Okay, I have a Confession to make!!!
I don’t clip coupons, nor does my wife (yeah, I know… here I claim to be frugal, and yet I don’t do this very frugal activity)! In my earlier post called 10 Millionaire Lifestyle Secrets, I indentify SmartMoney’s secret #2 “I shop at Walmart” secret! It explains that the $100,000+ income crowd clips coupons. Now as I said, I don’t clip coupons, but… my grandmother did! So I’m going to start out describing the system that she used, then I’m going to describe some more modern techniques.
But before that, today, I also learned that one of the bigger blog sites FreeMoneyFinance‘s spouse clips coupons. The blogger at FreeMoneyFinance fit’s the Secret #2 description very well, and even makes more than that! Click the following link to read his article called: How to Earn $100 an Hour (Or Save $100,000 in Your Lifetime). This FMF article is truly an eye opener and a must read!!!
After using Coupons to save money, calculate how much you saved per month (or week), and pump it from your savings into a brokerage account, bonds or CDs.
Now onto the coupons saving methods both classic and modern!
The classic way, the type of system my grandmother used:
Basically she clipped coupons from the newspaper! Then she had white well worn envelopes with names in the front to them that she would put the coupons into, and they coupons were organized by product name type and date within the envelope. She then put the envelopes in an accordian style folder.
At first she started this process on the dining room table, but during football season, she would setup her small TV in the dining area. She would do coupons while my grandfather would classify old coins and put them in sleeves. She effectively took a negative time consuming activity and made it a positive by doing it while she was enjoying listening (and watching), the football game.
Times are different today!
Back when my grandmother clipped coupons, the Internet didn’t have the bandwidth it does today (anyone remember the 2400 baud modems?). Today it’s possible to do things such as double savings (this is where you can use 2 coupons on the same product. One from the store and 1 from the manufacturer), and print all kinds of coupons from the Internet! Since I’m new to this, I can’t vouch for any of the new techniques, so instead I’ll leave you with a great intro to coupon clipping video:
And for you coupon clipper extremists, here is a video about people that really squeeze the old screaming pennies!
I used to love clipping coupon but I think sometimes the practice gives you a false sense of frugality. I stopped using coupons once I realized that generic brands are often cheaper than brand name + coupon. Sometimes, Target and Wegman will send me coupons for their own brand; I always use those!
I know coupon junkies who hoard hoard hoard and stock up but, come on… 30 bottles of shampoos in your linen closet is not frugal, I don’t care how much you paid for them.
We’ll give it a spin to see if it works for us. The attached videos showed shoppers getting hundreds of dollars of food for pennies (literally).
I think those shoppers really curved their eating habits to what is on sale or cheap. I don’t know if my family will go for that…
Maybe sometime in the near future, I’ll post about my personal finding, and if it’s worth it to us.
@LeanLifeCoach
I though it was pretty clever of FMF’s family to do the coupon clipping while in the car to church! That’s a great way to maximize wasted time on the road!
The only coupons that we currently use is for Papa John’s pizzas.
I think I’ll start out slow with it and go from there.
@Barb
Sounds like a sound approach! We don’t have an ALDI’s near buy but we do go to both Walmart and Target often enough… 🙂
That woman is my hero – I would have never thought that was possible. I always feel good when I get my Kroger’s receipt and it says I saved $20-$40 on average, but this lady makes my savings seem like chump change. Of course I do this without coupons and focus on generic brands and in store specials. Maybe I need to rethink my strategy.
.-= David @ MBA briefs´s last blog ..Do mass firings improve performance? =-.
@David
Yeah I was amazed by that too! Kudos to her for being so clever and observant!
I’m thinking perhaps blending the strategies… I’m going to just try a few at first, then maybe build on that base of experience…
The video was pretty amazing though 🙂
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@Evolution Of Wealth
I agree, our specialty is Papa John’s pizza coupons!
Back when I was more involved with Upromise, I use to use restaurants.com, but there were just a few restaurants that I liked on the list…
In the future, I’ll have to google for dinning out coupons more often! Thanks for the idea!