THE BASICS OF COUPONING...INSTALLMENT 2

There are many different places to get coupons and several different ways to organize them. First, we will discuss where to get them.

The biggest source for a variety of coupons is your Sunday newspaper. Almost every week, there is a least one coupon insert in the paper, with most weeks having two or more. It is my recommendation that you keep all coupons. Even if they are for items that you have never bought before, and you think that you probably never will. You never know when the right deal may come along. You should always buy the largest paper that is distributed in your area. The best one that I have found is the Charlotte Observer. It is sold, of course, in and around Charlotte, NC, and in several Publixes and newstands around the Upstate of SC. Most couponers buy at least 2 newspapers every week. Walgreens and Ingles sometimes sell newspapers at a discounted price.

Another great source for coupons is the internet. Many companies have websites and quite frequently offer valuable coupons for their products. There are also several websites that are dedicated solely to printable coupons. They are coupons.com, smartsource.com, and redplum.com. These websites update their coupons regularly and offer different coupons for different areas. Feel free to experiment with different zip codes when looking for coupons.

There are several magazines that offer coupons regularly, and if you look for a deal, you can usually get a subscription pretty cheap. The best magazine for coupons is "All You" , which normally has $55-$100 worth of coupons each month. The only place to buy it is at Wal Mart, or by subscription. The best subscription price that I have found is HERE. This site is linked to Southern Savers, and not only do you get the magazine for about 83¢ per issue, a contribution is also made to a local food bank. Please remember, though, that the subscription version does not always have as many coupons as the Wal Mart version. Some of the other magazines that have coupons quite regularly, are Woman's Day, Family Circle, Weight Watchers, and Good Housekeeping. There is also a free publication called Rogue, which you can sign up for HERE. It is issued quarterly and has a lot of Procter & Gamble coupons.

Other places to find coupons are tearpads or booklets near products in stores, in-store coupon dispensers, peelie coupons attached to products you are buying, coupons located on or inside packaging, home-mailers, and the list goes on. Never pass up the opportunity to add a coupon to your collection. If you see a tearpad or a dispenser, feel free to take one or two. However, it is not all right to remove coupons from products that you are not buying at that time, or to take a whole tearpad or dispenser-full. Please consider others when you are collecting your coupons.

Now we come to organizing our coupons. Organization is very important in order to get the best use from the coupons that you have collected. Most couponers start out using envelopes or a small accordion file and soon convert to a 3-ring binder and/or a file box. The file box is normally used to store full inserts, arranged by date, and the binder is used to store clipped coupons, printables, those that we get from tearpads, etc. You can buy inserts and dividers for the binders from your local discount or office supply store. If you have a hard time finding them in your discount stores, check where the baseball cards are displayed. You can then set your binder up to match your particular preferences. Some people organize alphabetically by name brand, while others use product categories. I initially used the category method, but later decided that alphabetically worked better for me. However, my binder is divided into 3 sections: food, household, & health & beauty. I like to keep it up-to-date as much as possible, so that I can take it with me when I go shopping. This way, I can take advantage of unexpected deals. I also use a file box with folders. Each insert is dated and kept in the corresponding folder until I clip it. The date of the insert is found on the spine.

Next Installment...

Building Your Stockpile