Goodwill, Salvation Army, and Consignments shops are great places to look for things. However sometimes when paired with a sale and a coupon its actually cheaper to buy it new at a store. Lots of stores offer coupons. JCPenny, Younkers, Old Navy, Bed Bath and Beyond almost always have coupons. Sometimes you will find online codes or coupons for other stores such as: Gap, Lane Bryant, New York and Company, Victoria Secret, etc.
JCPenny shopping
$10 off $25 purchase comes out often
$10 off $10 purchase sometimes comes in the mail
I just went to Ulta for the first time and LOVED it! You can use Manufacturer coupons for all your beauty products (for which I had lots) and also thier store coupons! I was able to find a store coupon on an app for my phone and often you can pull up coupons on your phone from the web that can be scanned at the store!
At this shop I had $18 in products and spent $6.60 after tax that's just over $1.50 an item!
Also a lot of stores now have txt coupons - if you have unlimited txting sign up for ALL OF THEM!
Hy Vee, Checkers, Target, Old Navy, Chick-Fil-a - just to name a few!
They will not only notify you of upcoming deals but occasionally you get a coupon for the text recievers ONLY "show this txt..." LOVE THAT!
What are some ways you save money on buying clothes? Especially unplanned purchases?
I think this is going to be one of the last videos til after Summer. We may do a few as things come up. Also if you havent noticed, we probably won't be posting as much on the blog. As we see great deals most likely they will just get put on the Facebook page.
In honor of Good Friday and Easter (just as important as Christmas in our house!) we want to leave you with a warm fuzzy feeling. We are at Target now, by the time this posts anyway, leaving coupons around the store for you. Our binders are busting at he rims and I hate seeing good coupons go to waste! You don't have to use these coupons at Target. Target is just my favorite shopping place so that's why I decided to leave them there.
Easter Egg Hunt for Couponers!
If you want to leave a fuzzy warm feeling for someone this wonderful Holiday you can leave a few coupons you aren't going to use too! I'm telling you, you guys don't want to miss this. Have fun! (:
Have a great Good Friday and Easter
I'm leaving these coupons at Target in Davenport on Elmore street. I encourage you to leave some of your own coupons in your own towns if you're not from the QC area. (:
Just back from Target. Just wanted to let you guys know the areas I left coupons. I made it to the Make-up, Toothpaste and that whole section of personal care items, Baby, freezer, cleaning, beginning of food section. At the food section my kids were ready to be done. They did great helping me post the coupons at the beginning. Have fun and Happy Easter!
We filmed outside of Walgreens last week. They won't allow us to film inside the store. Make sure you look for the clearance bins when your in the stores. You may have a good coupon to stack with it. When theres Register Rewards try and use the least amount of money you can. So what you want to do, if you're buying more than one thing that has a Register Reward, is buy the one item and then use that Register Reward for the next. So I bought the soda last week. I used the $3 Register Reward to buy my toothpaste. I also had $.75 off coupon so I was only paying $2.24. So in this case I need to make sure I'm buying something else to cover that 'overage'. I could have bought the Purex at $1.99. I decided to get the candy for free. You can save these 'filler items' for Easter baskets.
**note correction on the Purex. You don't need a filler item when you are using a Manufacture coupon and Walgreens coupon. Steph had $1 off manufacture coupon and a Walgreens in ad coupon to make the Purex $.99. She didn't have to purchase anything else at that point.
You can use an In Ad Walgreen's coupon, Walgreen's booklet coupon, and Manufacture coupon all for one item! For example, Walgreen's had Progresso soup on sale one week with an in ad coupon. I used the in ad coupon, a Manufacture coupon and there was a coupon in the Walgreen's booklet and I got the soup for $.50/can.
I hope this video helps a little. It was hard to do outside with the cars and people in the parking lot. I apologize!
We took Lisa coupon shopping for this Follow me Tuesday video. Now it is very hard to do this. We talked about a lot more than whats on this video. I also would like to say, our original winner couldn't make it after all. It is very hard to get 3 busy people to the store at the same time with out kids. Then I ended up with one of mine anyway...lol. I got ahold of Lisa and she was able to line up a sitter for her daycare kids and her own (Thanks Donna!). She had a days notice!
So we talked about getting a binder, organizing coupons, where to get coupons, price points, pairing up store coupons with manufacture coupons, and having a plan. These are all things we have talked about on the blog. We will have to also do another shopping trip with Lisa later on. It is a lot to take in and go over in a just a few hours. This shopping trip is not an extreme couponing type experience. We are not extreme couponers. We coupon to save what we can for our family. We get what we need and try to get what we think is enough til the next sale.
The main things we talked about with Lisa that were not in the video is to try and never pay for toothpaste(which ,by the way is free at Walgreens this week! If you got a paper this week its actually a money maker.), body wash, deodorant, etc. Walgreens and CVS do Register rewards and Extra Care bucks that you never have to pay for these items. If you need them try and not pay over $1 for these items and when you can get them for free stock up for what you think you will need to last a few months.
Know your price points. We saw silly bands on sale for $1.48. This is an ok price for Disney silly bands but if your kids don't care about the trade mark items, you can find these for around $1 at Walmart. We actually noticed a lot of 'clearanced' items that were only a few cents cheaper than regular price.
Check end caps. Usually this is where the clearance items are located
Don't match the picture to the item on the coupon. As long as you are matching what the words say, it doesn't matter if you get the item pictured on the coupon.
Make sure to pull the blinky and tear pad coupons. Most of the time its best to save these for later. Usually they will be cheaper when the tear pads and blinkys are gone.
Also most stores will price match. So if you have a favorite store or dont have, lets say, Target near you. Walmart will price match Targets prices. Most of the time you don't even need an ad. Just tell them its 'this price' at Target and they will ring it up. You can also use coupons on top of the price match!
This Follow me Tuesday I wanted to highlight how you can be frugal by making your own laundry soap. It really isn't hard at all and only takes a few minutes! I posted a few weeks ago that I wanted to do this, here. I got my recipe from here. A friend called me and thought I would want to know about his cousin that makes her own laundry soap, so I checked it out.
It only requires you to by 3 ingredients! Borax, Washing soda, and Naptha soap. This soap smells so clean and refreshing! These are all found in the same isle, laundry soap isle. I posted the prices I paid for them here. It only ends up being about $.35 for a 33 load container of laundry soap. And I didn't use a single coupon!! Check out the video.
Needed Ingredients
1/3 bar Fels Naptha
1/2 cup Arm & Hammer washing soda
1/2 cup 20 Mule Team borax
Water
Needed Utensils
You will also need a small cheese grater ,a 4 qt sauce pan, water, and a 3 gallon bucket for mixing (got mine at Wal-Mart for $1.98).
Grate the soap in the sauce pan with a grater.
Add six cups of water to the pan, heating until the grated soap melts. I had some pieces of soap I didn't grate to well and they floated to the top. I just picked those out.
Add the washing soda and borax, stirring until dissolved. Remove from heat.
Pour 4 cups of hot water into your empty bucket. Add soap mixture to the bucket. Stir. Now add 1 gallon plus 6 cups (or 22 cups) of water; stir.
Pour into gallon containers. (Some people use empty water jugs; I use old laundry soap containers since they have the measuring cup built in the lid.) Recipe makes about 2 gallons, which is enough for 64 loads of laundry when you use 1/2 cup of detergent for each load. The pouring process is a little messy. I'm sure once you do it often it may get easier but I spilled about half of what I poured. Maybe get a funnel to make it easier!! Also the batch I made didn't fit into 2 33 load containers of laundry soap. If you are using these containers you may need 3. If thats the case the cost I figured out is less.
We had some issues downloading to YouTube today so its on the Facebook page here! In this video we talked about stock piles. We have had a lot of questions about how to organize your stock pile. In this video you see Stephanie's organized pile. I also have some pictures posted of how I do mine. There are many different ways to organize. You need to do what works best for the space you have.
This is a metal shelf I have at the bottom of my basement stairs. I keep most of my stock pile here.
I am lucky enough to have a pantry in my kitchen. We added these shelves to the pantry wall and you could do that anywhere in your house. On these shelves you could keep body wash, deodorant, toothpaste, cleaning supplies, etc.
These are shelves that we put on our back porch that we had a whole shelf of kitty litter on. Also cat food and toilet paper stores well here. This is also where I keep my freezer.
I have a pretty big toy stock pile too. This is kept in my bedroom closet. If you have a toy stock pile make sure its put somewhere the kids aren't allowed.
We had a food video recorded also but I'm not sure we are going to be able to put that up now. I will just share some info on this post. I'm very lucky to have tons of cabinet space to put my food stock pile.
For those of you not so lucky to have this space. Some people store things in plastic totes in the basement or garage. Also if you have some desk space you can always stick things underneath the desk. I would recommend getting some shelves put in somewhere like in the pictures above if you can. I also notice things tend to be placed through out the house sometimes. Note the 3 men deodorants in the above picture. This is in my kitchen and yes, they are all opened....
Feel free to share your pictures with us too on Facebook! Its fun to see how everyone else does it and there are so many different ways to organize.
Make sure you make a 12 week cycle so you know what the rock bottom price is. Just use a normal notebook and keep track of 20-50 items for 12 weeks so you know what time is going to be the best price for these items you use the most of. Once you figure out the rock bottom price, that's when you want to stock up on those items. Sometimes you may not figure it right and have to pay more when you run out but don't beat yourself up over it if that happens.
Remember if you have overage when using a coupon, the store will not give you money back!
You can almost always count on personal care items being free or close to free. This would be toothpaste, body wash, tampons, etc.
March-Freezer deals
May/June Swimsuit deals
August Back to school deals-School/office supplies, underwear, socks, undergarments
Oct-Dec Toy sales
November Electronics/video games
After all Holidays you can stock up on candy. Usually right after the Holiday it goes down to 50% but if you wait a week-3 weeks you can get it for 90%.
Clothing is usually towards the end of the season and you can always pair coupons with clearance items. Jcpenny almost always has $10 off $50 purchase. Old navy has where you can dig for bones. Younkers always has 20% off and sometimes has $10 of $25 purchase that you can now use on yellow dot items.
We usually post any major sales on the blog so if you're unsure just make sure you check the blog. But get to know your price points for your staple foods that you use the most of.
Our next few videos we are going to talk about how to organize your stock pile. Keep in mind we are not extreme couponers.
Wow! What a week at Target this week! Okay, so our trip to Target was very exciting. First we walk to the freezer section and not everything is marked. So I asked the manager, who was standing there, if he could help me with the wording on the sign. Does this include EVERYTHING in the freezer section? He says yes, even the items that are $1 ,for example are included! I say great, this is going to be an awesome trip. So we start walking around looking at our coupons and whats available. Here's a list of items and links to coupon match ups that we liked:
Rhodes Cinn rolls $3.69
-$1 off Manufacture coupon(Redplum 1/23-2/6)
Market Pantry Dino nuggets $4.74 x2-$1..50 coupon=$7.98
Lean Pockets $2.09
MP Veggies $.87x4-$1coupon=$2.48
total out of pocket $12.55
2 Rhodes Cinn Rolls $3.69x2 -2 $1 coupon=$5.38
Birds eye veggie $1.27 -Free coupon from All You
Van De Kamps $3.90
Totinos $1.27 -$1/3=$2.81
-$5 Gift card from previous transaction
total out of pocket $7.09
2 Rhodes $2.49 -2 $1 coupon=$2.98
Lean pockets $2.09
Tonys 2 $2 -$.50 coupon=$1.50
2 Tgi fridays $2.18-$4 off 2=$.36
-$5 GC from previous transaction
total out of pocket $1.93
4 Mp Pasta $3.48 -$1/4=$2.48
lean pocket$2.09(I messed up my count and had 1 extra item that didn't go in the 7 freezer deal...oops)
MP milk $3.09 ( We needed milk...lol)
MP Eggs $1.19 (needed eggs too...)
Smart ones $1.80x10-$5 off 10 target coupon, -$3 off 10 manf coupon=$10
2 Rhodes $3.69-2 $1 manf coupons=$5.38
2 Rhodes $2.49-2 $1 manf coupons=$2.98
-$5 from previous purchase=total out of pocket $22.21
-2 $5 Gc I received for a future purchase=$12.21
total out of pocket for entire purchase-$33.78 (In the picture you'll notice more Tony's and lean pockets...I'm missing a receipt for those. I believe my total for that one was just over $5 so it was a few cents for all of it. I just used the $1/2 Tony coupon from the 2/13 Smart source) Also when figuring out your savings you can add in the GC you didn't use to show how much you saved but if you do that, later don't tell yourself your getting something for free when you use the $5 GC because you have already counted it towards your purchase. Or I could say my total out of pocket was $43.78 and then later count my $10 GC I have towards something else I will buy, like the Sobe waters. Does that make sense? Let me know if I need to explain that better?
The pair ups for this deal are end less! Go through your coupons and find all you can. Allyou had a free Birdseye with Van De Kamps purchase. There are several others from different inserts to use. Don't know about you but my freezer is overflowing!
Now when we went to check out they informed us it was 1 gift card per transaction but he said we could put it all on the belt and just separate it out. For the Smart Ones deal where you have to buy 10 it printed out 2 gift cards so I'm not sure why they made us separate it all out. He commented to the very nice cashier that as long as I wasn't getting anything for free it was fine. The cashier was very patient with me while I sorted out my coupons and which food I wanted for which transaction. Also don't forget to go through the Up&Up cotten ball, qtips, Ib pro coupons and print those out too while you're there. And Sobe is 10 for $10 getting a $5 GC back. Market Pantry Pasta is only $.87 for the whole wheat pasta and print out $1/4 here. Let us know what deals you ended up with.
Very short video this week. This week we just would like to point out to price check items. We show Missions shells are priced wrong on the shelf. Also today I went and Doritos said $2 but rang up $3 so they have to give it to you for the shelf price. Hope you enjoy the short shopping trip video...more to come!
This week on our Follow me Tuesday video we are talking about what to do with your coupons, how to use them in the store.
Get the bigger town newspaper for the bigger volume coupons
Check your favorite blogs before you make your shopping trip, get organized, and have a plan.
Your goal is to get that item for the least price you can. If your coupon allows it go with trial sizes!
You can use store coupons and manufacture coupons together for one item.
Register Rewards are considered manufacture coupons. If you are going to use those with a manufacture coupon you will have to get another small price item as a 'filler item'. For example-Lets say you have a $5 register reward from a previous visit and you are going to buy the body wash available at Walgreen's this week for $3.99. If you are going to use the $1 off peelie on the body wash you will have to go buy a piece of candy to go with it. For every manufacture coupon you have to have an item.
Rolling Register Rewards-Your goal is to use the least amount of your own money as you can. Example: Buy the body wash this week and go back in and use your $3 register reward to buy the hand sanitizer get back $4. Go back and use your $4 to buy the body wash again. Go back and use your $3 to buy something else. You can keep doing that all you want but DO NOT USE a register reward for the same item. So you cant go buy the body wash and then turn around and use your $3 RR on body wash again. You will not get another RR(register reward).
B1G1 free sales. When there is a store sale of B1G1 free you can use a B1G1 free Manufacture coupon to get 2 for free.
If you are using a B1G1 free coupon and a $1 off coupon to purchase something make sure you use your B1G1 free coupon first so that you don't end up getting your reduced item for free.
As a rule of thumb always use the store coupon before a Manufacture coupon to avoid the register beeping. It always runs smoother to do it this way.
Let us know what you think!! Any suggestions or what you would like to see in a 'Follow Me Video'. We love to hear from our readers. We're all in this together.
Okay, we have been having problems uploading these videos. We hope to get these on Youtube eventually but for now you can go to Facebook to view them. This follow me Tuesday is about what to do with the coupons when you get them. We talk about accordion style or binder style storage. We also talk about organizing your binder according to the store you shop at. Expired coupons or free items towards the front, personal care items, cleaning supplies, then food. Organize them to make it easy to find your coupons while you are in the store!
Be on the look out in the weeks to come for a new video series we are working on. We are also talking about putting together some little giveaways. If you dont want to miss these make sure you follow the blog and not just Facebook! We need to raise the 3 followers up to match the Facebook followers. Once a week Im going to start doing a blog post via the blog only and not Facebook. Be on the alert!
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