Reduce Household Spending One Coupon at a Time
Filed under: Clear the clutter, Healthy Habits, Home Organization, Organizing Products & Reviews
Everyone is worried about the current state of our economy, with good reason. But much of what is going on globally is out of our control. What we do have control over is how we spend our own money.
One of the easiest ways to reduce household spending is to use coupons when you shop. It’s a no brainer … if you found fifty-cents, seventy-five cents … a dollar on the floor, wouldn’t you pick it up and feel like luck was on your side that day? Isn’t using coupons like finding money on the floor? You bet! Yet a small percentage of Americans even use coupons, let alone have a system for organizing, storing and redeeming coupons. Consequently they spend much more of their hard-earned money on household purchases than necessary. Yes, it takes some time to get set-up ~ all the more reason to have an organized system in place to greatly reduce the time it takes to use this free money when you shop. I’ll be highlighting three tools and systems here that you can use to stay organized and find the most savings possible with coupons.
To get started learning about the world of couponing, I found a helpful guide written by a money-conscience mom Stephanie Nelson, Greatest Secrets of the Coupon Mom. This 165-page guide is a quick read and a great resource to help you learn how to find, clip, sort and organize coupons for saving money on every household purchase. Stephanie shares all of her coupon-clipping, money-saving tips and tricks.
Another very helpful organizational tool for saving money with coupons is
The Couponizer, developed by Amy Bergin, another cost-conscience mom. Amy developed this system for her family when other systems she tried were too cumbersome. The Couponizer system she developed gives you all the tools you need to clip, organize, store and use your coupons to reduce household spending. Included with the Couponizer system are:
- a clear zippered storage bag
- scissors
- Money-saving Guide
- shopping list
- Coupstacker, which is an organizing mat for sorting clipped coupons to insert into.
The Couponizer categories.
Some of the categories are: Meat, Vegetables, Breakfast, Dairy and many more.
The Couponizer even includes a plastic sleeve to store your frequent-buyer cards and coupons that are about to expire. One of it’s best features is that The Couponizer is designed to lay flat in your grocery cart, making it easier to find and retrieve a coupon and maneuver the cart at the same time.
I’ve heard people say that when they have coupons they often buy products they wouldn’t ordinarily, so they actually spend more money when they use coupons. The solution for this is to never go to the store without a list of what you truly need. In our home we use a shopping list 
called ALL OUT OF notepad, which is a 6 x 9 sized shopping list pad shopping list pad which adheres to your refrigerator with a heavy-duty magnet. The ALL OUT OF notepad saves you the hassle of having to write out a shopping list each time you shop. As we deplete household items, we circle the needed item on the ALL OUT OF notepad on our refrigerator. We tear off the already prepared shopping list and take it with us to the store.
When your coupons are organized it will be much easier to find and use them to save big money during every trip to the grocery store. I get great satisfaction from seeing the subtotal at the register, then watching the total reduce as each coupon is scanned. It’s like getting free groceries.
Originally posted 2009-02-25 13:26:46. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
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