Yes actually, they are in the newspaper, but only in the Sunday edition, and they are their own full color booklet (not made of newsprint, and not bound with the newspaper).
Typically the Sunday newspapers have an extra packet of advertising included with them. I get the Chicago Tribune; on Sundays along with the super-sized Sunday paper sections, it also has a plastic-wrapped packet inside with lots of advertising in it. Most of it is flyers from regional/national chain stores hyping their weekly sales. There are also some collections of coupons from a variety of different manufacturers.
We also tend to get a smaller selection of coupons with the mail during the week, though these tend to be mixed with local businesses’ coupons.
Back in the day, everytime one of those news reports would be on TV, I would start going through my Sunday paper. What a joke. I don’t think anybody can save more than 10% of their purchase, unless with double coupon days, and those are few and far between.
Each Sunday I’d get my little scissors, and find things like 15 Cents off my next purchase of L’eggs pantyhose, if I buy two; 50 cents off my next purchase of 50 lb bag of Purina Cat chow; $1.50 off my next 36 print roll of picture development; 15 cents off of my Dole Salad Deluxe.
The next time something like that comes on TV, find the network and get the reporter’s name. I’ll bet a jillion dollars that it was a rehash of something that they did 25 years ago.
hh
I get most of my coupons from Save.ca. Once every couple of weeks I go scan the website and see if there is anything I actually use on there (and there generally is… egg noodles, yogurt, laundry supplies, toilet paper, my favourite frozen pizzas). Order them up, they get sent to my house and it’s actually stuff I buy. Takes about 30 seconds once you’re logged in. Flip through the fliers and if you see a good deal that works better with the coupon go for it, if another brand is better value then go for that and the coupon stays in my file until a later time when it gets used or it runs out.
I also follow a couple of blogs Canadian Free Stuff and Smart Canucks Every now and again they have things I don’t know about from other sources, and in my feed it’s easy to weed out the coupons or info on sales to stores I don’t shop at.
I never thought it was that much hassle. It’s just part of my shopping routine, though I don’t ever save more than a few dollars at a time but it’s a couple extra dollars to be used elsewhere or put away.
Even if you don’t save 10% of your purchase, I bet you make back the price of your newspaper. Coupons mean you get your newspaper FREE. How great is that?
Wow!
hh
Well, not so great if you have to do all that clipping and stuff to get a free newspaper you didn’t want anyway.
Do all of you really get the Sunday paper?
My name is Exapno and I’m a printaholic.
I get the Sunday paper just for the coupons. I might browse the main page or read the comics, but the main reason I have a subscription is coupons.
I get a serious thrill out of saving money on piddly shit. I average about 15% of retail on things like toothpaste, deodorant and shampoos, 50% on cleaning and paper products and pay about 65% on food. Drugstores are where you can seriously clean up by watching the ads and coupons. For instance, last week I picked up 4 boxes of Post cereal for $1.25 each, stacking two manufacturers coupons on top of Walgreen’s weekly sale.
My local grocery chain sends personalized coupons for loyalty card members, too. Often for simple things like juice and butter, or $5 off $20 worth of produce, those are very appreciated.
Looking through the coupons helps keep me from falling into the same old cooking rut. Sometimes I try new things just because I got a great deal, more often looking through the ads and coupons just gives me ideas of stuff to make.
I spent more time in the beginning, figuring out how to read the ads and match up coupons, learning the sales cycles, etc. Now I figure it takes fifteen to twenty minutes a week and saving that money just rocks my socks. For me, it’s totally worth the time.
I get two - the New York Times and our local rag. We used to get three, but after the Mercury News got bought by the same set of bozos that own our local rag, the content became so similar that it wasn’t worth it anymore.
As for making back the cost of the paper - we dropped the local rag for a while, and they got so desperate to get just back that we got such a cheap home delivery price that we actually are saving more on Sunday coupons than we are spending on the paper.
I’ll put my money on “just look for sales.”
When I was in college, Safeway would do Buy One Get One Free ground beef. We’d each get 2 5 lb. packs of hamburger then freeze it. In fact, once I “Saved 45%” without using a single coupon, just going around and buying stuff that was on sale at the time.
Even now, I know my mother usually takes a packaged meal for lunch. What is usually $5.50 was on sale for $1.88 last week. We went out and took our maximum 10 a piece.
I have a 7-days-a-week subscription to the Chicago Tribune.
My parents are huge coupon clippers. At one time my dad was doing the serious coupon stuff, where you shop around for places doing double and triple and nit-pick about the sizes of items allowed. He could go into a store and come out with $100 worth of groceries for $20 or $30 sometimes. I can tell you it is very possible to get crazy savings when a store does triple coupons. Now they have a whole closet full of small jars, boxes and cans of stuff they never use. For example, instead of a regular jar of instant coffee (which they like) on their counter they have 20 of the tiniest jars available in the pantry. Over all, it’s hard to tell if they actually saved any money. Dad had some fun while he was doing it though.
We don’t clip coupons at my house these days. Most coupons are for brands and/or products we don’t use and it is just too tempting to “save” a dollar and buy something we don’t need/won’t use. My mon still sends me coupons in the mail though … maybe one day I will see the light.
Its the working man’s equivalent of the space station and the space shuttle.
The shuttle exists to build the space station. The space station is being built so the shuttle has someplace to go.
Are you kidding? It’s so so very worth it, to me, anyway. Grocery shopping (and the planning for) is my hobby. I get a huge thrill walking out of the store with a cart full of food for $40. I clip coupons only for things I would have bought anyway, or things I might maybe buy if they are nearly free. I spend about an hour a week clipping coupons and going over the store circulars. I match my coupons up with the sales, and plan our weekly menu around that. I save about 50% each week, and it’s stuff we can eat that week, not 18 bottles of marinade.
I don’t get the logic that it’s not worth it to save fifty cents on this or a dollar on that. We’re pretty poor, but we’re going to spend money on food no matter what. The money I don’t spend on food is money I have for other things (like “new” books, $0.25 at the charity shop!) or just more food.
Where they pay off for me is when you can use a coupon during an in-store sale, especially for stuff like OTC, specifically omeprazole. Otherwise I agree with what everyone else said, if you’re not already buying that stuff it only ends up costing you more. I buy fresh and generic whenever possible, very few name-brand loyalties here.