Becoming a Savvy Shopper

The basic idea of Savvy Shopping is combing store sales with coupons to get free or almost free food & household items!!

Step 1. Subscribe to your local news paper to receive the Sunday paper. For Denver readers you can subscribe here. For the best savings and most stockpile, I encourage you to purchase 1 paper per person in your family.

• Until you subscribe, you can go to any Dollar Tree and purchase the Sunday paper for only $1.00. Tip: They have the papers there until the following Sunday or until they sell out, so many times you can go on Monday and there will still be papers left! WARNING: Check the papers to make sure they have the coupon inserts. Many people go through the papers and pull out the inserts and do not buy it, sad, but true.

Step 2. Develop an organizational system that works for you. Not every system is perfect for each person, but you must have some kind of system or the coupons will become overwhelming!!! I take my coupons with me every time I go shopping, so I like them to be organized by category according to how my stores are organized. Here are several different methods of organization. I recently changed from the expandable folder to the binder method.

• Binder System: I just recently switched over to this method and I am loving it! Hip2Save has a wonderful video on how to set this system up! Go to her home page. On the right hand side you will see "Follow Me Monday" Videos. Click on "Coupon Organization" and that will take you to the two part video series on how to buy and organize your binder. Because of the video I switched!

• Expandable Folder System: Here is a photo of a similar expanding file that I used to carry. I had 3 different folders, one for toiletries, one for food and one for miscellaneous.

• Index Box Method: This method is good to get started to make sure you are actually going to clip coupons and save, before you go out and buy the items for the binder or expandable folders. Check out Money Saving Mom for her method of setting up the Index Box.

Step 3. Subscribe to The Grocery Game (GG). To sign up, it will ask you for your zip code and then it will provide you with the stores in your region. The first month in only $1. After the trial, it's $15 for the first store and $5 for each store for an 8 week subscription.

If you find this blog helpful to you in saving money, when you sign up for GG, please put down my email under the referral section.

savvyshopperdenver@gmail.com

You might ask, "How can there be any savings after you are paying for subscriptions?" I had the same question, but when I save 60-90% off of my total each time I shop, it proves to me that the $25 every 8 weeks that I pay is worth it! It only takes me about 2 trips to the grocery store to cover my costs.

Step 4. Register your grocery discount card for ecoupons. When you load a coupon to your card, the coupon does not double and it works only for one item. You can stack your ecoupons and a printed manufactured coupon to get great deals!!! There are three different sites available for this.

• Cell Fire-The key to Cell Fire is to only register one card per person. If you register 2 cards then you will not be able to get all of the coupons for each card, you have to choose which store you want the one coupon loaded to. So I have one card registered under myself and one under my husband. New coupons are available all of the time, so check this site frequently for new coupons.

• P&Gesaver-Proctor and Gamble have coupons available at the beginning of each month.

• Shortcuts-I am new with Shortcuts, so I do not have much to say about it. As I learn more I will update you with another post if there are any tricks to it.

Step 5. Begin printing coupons. On my home page there is a long list of sites that you can print coupons from. I typically print coupons out that I know for sure I will use because they change the coupons frequently. But I do not print all of them because it take a lot of ink from my printer. Many people do print off all of the coupons any time new ones come out. I file these coupons in the correct category so they are easy to locate in the grocery store.

These are the basic of clipping coupons and getting organized! If you decide to get started with this crazy "sickness" of couponing, then check out how to prepare to go to the grocery store; organized with your list and coupons. After you get the hang of clipping coupons and actually using them at the grocery store, there are lots of little tips that I will offer in another post to help you become the best savvy shopper!

Any scissor will do...

Alli