Making the Most of Your Coupons

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If you are starting to accumulate lots of coupons you might be wondering the best way to use them. Just heading out to the grocery store and using your .35 cent coupon on tuna fish is not the best way to utilize your coupon. If you know how to use your coupons you can make your money stretch farther than you thought possible!


1. Wait to use your coupons. Don’t use them right away. Wait closer to the expiration date for a good sale. For example, take a $1/1 Colgate toothpaste coupon. When Walgreens, Rite Aid, CVS, Albertson’s or your local store has them on sale, THEN use the coupon on the sale price. many times these stores will have toothpaste on sale for $1, then you could get the toothpaste for free! Or when Walgreens offers Register Rewards on the toothpaste you can actually come out ahead when you use your coupon on the sale price, then get back a RR for the full purchase price!

2. Combine B1G1 free coupons with a similar sale. Let’s say that Walgreens is having a sale on their Colgate toothpaste, B1G1 free. The sale price is $3.99 each. But let’s say you also have a coupon for a B1G1 free tube of Colgate. Use that coupon you have with the sale of B1G1 free and you will come away with two free tubes!

Another example. The sale at Rite Aid awhile ago. The Herbal Essences shampoo/conditioners/stylers were B1G1 free. I used the following coupon with it and came away with getting both items free! Only pay sales tax.

Herbal Essences Styler FREE when you buy any Herbal Essences Shampoo, Conditioner or Styler(11-30-09) PG-10/11

Here is how it works: Buy one shampoo or conditioner or styler. Get another free. But when you use the above mentioned coupon with it, the one you bought is also free! (as long as one was a styler). Make sense?

3. Combine your coupons with current rebates available. This is one of the main ways I have gotten ahead over the years. The Kraft rebate at Albertson’s last August is a good example. Kraft was offering a $20 rebate for purchasing certain items. I combined the sale prices at Albertson’s on those items with current coupons I had, which was $7 worth. I spent $14 plus tax out of pocket and got my $20 rebate back!

Sometimes a rebate offer will specify that the rebate is after coupons, but not usually. In the 8 years I have been doing coupons and rebates I have only seen that a couple of times.

4. Use manufacturer coupons with store coupons on the same product. Target, Fred Meyer & Walgreens are the stores in my area I do this at. These stores offer store coupons in their weekly ads or in their monthly coupon booklets. Many times there are manufacturer coupons (from the Sunday paper or printable coupons) that are for the same item. You can use these two coupons together!

For example, let’s say that you want to purchase Garnier shampoo at Walgreens for $3.99. Walgreens has a store coupon for $2/1. You also have a manufacturer coupon from the Sunday paper for $1/1. Use them together to get the shampoo for .99 cents.

5. Use your cents-off coupons to get free items. Did you know you can get many free things with regular cent-off coupons? You can! One way to do this is by purchasing trial size items. If you have a $1/1 coupon for Tide, use it on the .99 trial size. Just make sure you read the coupon to make sure it doesn’t mention that trial sizes are excluded. Many stores will apply the overage to your total as well! Walmart usually does. Target would adjust the coupon down to .99.

How do you make the most of your coupons?



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2 Comments

  1. wow, very helpful!!! Thanks so much!!!

  2. Yes! I totally agree with all of your ideas. I also like to make my free product coupons work for me by using them with other sales or promotions. For example, this week Safeway ran a soda sale that was Buy 2 12 pkgs. get 3 free. This is a decent sale, but I made it even better by using two free 12 pkg. coupons I had. All I had to pay was tax on 60 cans of diet coke!

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