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Extreme Couponing for the Rest of Us

Many have heard of the TLC show “Extreme Couponing“ which shows people basically paying nothing for groceries with creative use of coupons. There is also bloggers like the CouponMom and The Krazy Coupon Lady. The problem with their approaches is that they take a lot of time, and tedious work, which most people do not have. In this post, I wanted to outline a simpler way to use coupons and grocery shop which does not take a lot of time, and which I personally have found to be very easy.

What I do is very simple – I look through five major online coupon sites once a week, usually on Sunday morning and print out whatever coupons my family may need, not just this week, but in the near future. The sites I use are Coupons.com, RedPlum‘s Grocery Coupons, Coupon Network, Smart Source and Target Coupons. Most of these coupons are manufacturer coupons and have several weeks of expiration ahead of them. Target in particular also prints manufacturer coupons in addition to regular Target coupons which theoretically can be used elsewhere. Then I print these, clip them and put them away in my coupon folder. Whenever we go shopping, we check the coupons to see if there is anything there that may be applicable. It usually takes about 5-10 minutes on a Sunday morning, but we have found use for these coupons even several weeks later.

Some additional tips:

• Target allows one Target and one manufacturer coupon per item. We also have a Target card that saves us 5% (which basically covers sales tax). Recently Target has started offering free shipping for Target card holders which we have been trying out for some bulky items like diapers.
• Some stores like Giant double manufacturer coupons under $1. We try to eyeball those deals but don’t pull out a calculator everytime we go shopping there.
• For certain items, we almost always buy store brand like Target diapers and wipes; Giant brand diet soda, etc. You always get savings no matter what and in Target’s case, there are sometimes coupons as well. You can try using the store brand before buying a lot of it in case you don’t like it but certain items like medicine, baby formula, diapers, etc. are all made by the same companies because of the patents involved or FDA approval required.
• We have storage space and extra freezer and fridge space for good deals. We have in the past bought 20-30 boxes of frozen pizza on sale, or 20-30 bottles of soda when they were really cheap. When there is a really great sale (think lowest price in 3-6 months), we try to stock up.
• Certain brands are known to sometimes have coupons on their website. We sometimes spot check those when there is time.
• Amazon.com and some other online retailers have occasionally some great deals on groceries. We have bought cheap dishwasher detergent and cereal online in the past.
• For those living in the Baltimore area – try to shop in the county for beverages since the city charges a bottle tax.

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