posted by Kelly on Frugal

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Several years ago I started cutting coupons as a way to save money while scrounging for ramen as a broke waitress. While high density cheap carbs sufficed as food, sometimes I still needed essentials like razor blades, allergy meds and other necessities. Coupons made buying things like toilet paper less painful on my wallet, and relieved me of the guilt for not buying awful generic paper products. (Seriously – generic toilet paper is the worst.)

A few weeks ago, Groupon ran a deal for the Sunday paper here in the Seattle area. It was a decent deal, but before clicking through, I thought hmm, I can do better than that. After a little Google magic, I found a coupon code on a local mommy blog that offered the Sunday paper at just 26 cents per week. That’s right – just 26 cents! The code apparently should have expired last summer, but I tried it anyway on the Seattle Time’s website and presto! – I now had access to hundreds of dollars in coupon savings every week. (The best part? I live in rural USA and my Sunday Paper actually is delivered to in my old-fashioned mailbox. If you can imagine me in uggs, leggings, an oversized sweatshirt and a sideway ponytail walking out to the colllective mailboxes down the street around 11am, that’s my typical Sunday morning. And you wonder sometimes why I’m single….)

Anyway, so now I have all these coupons for basically free. And oh, let me tell you how worth it they are.

First, there was my shopping spree at Kohl’s a few weeks ago.

That’s right – more saved than I spent. I managed to hit “early bird” hours the day after Christmas, which meant I was already saving 50-75%. On top of that, I’m signed up for mailing list to stores like Kohl’s, and had a coupon for another 20% off for that day only. The great thing about technology is that many stores now allow you to present coupons via your smartphone, so I just pulled the coupon up on my iPhone at the register. You should have seen the look on the woman in line behind me. She literally said “how the hell did she do that?” I felt like I was on a reality TV Show. (You know….that one?)

Today was another successful day of super savings. I managed to catch the last day of this weeks’ sales at Rite Aid, which is known to be a GREAT source for savings – even without coupons. This week’s Sunday inserts were especially good, and I also managed to find a few printable coupons to stack with the other coupons. I only needed a few things (read: NEEDED) but managed to save nearly 50% on essentials that will last several months!

I don’t use coupons for things I don’t need, or use them to hoard dozens of boxes of cereal in the garage. I also try to match coupons with ongoing sales – sometimes I’ll buy duplicates of things I always need (like eyedrops) if it means saving money and doesn’t hurt my bank account too much. I definitely don’t use coupons to buy something just because it’s a great deal – unless of course, I know at some point I will need it and it may cost more in the future when I will need it. And if I know I need something that I don’t have a coupon for, I try to find a coupon for it online. Manufacturers often offer coupons for their products on their websites and Facebook pages – that was actually one component of today’s massive savings, as Clean and Clear had a $5 printable coupon on Facebook.

Do you cut coupons? What’s your strategy? I’d love to hear them in the comments!