Does couponing save money?

**Frylock **had questions that they put in an old thread that made me think the topic deserved a new thread, lo these nearly three years later.
Things have changed in the couponing world. You’re as likely to get a coupon from sharing a link (and marketable information) via Facebook or downloaded on your phone from either a particular store or couponing site.
Still, Redplum coupons come free in my mail every Tuesday (if you want them you can go to their website and show interest in their delivery to your area). And the Coupons.com and their ilk are going as strong as ever w/ coupons for milk and cheese as well as the dreaded ‘processed foods’ no one admits to buying as well as infant formula and certain brands of fresh fruit.
Stores have adjusted to greater couponing as well; some embraced it more and others have put new limits down. One will now find stores which forbid coupons printed from the internet, considering all of them suspect. Kroger stores in most places no longer offer double coupons. :frowning:
Other stores like Dollar Tree now accept coupons which can often make items there free (I’ve gotten free or nearly free, rice, cereal, hot chocolate mix, dishwashing liquid, canned veggies and soap at Dollar Tree w/ coupons); Target has store coupons that can be stacked w/ manufacturer’s coupons from an app on your phone, running the gamut from any fresh produce to bras.
Observations, anyone? Complaints, filthy remarks (about coupons)?

Coupons do save money, assuming that you use them to buy things you were going to buy anyway.

If you use them so much that “couponing” is now a word for you… well, you should probably just get a part-time job instead.

I’ve known people who “coupon” and it borders on obsession, to the point of buying file cabinets and folders to organize coupons in, and racks or shelves to store their extra stuff.

Great, so you got 25 boxes of jello for a buck. Do you even eat that much jello in a year? How much did the shelving cost to store all of it? “But I got 25 boxes for a dollar!”

Whenever I’m shopping, I take note of the people with any sort of coupon book, folder or pouch, as I know they’re going to take an extra ten minutes to go through them all at the register.

Perhaps you should point me to the ‘part-time jobs that cost less to drive to than one can earn’ tree to pluck one from?
I do hope you feel relief now that you’ve emptied your bowels on the first response to the thread.
gotpasswords, I’m the first to make sure no one’s trapped behind me in any checkout line and avoid peak hours as much as possible.
I take any stuff I buy but can’t use to the local food pantry as well.
Can we discuss coupon usage rather than couponers?

My wife works couponing pretty hard, and she saves money. We’re feeding three people. She has a simple envelope thingy and regularly takes out expired ones.

The store she gets the most coupon value at also has a points system for gasoline credits. Last month I got $1 per gallon off filling a 25 gallon tank, saving $25. Made me very pleased!

Yes it does work, as long as you only buy what you planned on anyway. That’s our strategy.

If your wife’s interested in passing them along, Expired Coupons for Overseas Military Families has a Facebook page where she’ll find an address to mail them to for regular postage; we military families can use them for another 6 months at overseas Commissaries.

IME, coupons work if you absolutely must have name brands.

I can easily find a coupon for a dollar off on Tide detergent. But the thing is, Tide is so expensive that I can buy the store brand for cheaper even with the dollar off coupon.

I still do keep an eye out for coupons, but there are very few that I can actually use. I LOVE Krogers online coupons that you can attach to your Kroger card.

For me, the real bargains are with the restaurant coupons.

Between clipped coupons and the store’s weekly specials, I will typically knock 15-25% off the list price of my groceries, plus the gas reward points. I buy only stuff that I need, but I may buy more than what I need in a given week if it’s a good price and nonperishable, or I’ll put off buying something for a week to see if it’s discounted the following week.

I find that usually (for me and my purchases, at least) coupons are really only a good deal if I can “stack” a store-issued coupon (Target, etc.) and a coupon from Red Plum, the manufacturer, etc. I know certain/many stores like Target and Walgreens will let you “stack” one of their own coupons with a manufacturer-issued coupon on the same item. If you’re lucky enough to find that there’s an in-store sale going on at the same time, then you’re really doing well.

Our Kroger family store is Smiths and they have a large clearance section; it’s rare I don’t find an item marked down so cheap it’s almost free w/ a coupon (especially now that they mail out that monthly stack of Kroger brand item coupons).
I wanted to mention that b/c of good coupons and sales helping me stock up I haven’t had to shop for groceries in a month and don’t expect to need to any time soon, which is helpful in the month after Xmas.

If you haven’t already found it, this lady does a great job of tracking Target/Walgreen/Riteaid deals.

Using coupons for things you want - of course that would save you money.

Using coupons **just **to get a deal on something - not saving you money.

what if using coupons meant you come across and buy something you wanted but wouldn’t have bought otherwise?

Does the coupon save you enough money to warrant buying the item in this scenario? It would have to for me but I don’t know what you’re envisioning.

i don’t know. say a book, the coupon leads to an interesting book, but you wouldn’t know about it if not for the coupon. coupons are basically advertisements with a hook. you would be paying closer attention to their products than otherwise. so unless you’re already doing that, chances are you’ll be spending more.

YES. I had my coupon stars align in December. I’ve never done so well. I’m not a big grocery store couponer, pretty much I just use the Fred Meyer (Kroger) store coupons every week on stuff I’d buy anyway, and that’s it aside from restaurant coupons.

In early December, we had an issue with our freezer and needed a new one ASAP. Didn’t have much money with Christmas coming on. I figured I’d end up at the Evil Empire (Walmart). I didn’t remember seeing any freezers at Fred Meyer, but called anyway. They had one model. I’d also gotten one-day coupons *that very morning-*one for $30 off a $100 non-grocery purchase, and xx% (can’t remember) off a home goods purchase over $50. I figured they’d only let me use one, but they let me use BOTH. The freezer was on sale, and with the coupons I got a little $180 freezer for $116.

I was ecstatic. It was the one I would’ve chosen, too, didn’t have to compromise at all. I also supported a Northwest business and did much better than I would’ve at Walmart to boot!

That doesn’t happen to me, either. I always look at the coupons hoping to find some deal. I think I’m missing something. But I virtually NEVER see a coupon for anything I even remotely would want to buy. (ESPECIALLY the Red Plum things that come in the mail, but also including the supplements from the Sunday paper.) This is because most of the food I eat is not packaged, and whatever is, is like soba noodles made in Korea, or Iraqi pastries made locally. And as Shakes points out, stuff like soap I can get cheaper at 99 Cents Only anyway without using a coupon to buy some product that is stupidly overpriced to start with. The only restaurant coupons I use are for Pollo Loco. Otherwise, there’s nothing for me. Why the fuck would I want to eat at Dairy Queen or Arby’s? Even if it were free I wouldn’t eat there.

This thread makes me realize that I’m pissed off at the marketing industry because it doesn’t make coupons for the products that are actually worth buying.

I still do it, it’s not a vocation or anything but I regularly save 35-40% off my total purchases. I take the store ads, coupon inserts and my little envelope with scratch paper and scissors, and kill time at work perusing them and making my list. Often, even if I don’t buy the product being advertised, say grands biscuits being shown making a pot pie, I’ll get dinner ideas like ‘hey pot pie!’ that help get me out of the same-old-meals endless rut.

Stores around here used to double, now they don’t so that’s less potential savings. It used to be very common to stack a mfr coupon on a store B1G1 sale and get stuff free, now it’s not.

The coupons tied to the loyalty cards come in super handy. They regularly send us coupons on produce we’d be buying anyway, meat, eggs, fresh baked artisan loafs, etc. A few neighbors who have loyalty cards but “don’t coupon” usually toss me their mailed store coupons, more savings for me. I figure eventually they’ll figure out a way to tag individual coupons to your individual loyalty account and I won’t be able to use the extras, but for now it’s all bonus.

I like using Tide, Garnier Fructis, Dove soaps, etc better than their off-brand equivalents , so knowing that I grabbed them when they were on sale and I had a coupon makes me happy. Since the stores cycle their sales and the manufacturers cycle their coupons around every 6-8 weeks, I just grab the brands we like when they’re a good deal and have a tiny stockpile of health and beauty type stuff. It’s nice knowing that last squeeze of toothpaste just means walking to the closet instead of an emergency store run on a busy day in cold weather.

My work partner has watched me ‘couponing’ for years and always lamented that he wished his wife would take an interest in saving $$ that way. Lo and behold, she heard about a local group giving how-to lectures at the library and has jumped in with both feet. I’m talking buying 30 bowls of fancy ramen noodles at a dime each, despite no one in the family ever having any interest in ramen noodles, 40 tubes of toothpaste, etc. Each day he comes in with more tales of the growing mounds of stuff that have taken over their house, she’s like a born-again saver full of all the zeal of a freshly minted convert. It’ll be interesting to see if she keeps up extreme couponing or relaxes to a more sedate pace.

Like others in the thread, I find it’s most lucrative for non-consumable items, and when you can stack coupons. I’ve gotten toys for my daughter for 25% of their retail price that way.

The bottom line about any form of couponing is this:

[ol]
[li]If you buy something you would not ordinarily buy, you lose.[/li][li]If you buy a larger quantity of something than you can use in a reasonable time, you lose.[/li][li]If you buy an upscale or premium product over a lower-cost product that’s just as good, you lose.[/li][/ol]
Nearly all couponing (by the time it gets to the point of deserving a title) breaks one or more of these rules. IME, most coupons are for “upscale” or “premium” products. You are NOT saving money if you buy Pantene for $9 with a coupon when equivalent shampoos are $5 every day.

You have to think the process through to understand: manufacturers are not knocking their prices down for *your *benefit. They do it to move products that aren’t selling - but still do so at a profit - and to get buyers to buy things they would normally pass by. If you buy something you don’t need because you were offered a discount… you’ve lost.