Newspaper Coupons Explained

Your Sunday paper is one of the best possible sources that you have locally. Depending on the size of the nearby city, you should find at least one insert. Usually, the bigger the city, the more inserts you should find. For instance, I live near Shreveport, LA but I don’t get all of the inserts that I could possibly get. So when I go get my Sunday Paper, I purchase the Dallas Sunday paper. This way, I am guaranteed to get all of the possible inserts.

Typically the inserts that you will see are: Smart Source, Red Plum (Valassis), and the P & G Saver. Smart Source and Red Plum typically come weekly and have varying expiration dates. The P&G Saver is usually a once-a-month insert and the coupons on average expire within 30 days.
The Sunday following a holiday, there will be no Smart Source or Red Plum inserts. Typically this will happen following Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s. Occasionally you may still find a P&G Saver in these papers though.
To obtain your papers, you can either purchase a subscription, pick up an early edition on Saturday or run to your local store and pick it up on Sunday. I run out and pick my papers up at my local store. This way I can get several of the papers. You may want to talk to your family, friends and co-workers and have them save their inserts for you. This way you will be able to get multiples of the same coupon! More ways to save money!

When you have your paper, clip all of the coupons. You will never know what you may get for free or what a store such as CVS will pay you money to take. (See CVS 101) Since you aren’t really experienced at coupons, I highly recommend you only clip coupons that your family can use. The more experienced that you become, you will want to clip all of the coupons.

Don’t fall for the same pitfall of clipping a coupon for $1.00 off a product and going to the store with this coupon. Let’s say this product is for Degree Deodorant. You find that your local grocery store doesn’t have this on sale and the purchase price is $2.79….. You used the coupon. You saved $1.00 and got the Deodorant for $1.79…You could have read the sales fliers, and saw a local drug store has this same Deodorant on sale for $1.65 and they take coupons! You could have gotten the same item there for only $.65!!!

They key to couponing is using them when the items are on sale….. It may seem hard to start but you get the hang of it really quickly.
Here is a tip to remember, if you are completely Brand Loyal, you won’t save as much is you are willing to use different brands…