Super-Couponing: "Buying" Coupons

If you've read any of our series here at MomVesting about super-couponing, then you're at least somewhat familiar with my take on today's booming subject of combining coupons and sales to maximize savings. Though I've written a post about how to acquire coupons, I had never delved into the world of getting those small paper scraps of savings online – until now.

You see, recently a local store was running a special on salad dressings; buy four of a certain brand and receive 200 extra gas points (every 100 points equals 10 cents off per gallon of gas at the store's gas stations). There was, I found out, a coupon that certain parts of the country received that would make for really cheap salad dressing and make nabbing those extra bonus points cheap, too. I knew this was the time to go beyond my usual means of grabbing coupons (from friends or the library) and strike out into new territory: nabbing multiple coupons online.

Finding Online Coupons

First off, I had to find the coupon. So, from the comfort of my own home office (and in my sweats!), I headed over to eBay. Yep, the auction site. A quick search of the salad dressing's name + coupon gave me a pretty impressive list of coupons that were up for auction in varying quantities, prices and auction-ending times. I clicked through a few of them and settled on one that would give me ten of the two-dollar-off coupons for under two bucks including shipping; this option also included expedited shipping which would ensure said coupons would be delivered by Mr. Postman before Saturday at midnight, which is when the sale would end. The auction I chose to participate in also was ending in about twelve hours from when I placed my bid, which would help translate into a faster shipping time to my home.

Transaction Tips

So I won the auction on a Tuesday, paid under two dollars via my PayPal account and my coupons, all ten beauties, arrived as promised on Friday. I headed to the store on Saturday, purchased eight salad dressings for four dollars and tax; I divided the order up into two transactions which also netted me 480 points (equaling almost fifty cents off per gallon of gas). Easy as pie. As this really was my first time purchasing coupons(though probably not last!), here are a few get-started tips for those of you thinking of trying your hand at maximum savings with some online help:

• Bid for coupons earlier in the week, say Sunday through Tuesday. This is especially important if you store is running a Sunday to Saturday sale on an item you want to buy extra of using coupons.
• View the auction and coupon carefully. This also includes reading the fine print. Some coupons might say "redeem at such-and-such a store," and you need to make sure by checking with your own local store of choice that this coupon will fly when you get to the register. You're also going to want to make sure that the product you're hoping to score is indeed included on the coupon. In short, do your homework!
• Share the "wealth." Or, if you like, be a coupon fairy. My salad dressing auction had ten coupons; I really only wanted eight, so I shared the other two with family members. Don't have anyone you know who'd want the coupon? Simply leave it on the shelf near the item. You could make someone's day!

I'm pretty excited that I've successfully obtained more coupons at low cost to help increase my family's small stockpile of items we use on a regular basis, and I hope you'll have success with it at some point in the future, too.

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