Turning into the crazy coupon lady
Ever since that Extreme Couponing show came on, Ron has been having me go nuts on clipping coupons and looking for sales. My purse is already about to EXPLODE with coupons, since there are so many ways to get them; it's not just through the Sunday paper anymore. (I got a subscription for the Sunday paper for 50c a copy instead of $1.75; might as well use a coupon to start couponing.) Besides coupons.com, I've found http://www.jillcataldo.com/ and http://www.mashupmom.com/ for local and national stores, plus the Jill site has links to other sites like Avenu which link eCoupons to my Preferred card. (I tried using it yesterday, and it let me use the Avenu discount combined with my Preferred Card discount, making my deodorant nearly free.)
Target has a ridiculous amount of coupons, which can be printed twice on one computer. Most of the coupons on their site are Target coupons, but I have seen a few that are manufacturer coupons, which mean they can be used at different stores. Wal*Mart does that too, but we don't shop there very often, as the nearest one is ghetto as hell and the other one in Niles is kind of a drive. With printing coupons, I figured out I need to surf those sites on IE, as Firefox doesn't work right with their software. Also, the printer needs to be on, because they print immediately - no saving them as PDFs for later or anything like that.
We don't have any stores that do double coupons, but unlike people who live in the boonies, we have A LOT of stores to choose from. As some of yas know, I already shop at four to six stores a week, mostly while doing other things, so it's not like I'm wasting gas. However, I doubt we'll ever get the 90+% off deals like the people on TV ($2k in a haul and paying $25 for it), because:
1) I believe in product loyalty, but I'm willing to give new products a try. Some of these people will buy whatever they get the deal on, even if they don't particularly like what they bought. That seems foolish to me, because if we don't like something, we won't eat it, which ends up being a waste of money, as minuscule as that may be.
2) I don't stockpile due to space. My pantry shares apace with the furnace, and we live in an apartment, so we don't exactly have basements and garages to buy up 60 bottles of mustard. Nor would we want to anyway, unless we were buying for a charity that was picking it up at the store, since we have a little car.
I have been thinking this would be a great way for a Pagan group to get a food pantry going, since one with dedicated space would have the capacity to stock up like these folks. People could donate coupons to them to use (stuff they don't want), as well as do their own couponing, and the stockpile would build up rather quickly! If everyone in the community met up once a month to drop off just the web coupons they didn't want (but were eligible to print), imagine what we could do! (Now I wonder if a 501[c] status can use coupons, which I don't see why not. They'd be out of paying taxes, which would be *crazy* savings - close to free for sure!)
Just my mind thinking...
Target has a ridiculous amount of coupons, which can be printed twice on one computer. Most of the coupons on their site are Target coupons, but I have seen a few that are manufacturer coupons, which mean they can be used at different stores. Wal*Mart does that too, but we don't shop there very often, as the nearest one is ghetto as hell and the other one in Niles is kind of a drive. With printing coupons, I figured out I need to surf those sites on IE, as Firefox doesn't work right with their software. Also, the printer needs to be on, because they print immediately - no saving them as PDFs for later or anything like that.
We don't have any stores that do double coupons, but unlike people who live in the boonies, we have A LOT of stores to choose from. As some of yas know, I already shop at four to six stores a week, mostly while doing other things, so it's not like I'm wasting gas. However, I doubt we'll ever get the 90+% off deals like the people on TV ($2k in a haul and paying $25 for it), because:
1) I believe in product loyalty, but I'm willing to give new products a try. Some of these people will buy whatever they get the deal on, even if they don't particularly like what they bought. That seems foolish to me, because if we don't like something, we won't eat it, which ends up being a waste of money, as minuscule as that may be.
2) I don't stockpile due to space. My pantry shares apace with the furnace, and we live in an apartment, so we don't exactly have basements and garages to buy up 60 bottles of mustard. Nor would we want to anyway, unless we were buying for a charity that was picking it up at the store, since we have a little car.
I have been thinking this would be a great way for a Pagan group to get a food pantry going, since one with dedicated space would have the capacity to stock up like these folks. People could donate coupons to them to use (stuff they don't want), as well as do their own couponing, and the stockpile would build up rather quickly! If everyone in the community met up once a month to drop off just the web coupons they didn't want (but were eligible to print), imagine what we could do! (Now I wonder if a 501[c] status can use coupons, which I don't see why not. They'd be out of paying taxes, which would be *crazy* savings - close to free for sure!)
Just my mind thinking...