Perhaps you’ve seen a the TV shows where a shopper uses an extremely massive amount of coupons to slash their grocery invoice down to just a few dollars and cents at checkout. “If I can do it, anyone can do it!” this person exclaims, and we want to imitate them. Who would not want to save lots of cash at the grocery store? However, the people who save essentially the most money usually spend quite a little bit of time gathering coupons, organizing them and strategizing their purchasing journeys.

Getting the type of financial savings by utilizing coupons that you see on TV might not be achievable right away (and you might not have as much time to put into couponing), however utilizing coupons will save you cash. Start small after which build up as your schedule and desire permit. Use the next 10 tips as your guide to making coupons pay:

1. Pick a retailer - Choose the store(s) that you most frequently shop at to focus your couponing skills on first. It can be too overwhelming for a novice couponer to keep an eye on all of the sales at all the stores in their area and coordinate journeys to all of them. Usually, stores also have a minimum purchase amount to acquire sale discounts.

2. Familiarize yourself with your retailer’s coupon coverage - Every retailer has a special set of rules and regulations concerning coupon usage. Stay up-to-date on the store’s guidelines and also do not waste your time planning purchases around coupons that your retailer is not going to honor.

3. Join coupon websites - Open a free e-mail account only for this job. If you search for “couponing” on any search engine, a few of the top sites ought to come up. Join their mailing lists to receive free, printable coupons. Also search and subscribe to sites for products that you use regularly and know you will be buying. These companies love brand loyalty and usually provide coupons for their products to these websites.

4. Have a simple system - Most prolific couponers have giant binders jam-full of coupons in clear plastic sleeves–leave these systems for the future couponing you. When starting out, all you really need is a small accordion file or plain envelopes (whichever you have readily available will do). Don’t make the error of spending your future coupon financial savings on an expensive coupon organization system.

5. Link your system to your store - Use one file slot or one envelope for every aisle in your chosen store. File your coupons by aisles and also write your shopping list by aisle. Keep one envelope or file slot open for the coupons you will use in the future, but at all times bring all of your coupons with you on every trip to the store.

6. Start clipping - If you are receiving coupons in your newspaper, start with those. Perhaps a good friend, relative or neighbor has coupon inserts that they don’t need or want. If you choose, you may want to start buying the Sunday paper for the coupon inserts. However, if you are simply getting started, don’t buy many copies of the paper for the inserts or coupons. If you don’t use all of those additional coupons, then you have wasted money as an alternative to saving it. The coupons you will have from the paper and from the web might be enough to get you going.

7. Stick to a schedule - Choose a specific time every week to “work” on couponing, i.e., clipping coupons, printing coupons from websites, filing, checking your retailer’s circular, and so on. This ensures that you will by no means miss an important deal.

8. Keep track of your time - Be sure to know exactly how much time you are spending on couponing and purchasing. Make sure that the time spent is reasonable and that the quantity that you save is worth it. This gauge can enable you determine if utilizing lots of coupons is worth your effort and time.

9. Keep track of your savings - This mixed with tip no. 8 will allow you to decide whether or not coupons are worth it for you. If you are actually not saving that much cash and spending extra time than you would like to, maybe couponing isn’t for you.

10. Purge frequently - Nothing is more irritating than having a coupon, matched to a fantastic retailer merchandise, only to find out at checkout that this nice coupon has expired! Frequently check the expiration dates of coupons so to be sure that this by no means happens. Keeping coupons sorted from oldest to latest (inside their respective file) can also help.

