Photo by MissMessie
Today marks the very last of our Extreme Couponing series on Courageous Homekeeping. It is a sad day. I hope you have all learned from this series. If after this final post, you still have some unanswered questions or things you are confused about, please feel free to ask questions in the comment section and I will continue to answer questions.
If you need a refresher on where we’ve been so far, please check out our previous posts: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, and #7.
Today’s “lesson” is going to be short and sweet. I’m just going to be helping you learn where to find all these deals. Back in “the day” (ha) if you wanted to figure out how to match a store sale with a coupon, you had to either really get lucky- or you had to spend hours and hours searching through stores or store ads in order to find the sales and then spend another chunk of time searching through all your coupons to see if you had any coordinating coupons. One of the beauties of this day and age is the Internet. When you search the online for coupon websites, the amount of websites you will find are numerous to say the least…there are a TON. So, go ahead and spend all the time you want looking for websites that you like. But the purpose of this post is to talk about 3 of my very favorite websites.
In no particular order, here are my 3 favorite websites:
#1 Frugal Living NW The Frugal Living NW website is great. The lady who runs the website actually lives in Boring I think, so she is very local. She also teaches classes around our area, so if you have never been to a coupon class, it would be worth going to her website and finding out when and where her next upcoming classes are. Not only does she have deals from various stores in our area listed on the website, but she also has other contributors who post about various subjects related to being frugal. (And soon, I will get to be one of them!!) She has posts on gardening, budgeting, and other things that are closely related to not just being frugal, but being frugal and living in the Portland/Metro area.
#2 Fabulously Frugal I have to admit to being a fairly recent convert to the Fabulously Frugal website. I also have to admit that I like it so much in part, because it’s so dang cute. =) I’m sorry, I’m a girl and I can’t stop it. But I do like their site also because the information they give is good and a bit different from some of the other sites I’ve seen. They even do Winco deals, which is unusual…although they live in Idaho, so I’m not entirely certain that their Winco deals work here in Oregon. I also like how they organize things and present the information.
#3 The Krazy Coupon Lady Overall, this is probably my most favorite coupon website ever. I feel like this website has the MOST information about the MOST stores and the most categories. The website is laid out well, and it’s easy to find whatever you’re looking for. In addition to matching the sales with the coupons, they also seem to have the most deal scenarios of any website I’ve seen…which is basically when they tell you exactly what to buy and which coupons to use. I also have to say, that the name of their book and their spunky tag line; “Pick another checkout lane, Honey” seriously was one of the things that got me over my last fears about using coupons. So for teaching me how to be sassy and to face my fears when it comes to couponing, the Krazy Coupon Lady holds a special place in my heart.
And that my friends, wraps up our Couponing 101 series! I hope you enjoyed it!
I have really enjoyed your “Couponing 101″ series!! You may have mentioned this already, but how do you get multiple copies of coupons that come in the Sunday papers? I have read other sites that mention subscribing to 5-6 Sunday papers for the coupons…however, for my local paper one “Sunday only” subscription is ~$130 a year, much less 5 or 6 ($600/year!). Is this necessary? Is there another way other than begging family members and friends for their coupons or buying them online? Thanks!
Hi Erin,
I’m not sure where you live, but I know that sometimes papers do discounts for multiple Sunday papers…if that’s something you’re interested in. You can just call your local paper and ask if that’s something that they do. If not, or if that is too much of an expense for you… the best thing to do then I suppose is to evaluate your situation. For me, I get 1 paper delivered to my house. IF there are a lot of coupons in that paper for items that I know my family likes, uses, and/or that I want to stockpile, then I will go out and buy more copies at the store…which I use grocery money for…the investment of $2 for a Sunday paper will yield far more return for the value of the coupons. You also have to evaluate the money vs. time situation. If you have more time than money, you can do things like beg off your family/friends like you mentioned with good results. You can also do things like ask neighbors, dumpster dive in recycling bins, or go around to local cafe’s that may get the paper and ask to collect the coupons from their papers. But if you’re like me, I have more money than time (that sounds bad…we don’t have a lot of money…we live with 5 kids on one income!) but at this stage in my life it’s more valuable for me to just go ahead and spend the $2 at the store rather than drive all over and find extra coupons. But also using ebay or a coupon clipping service, really is a fast, easy and inexpensive way to get lots of coupons…generally for a stack of 10 coupons, you will pay less than $2…and that is great if there’s only a few items that you want to stockpile…Sadly, there’s not really any way to get around needing lots of coupons if you’re going to stockpile…but the cost of the coupons or papers is so far below the money that you’re saving, that it makes it more than worth it.
I hope that was helpful! If you have any more questions, let me know!
Excellent series! Excellent Web site! Thank you for putting all of this great info in one place. I just finished my second shopping trip using coupons, and I saved 20% on my grocery bill! Not a bad start to extreme couponing.
I had a quick question, though, and I apologize if you covered it already. (If so, feel free to direct me to the part of the series it’s in). … How do you organize your stockpile of coupons as you wait for items to go on sale? By expiration date? By product type? I’ve turned into a clipping machine, but now I have a disorganized mess all over my office desk.
As a side note, I found your site through Colette Port’s, Coco photography. She was my BFF all through school, and she recently did a photo shoot for my family. I saw your photos on her blog and loved them. Based on those photos alone, I knew I’d really enjoy your site.
You ladies energize and motivate me. Thank you!
Aww! Thank you so much! In my original class that I have taught about couponing, I did talk about how to organize them…but in the series that I wrote for here, I was also using it for a class I was teaching at a women’s conference, where time was strictly limited, so I had to cut that part out. =) My best suggestion would be to check out other coupon websites (the websites that actually specialize in coupons…I listed a few in this (?) post) Almost all coupon websites have a section where the talk about and show different ways of organizing. There’s tons of different ways to do it, so just pick one that you think will work best for you and try it out…and then I can almost guarantee that you will re-do it several times before you get it the way you want it! =)
PS…NEVER organize by expiration date!! You’ll never be able to find anything!
Thank you!!! LOVE The Krazy Coupon Lady.
I’ll check her site first.