Advanced and Extreme Couponing - Being Paid To Shop

Advanced and Extreme Couponing – Free Products and Being Paid To Shop

107 Quick & Easy Ways To Have More Money

• Quick and easy changes you can make today to have more money in your pocket.

• It is NOT about depriving yourself and making depressing cut backs.

• It IS about making sure you're not wasting money, enjoying what you have, and looking for ways to have more fun!

• Be sure to check your email for the bonus surprise freebie!

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If it's your first time here, be sure to read our Introduction To Couponing article!

Everyone knows what coupons are, and everyone has known a grandma with a few coupons clipped from the newspaper that she’s using at the grocery store. Coupons are a promotion method that’s probably as old as American style capitalism, and they’ll probably outlive us all, like cockroaches. But not everyone knows the power of extreme couponing.

The difference between a little casual couponing and extreme couponing comes down to one concept – stacking. A single coupon or sale might save you a little money, but when you can stack 2 or more offers, you can start saving large amounts of money. Sometimes even enough to make products free, and every once in a while enough that the store owes you money.

Looking For Patterns

The only real method to stacking is to look for trends – items that are being promoted in several ways, both by stores and by manufacturers. You’ll probably first notice these trends with products you really care about. You clip a coupon for your favorite granola bar, then see it in the Walgreen’s weekly ad, then find a coupon for it in your online clippable coupons, then see it being promoted as a cash back offer on Ibotta. Because you care about it you’re more likely to notice it, at least in my experience.

Writing a list of favorite products can help you center your focus on things you really want, which will help you notice patterns.

You don’t have to go it alone, there are lots of couponers with websites, youtube channels, and active social media accounts. If you can find someone who’s couponing a lot of things you care about, you may be able to rely on them to point out excellent deals. But you’ll always be best off if you can find deals on your own, without relying on anyone else. 

Schedule

My weekly schedule of couponing is as follows:

Prepare

  • Check Ibotta daily. For each store I shop regularly, I go to the store listing in Ibotta, click over to “new offers”, and see what they’ve added. I also scroll the whole list periodically in case I’ve missed something that I would like to buy. (Read more about Ibotta here.)
  • Get the Sunday newspaper inserts. I tell you how here. I cut out every coupon I might be interested in at all. Everything left over from clipping goes into an the envelope for a couple weeks. I save it in case I see an online couponer point out a deal I missed. After that it goes into the recycling bin.
  • I check the online ads for each store I shop on the day they are released. Also check the clippable coupons where available.
  • Keep a running list of any product(s) I care about that I see in more than one promotion.
  • Plan my shopping trip around the deals that I think are the most worthwhile, especially because I like to plan my meals around any special deals. I literally make paper notes about what I need to look for at each store.
  • I go shopping! It can be easy to get distracted and forget a deal, or not buy exactly the right things to qualify for discounts. To avoid this, I sit in my car and check my notes before going inside.

Follow Up

  • File any new coupons/catalinas I received while shopping into by coupon folder.
  • Place all of my redeemed reciepts into an envelope for the month. (I eventually recycle them but I keep them for a while.)
  • Clean out my coupon folder weekly so that I’m not dragging around expired coupons.
  • Repeat every week, as needed. Now that my stockpile is built up I tend to hold out for really good deals, and I don’t shop quite as often as I use to. I still usually pick up groceries weekly, even if it’s only a little bit of perishables.

Email Lists

If you’re making good use of loyalty programs and signing up for a lot of email lists, you may want to consider making a dedicated email account, just for your coupons and promotions. This will help keep your ‘real’ email easier to access, and prevent you from losing important things in what can be a flood of promotional emails. You will also be able to quickly scan for special promotions, which can be lucrative.


Notice Patterns

The concept of extreme couponing is so much simpler than I ever could have imagined before I got started. I wish I had figured it out 10 years earlier. It really comes down to noticing patterns, understanding store coupon rules (which often are so simple that you don’t even need to worry about them), carefully reading the find print, and doing simple arithmetic – the kind you could easily handle with a very basic calculator. 

The more you do it, the easier it becomes. Extreme couponing isn’t all that extreme in practice. A lot of stores and brands aren’t that creative about promotions. They run the same thing regularly, often on a two to four week repeating schedule. Once you know that a brand regularly puts paper towels on sale one week a month, you can be on the lookout for a paper or digital coupon to stack with it. With practice you will become a master, and then you can help you friends and family put the same skills into place, or resell your goods for a profit, if you’re into that kind of thing!

107 Quick & Easy Ways To Have More Money

• Quick and easy changes you can make today to have more money in your pocket.

• It is NOT about depriving yourself and making depressing cut backs.

• It IS about making sure you're not wasting money, enjoying what you have, and looking for ways to have more fun!

• Be sure to check your email for the bonus surprise freebie!

107 Quick & Easy Ways To Have More Money!Don't Miss This Free Ebook!

• Quick and easy changes you can make today to have more money in your pocket.

• It is NOT about depriving yourself and making depressing cut backs.

• It IS about making sure you're not wasting money, enjoying what you have, and looking for ways to have more fun!

• Be sure to check your email for the bonus surprise freebie!