is based around the fresh produce that’s on sale that week.

Couponing is stupid because it’s not cost effective and is a waste of my time. We get $57.27 an hour after taxes for something we can largely do in our pajamas at the Sunday morning breakfast table. If you think that’s a waste of your time, be my guest. I consider it a pretty effective use of my time.

Couponing is stupid because it’s all about consumerism. I don’t really care that much about consumerism if I can get soap for a quarter. I’m not seeking the latest products - I’m seeking cheap. If I can get cheaper quality items without the coupons, the coupons go in the trash. If you want to label that consumerism, feel free, but I consider it a pretty frugal methodology.

Recently, my wife and I had some guests over to visit. While here, one of the guests used the restroom on the main floor of our home, where we have a large closet where we store supplies over the long haul. She observed that there were about twenty bars of soap, several bottles of Old Spice body wash, several large bottles of shampoo, and six boxes of our son’s favorite breakfast cereal (Yogurt Burst Cheerios) stowed away in there, and when she came out, she made a half-curious and half-sarcastic comment about them.

Here’s the real scoop: every item listed above cost us less than a dime. In each case, we saw a tremendous buying opportunity matching coupons to a sale and we simply stocked up big time on those items, leaving us with a large closet stuffed full with unusual items. I like to call it anticipation buying.

Anticipation buying revolves around four distinct principles.

First, there are some items that we will continually use over time. Soap, shampoo, oatmeal, Yogurt Burst Cheerios (without them, our son would riot), flour, sugar, some fruit juices, milk, coffee, razor blades, toilet paper - these are items that we use over and over again and continually need to stock up on. Because we’re aware of this, we can use a specific plan of attack for these items to get low prices on them.

Second, there are irregular opportunities to find such items on sale. These items pop up on sale on a completely irregular basis. Brand A shampoo might be on sale one week, then two weeks later Brand B will be on sale. Not only might national brands be running a promotion where items are on sale in stores, but individual stores might select different loss leaders to get people in the door.

In order to keep up on these individual sales, we just follow the grocery flyers in our Sunday paper (and in other flyers we get in the mail throughout the week). I usually have flyers for all of the local grocery stores and I keep an eye out for their big sales by reading their flyers each Sunday over breakfast.

Third, there are irregular opportunities to find strong coupons on such items. I clip every coupon for items in the above categories that are of acceptable brands from the Sunday paper, and if I see a very good coupon, I’ll stop at the local convenience store early on Monday morning and ask for the inserts out of the old Sunday papers (the cashier always says “Sure” and I start scavenging for coupon inserts). Sometimes, I can get as many as fifteen of the good coupons - if they’re for $1.50 off an item I know we’ll use frequently, it’s like cash in the pocket.

So, we patiently clip all coupons for these items and save them until there’s a sale, then stock up. I have the coupons. I have the flyers. I then just wait for them to sync up. Usually, it happens about a month or so after I clip the coupons (yep, the one month coupon strategy at work).

Another tactic to note: quite often, individual store flyers will have coupons that match the manufacturer’s coupons you have. Often, you can use these coupons simultaneously. So, let’s say my local Fareway ad has a coupon letting me get Herbal Essences shampoo or conditioner for $1.99 a bottle (limit 6) and I have three “save $3 on 2 bottles” coupon from the manufacturer. I just take all of them there and walk out with good shampoo and conditioner for $0.49 a bottle.

Here’s a real-world example. Recently, I had several copies of a coupon that permitted me to save $3 on any two bottles of Old Spice body wash. I waited until I noticed a sale - and not long ago, there was one at a local Walgreen’s. The individual bottles were $1.79 on sale there. I took in my wad of coupons and picked up ten bottles, paying $0.29 a bottle. I walked out of the store with ten bottles of soap, having spent less than $4 total - and it was just a five minute stop on my normal shopping trip. That’s how you save money.

What’s the long-term effect? The result from doing this regularly is quite interesting. Our regular shopping lists almost never have these “anticipation” items on it. Instead, they almost always just list the food items we need for the week, which means that at the grocery store, we rarely even visit big sections of the store. We mostly visit the produce aisle, the meat counter, the dairy area (for milk, etc.), and a few other specific places (pasta, canned items, bread when I’ve not made any), and that’s about it. Our grocery bills are cheaper and our shopping trips are actually quite a bit shorter because we’re not going over to the far side of the store to pick up shampoo or toilet paper - the time invested in executing this strategy is partially redeemed on ordinary shopping trips.

When I first started The Simple Dollar, I had a very simple coupon strategy that didn’t save me a whole lot of money. It’s been fun to watch the strategy evolve over the years - first syncing it with a grocery list and evolving that strategy a bit, then discovering the figuring out how sales and coupons synchronized and now evolving that strategy a bit. I used to believe that perhaps coupons weren’t worth the time invested, but I’ve found more and more that if you do it intelligently, there are some serious savings to be had - and it doesn’t take as much time as you might think.

One of the more common fund raisers for youth groups around here is the “Entertainment” book. It’s essentially a rather thick book of coupons (the Des Moines area one we have has about 300 pages) with a lot of “buy one, get one free” offers - and some straight-up discounts - on items from local businesses. For us, the book cost $20 and most of the coupons last through the following November.

At first glance through the book, it seems like a spectacularly good deal. Not only is your $20 helping out a local youth group or civic organization, you also get an enormous book of coupons for items from a lot of local businesses and chain stores. For me, the real value comes in the coupons for buckets of balls at a local driving range - you can buy one and get a bucket for free. This means that my $4 or $5, which would normally buy a single bucket of balls and thus provide me about an hour’s worth of entertainment suddenly becomes two hours’ worth, or else it lets me go bash some balls around with a friend for free (assuming of course my pal buys a bucket).

There are two reasons why a book of such coupons might not pay off - here they are along with strategies for overcoming them.

The first possibility is that you’ll end up spending more because you have the coupons. One good way to fend off this possibility is to go through the entire book of coupons soon after you get it, pull out all of the coupons that you’re pretty sure you’ll use, then get rid of the book so you’re not tempted to use some of those other “coupons” to spend money you shouldn’t be spending. I went through our book and pulled out somewhere around 50 coupons, then I proceeded to give the book to friends to pull out more coupons that they might use - I didn’t even want the temptation to “buy one, get one free” at a local coffee shop.

Another possibility is you might forget all about the book. The best way to do this is to keep the book out in a place where you’ll often see it. We do this by keeping the coupons we already pulled out in our coupon box, which we go through so often that we regularly see the ones we decided to keep. I also keep about three of them in my wallet at all times - almost always, I’ll carry one around to bat a bucket of balls at a driving range.

Here’s the bottom line on such books: if you look at it as a way to participate in a group’s fund raiser, it’s definitely worthwhile. I’d much rather have one of these books that could potentially save me some money rather than an overpriced item out of a catalogue that I don’t want at all. From a strictly frugal standpoint, it’s questionable as to whether it saves money - for example, I’m more likely to go out and whack away at a bucket of balls for $3 than for $6, but would I have gone anyway without the coupon? Still, if an “Entertainment” book is an option for you as a fundraising purchase, it’s likely a much better option than some of the other overpriced things you could be asked to buy.

Each Sunday, my wife and I receive the Des Moines Register on our doorstep. It provides us material to read over while we eat breakfast on Sunday, and we usually peruse the flyers inside the paper as well to see what’s on sale at various Iowa grocery stores in the next week (most of these flyers cover most of the state of Iowa).

We also usually take the time to leaf through the coupon flyers in the paper. There are usually one to four flyers that contain coupons from large food and consumer goods companies, usually touting various name brand products. We usually find about two to three coupons per paper worth clipping, and the savings is usually enough to pay for the paper and a bit more.

The question that most frugal people ask about this situation is how is this worthwhile? Most of the coupons in such sections don’t offer enough of a discount over the generic product to make it purely cost-effective. The ones that are cost-effective are often for products that we don’t buy anyway. So why look?

The real reason is there are about two coupons per issue that are really worthwhile, and finding them while eating breakfast is definitely worthwhile - for me. For example, a while back I found a $3 off coupon for Luvs diapers which, when used during the next grocery store visit on the least expensive package, got us 40 diapers for about two cents each - an incredible deal.

Is the time invested cost-effective? Probably not. If it doesn’t happen as a leisurely activity over breakfast, we usually don’t bother with the coupon section at all. It is simply not cost effective to browse the Sunday flyers for coupons as a separate activity. That’s not to say it’s a worthless activity - you can often save a buck or two from the browse if you know what to look for.

The best approach I’ve found? Browse through them very quickly, just looking for items that are very similar to things you regularly purchase. If you know the price and the coupon is worthwhile, clip it; if you don’t know, the coupon should be a dollar off at least before bothering. If you find one that’s really stellar for your use, you might find it worthwhile to find an online coupon broker and get a bunch of them. Using this quick rule of thumb might cause you to miss a coupon or two that’s worthwhile, but it will very quickly lead you to good coupons that are worth your while. Of course, if you don’t have that casual time with the Sunday newspaper anyway, the coupons aren’t worth the effort.

Who says web surfing can’t directly save you money? First of all, here are five websites I use on a very frequent basis that have directly saved me significant money.

Remember The Milk
http://www.rememberthemilk.com

I wrote ecstatically about this site before, but the same still holds true: I use it to manage my grocery list, among other things. I just add items to Remember the Milk whenever I think of it, then when I’m out at the store, I fire up the mobile version of the site and there’s my shopping list right on my cell phone. This makes it incredibly easy to just follow the grocery list and get out of the store without spending extra money.

Coupons.com
http://www.coupons.com

This is basically the equivalent of printing money. When you have your shopping list ready, just visit this site and scroll through the pile of available coupons. Print the ones that match what’s on your list - most of them won’t, but I usually find one or two that do. I also like to visit the website of the grocery store I’m about to visit to pick up even more coupons. Quite often, five minutes of web surfing in this fashion can save me another $5 on a grocery store visit. No need to worry about clipping coupons at all; just print the ones you actually can use out before you go to the store.

FatWallet
http://www.fatwallet.com/

If you’re about to make a larger purchase, stop by FatWallet before dropping the cash. The site is basically a collection of deals on all kinds of products from various vendors, from computers to housewares. I looked at FatWallet just before buying my laptop and after about three minutes of looking around, I found a Dell code that knocked $300 off of the price. I’ve found other deals there, too, just by looking around a bit before making a planned larger purchase.

PaperBackSwap
http://www.paperbackswap.com/

PaperBackSwap is another site I’ve waxed ecstatic about in the past, but it still holds true: it’s an incredibly cheap way to get books in the mail at home. Basically, for every book you don’t want any more that you’re willing to ship via media mail to someone else who wants it (you’re matched up at the site), you can request any of the million-plus books there to be shipped to you for free.

What about other online sites?
Many people use such sites as Priceline.com and Shopping.com for online comparison shopping, and I agree that you can sometimes find deals by using them. However, I almost always find that the prices are slightly inflated at these types of sites. For example, I was recently able to find a very nice price for an airline ticket online, and it would have been quite easy to just click and order it. However, I just directly called the airline, told them the price that I could get online, and asked them if they could directly beat it. They did almost immediately by about $20.

In short, don’t believe in online comparison shoppers as the be-all-end-all of saving money. Although the prices are better than what you might find off the shelf, quite often a little more legwork can save you a little bit more than that. If you’re going to book a flight, get a hotel room, or other such things online, take an extra minute to call up the airline or hotel. Tell them the price you can get online and ask if they can directly beat it. Quite often, they will; by cutting out the middleman, you save and the airline or hotel might be making an extra dollar or two as well.

The same is true for comparison shopping. I’ve often found that once I locate the best price on a comparison shopping site, if I go to that specific site and enter directly, I can find the same item for the same price - or often cheaper.

Remember, comparison shopping sites are a tool to help you save money; they are rarely the ultimate answer themselves.

As I’ve discussed before, I’m a big fan of sensible coupon use. I rarely enter a grocery store without a shopping list with fifteen coupons paperclipped to it, and people in line behind me are often shocked as they watch my shopping total go down, down, down to sometimes amazingly low amounts. I wouldn’t want to even speculate how much I’ve saved in the past month with grocery coupons, but I’d be willing to bet that it’s reduced my food, household, and toiletry bills by 30% or better.

The funny part is that I really don’t spend very much time collecting the coupons. Instead, I effectively just hire others to do it for me - and still make a tidy profit. I merely visit a coupon broker once a week or so to see what they’ve clipped out of the Sunday papers and pay them a tiny fee for just the coupons I want. For a dollar or two, I get a big heaping envelope of coupons that I can basically directly take to the store and save money with.

Let me use an example. One great, easy to understand coupon broker is Kirstin’s Coupon Corner. She lists all of the coupons she has, along with a tiny price for each one.

Let’s say on Sunday evening, I assemble the start of a grocery list for next Saturday’s shopping excursion (I do this sometimes, mostly because cutting down to one grocery trip a week or less is a big money saver). I look through the cupboard and add the following items that I need to the list:
A tube of Crest toothpaste
A package of Luvs diapers
Dishwashing fluid (probably Dawn or generic)
Tabasco sauce
K-Y jelly
stewed tomatoes

I visit Kirstin’s Coupon Corner and I start matching up these items with coupons she has available:

$0.10 - Crest Paste or Liquid Gel $1/1
$0.10 - Luvs Jumbo pack or larger $3/1
$0.05 - Dawn .50/1
$0.05 - Tabasco Sauce .50/1
$0.10 - K-Y product (2.75oz or larger) $2/1
$0.05 - Hunt’s Tomatoes (11oz or larger) .45/3

I decide to get three of the Luvs coupons because it’s a stellar deal, so I request $0.65 in coupons from Kirstin, plus $0.39 in postage. I send her off a PayPal payment of $1.04 and this list of coupons.

On Friday, I open up my mailbox and there’s an envelope from Kirstin that I ordered. I take them to the store. How much do I save on stuff I would have purchased anyway? $13.45. It cost me $1.04 and about fifteen minutes extra time - and I didn’t even have to open up the Sunday paper. If you want to blow things out of the water even more, try lining up this strategy with a double coupon day at your local grocery store.

In the past, I’ve discussed the art of clipping coupons as well as the huge advantages of a grocery list. Lately, I’ve found that combining the two together can net a very nice financial edge - and it only takes me about ten minutes a week.

I schedule my primary shopping trip on Saturday mornings. The reason for this is that local grocery stores are usually offering a ton of samples at about ten or eleven in the morning on Saturday, so I can usually get most of Saturday’s lunch for free when I make multiple stops (and I usually do).

I also save coupon sections from the Sunday newspaper. I just pull them out when I’m reading the paper and set them aside for later use. If you don’t get a Sunday paper, check at a local convenience store on Monday morning and they’ll usually let you scavenge one for ads - something I’ve done in the past.

On Friday evening, I finish my grocery list. I make sure that everything I’m going to buy at the store is on it - all of my food items, toiletries, and so forth. I usually check a few of the essentials when doing this.

Then, I sit down with the saved coupons and clip everything that matches. Since I usually buy the brand that Consumer Reports recommends in bulk, I just look for coupons of those specific brands unless I spot an exceptional deal (like a recent $3 off on Luvs diapers, which made a small bag of them less than a nickel a diaper). Everything else, I toss. This usually nets me only a couple coupons.

I also do some online searching for coupons. I’ll check the coupon page at my local grocery store’s site, as well as a few general coupon sites, but I never print a coupon that doesn’t match up with my list.

I paperclip the coupons to my list and then go shopping on Saturday morning. In the store, I stick to my list and I still look for in-store bargains that beat the coupons, though these are rare. Sticking to the list ensures that I buy very few unnecessary things at the store. If I end up with any unused coupons, I save them for future weeks.

This process, both the individual pieces and in combination, has cut about 40% off of my weekly grocery / household / toiletry bill and I barely notice the difference.

I was surprised recently to find out that several regular readers of The Simple Dollar were completely unaware of Froogle, Google’s comparative shopping search engine. It’s such a powerful tool for finding good and reputable deals that I wrote up a brief tour of the site, including a clear example, so that you can see how powerful this free tool really is.

First thing, pop open a new window with Froogle in it. This way, you can use Froogle yourself while following along with my example. You’ll immediately notice that the homepage of Froogle is clean, open, and very similar to the front page of Google itself. You’re immediately drawn to the search blank, so type in a product you’re interested in. For this example, I’m doing some video game shopping for my nephew, so type in Madden NFL 07 Playstation 2 in the search field.

You’ll immediately see a results page with a ton of options along the top; we’ll get back to these in a minute. The first thing to look at is the extensive listing of matching items that fills up the main part of the page. Right above this, in the upper right on the green bar, is an option for different sorting mechanisms for the results. By default, they’re sorted by relevance, but I often quickly switch this to “sort by price: low to high.” Give it a try.

Quickly, I realize that there is a flood of results here, so I add some criteria using the abundance of options along the top section. I don’t want to pay more than $40 for it, so I choose the “Under $40″ option, which quickly eliminates some results. I also click on “4 Stars and Up” so that I know that I’m buying from a reputable individual. With just a few clicks, I’ve pared the results down to just four matches, where I can see that I can get the game for as low as $37. From here, I can click on the item itself or just jot down the cost that I can get it at using Froogle and use it when shopping elsewhere. I saw it on the shelf recently at Target for $44.99, and it’s also available at Amazon.com for $39.99. Is the reliability and trustworthiness of Amazon worth the extra $3, especially if the shipping is free? Thirty seconds with Froogle brought this money-saving option to my attention.

Froogle is also a good way to find retailers for niche items. For example, I discovered a wonderful site with great customer response and prices on fragrances (Fragrance Shop, for those interested) and I’ll often take my business there if purchasing a new cologne or a bottle of perfume for my wife.

In short, it’s a highly valuable free tool for saving a good deal of money on the internet. I would estimate that Froogle has saved me $50 in the past year alone, and at least $20 this Christmas season so far.