Super-Couponing: Questions and Answers

As you know, I've been trying my hand at super-couponing, combining sales with coupons, in an effort to stretch my family's budget. I have made no secret of my attempts to be super-thrifty, and as a result, I have received many questions from friends and family regarding all aspects of my forays into the couponing world. Here I've put together my answers to some of the most frequently asked couponing questions.

Q: Why bother? There are no coupons for what I buy; I won't save any money by clipping coupons. Couponing would therefore only be a waste of my time.
A: This, in all its varying formats, is probably the most-asked (or most-lamented) concern I've heard. My counter-question is this: do you buy laundry detergent? Toothpaste? Coffee? Eggs? The list goes on. I'd bet my daughter's favorite stuffed puppy that you do purchase something somewhere that could potentially have a matching coupon.

True, some items seem to have more coupons available than others. For example, personal care items like toothbrushes, deoderant, paper towels and toilet paper often offer coupon savings. But if you can save money on these items, why wouldn't you?

Saving money on these items frees up cash to pay for others, like the rarely-couponed produce and meat. And when you see those rare coupons on perishable items, you can snatch them up and save even more. Also, you can sometimes score awesome savings by writing to, say, your favorite deli meat company.

Q: Where are the savings if I have to buy name-brand merchandise? Isn't generic better for savings?
A: I had always thought that buying generic was a much better bet than purchasing the national brand, even with a coupon. Now, a bit into couponing, I'm finding this is not necessarily so.

For example, a local grocery store recently had a name brand detergent on sale for $2.49 per bottle. Combined with a $1-off-one-bottle coupon, that brought the total to $1.49 per bottle, which was much cheaper than the store-brand price of $3.99 per bottle. Even better, sometimes that same store will run a dollar-coupon-doubler special (in which they double $1 off coupons). This makes the detergent $0.49 per bottle!

Need another example? Name-brand bandages printed with kids' characters were on sale at a local store for $0.99 per box. A 50-cents-off-one-box coupon was doubled to make each box of bandages free. That's free, people! Compared with the store brand's $1.29 per box, this was a significant savings.

The fact is, name-brand merchandisers simply offer more coupons than store brands. This can really net you some nice, everyday products for less (or even free!).

Q: You can't use more than one coupon per item, so you can't be saving that much. Right?
A: Wrong. Here's the deal: you cannot use more than one manufacturer's coupon per item. However, many stores will let you "stack" a manufacturer's coupon on top of a store coupon for the same item.

Target, Family Dollar and Walgreen's are just a few of the stores that often offer in-store coupons on certain items. In fact, some of these companies' newspaper inserts will often point out where your savings are best spent by showing you the value of their in-store coupon coupled with the most recent manufacturer's coupon. Combine these store-specific coupons with manufacturer coupons, and watch the savings mount!

We'll continue our first-hand look into super-couponing here at MomVesting. Watch for more of this series coming soon. If you have any questions, concerns or comments of your own, we'd love to hear from you!

Photo Source