This article is on how to save money with coupons – really. Couponing is a great thing to save a lot of money. But if you’re doing it wrong you won’t save a dime. In fact you might even spend more than you usually would.
To really save money with coupons you have to follow these three golden rules.
1. Do You Need It? – Only Get What You Would Buy Anyways
“Cheap” or “free” stuff you don’t really need is neither cheap nor free. If you get 100 cans of cat food for 5 Cents a piece but if you don’t have a cat than you just have a bunch of cans blocking your bedroom or kitchen or hallway or wherever you plan to store your goods. Hence, these cans cost you a lot of quality of life they don’t save you anything and you should not buy them, not even if they were for free.
And getting you to buy stuff you wouldn’t normaly buy is exactly what coupons are made for. That’s because the big companies want to make money, so they have to figure out a way to make you buy stuff you either don’t need or wouldn’t have bought otherwise. Hence, they invented coupons. Your responsibility is to use them in a way that actually saves you money.
Therefore I highly recommend to first make your grocery list based on what you plan to cook and do in the upcoming week. Then do your coupon clipping afterwards. You may build your weekly meal plan on sales though
2. Can You Use It? – Only Buy as much as you can possibly use
If you get one hundred bottles of branded cetchup for 1 Dollar a piece that is really a great deal and if you like cetchup you may actually consider this offer. But if you know that you only use one bottle of cetchup per month this deal would mean that you now have enough cetchup for about 8 years.
This might still be a good deal but if the cetchup expires at the end of the year you will be left with much more than 80 bottles (even if you buy them in january). Which means that 12 bottles of cetchup did actually cost you about 100 $ that’s 10,-$ a piece with coupons and that is not even regular price, it’s not saving you anything, it’s just really expencive cetchup. Hence, a good deal is only a good deal if you can use everything you bought in time.
One addition: If you only eat the one hundred bottles of cetchup because you got them cheap than you’re not saving money you’re just gaining weight (see rule 1).
3. Do You Have A Place For It? – Only Buy As Much As You Can And Want To Store
If you get a thousand packs of toilet paper for free that sounds really great. Because everybody needs toilet paper (rule 1 applies) and it won’t expire (rule 2 applies). But what about the storage?
Lets do some math (don’t be scared I will do all the calculating, but you may skip this paragraph if you have to ^^) Every pack of toilet paper measures about 20x10x4 inches. Lets assume a regular room is 8 feet high that means you can stack 24 packages of toilet paper on top of each other from the floor to the ceiling (no space left and depending on your size you might need a ladder to reach the top of the pile). If you want piles of 24 packages each you need 42 piles to store all your 1000 packages of toilet paper.
That means you need a room of 70 x 35 foot to store your toilet paper which would be about twice the size of my whole apartment. Hence, if somebody would offer me 1000 packs of toilet paper I would have absolutely no place to store it and thankfully decline. I could probably donate almost all of it, but this would still mean I had to carry all this stuff first to – well I would decline
Conclusion: If you’re buying something for the regular price it means you’re paying the store for actually storing it and holding it fresh for the time until you really need it. Which is actually fair since they need to pay their employees, fees, taxes and rent for their place. And paying the store is opposed to buying things when they’re on sale and storing them yourself for years to come. So if and how much couponing you want to do comes down to if you have the space to store the stuff and if you want to store it yourself.
How To Save Money With Coupons
One last thing on “How To Save Money With Coupons”: Time is money. Everytime you sit down to do your couponing think about it. This is time you could be spending with your kids or doing things you love, like swimming, dancing, walking your dog, talking to your spouse – whatever it is you love to do.
So don’t get all caught up by couponing and saving money. Sum up what you actually spend on the things you really need and compare it to what you used to spend. Then you will know what you’re really saving. Divide that amount by the hours you spend on couponing and see how much you “earn per hour”. If you’re satisfied with the result you’re doing it right if not you probably want to reconsider your practice and if you’re really following the golden rules properly.
