The Williamson Wildlings: Couponing

A lot of people have been asking me about how I coupon and get things for free. There are two main ways to which I coupon, the First way is online couponing and sampling and the Second way is the good old fashion Cutting Coupons. I guarantee you will not only save money, but also you will be more organized with your food storage.

Online Couponing and Sampling

The First thing you want to do when you start to do online couponing is to make sure you make a junk e-mail. You do this for several reasons...
1. You will be receiving several e-mails a day from different companies sending you notifications of new opportunities for free samples or coupons. So you'll want one specific e-mail for couponing.
2. It keeps you protected! If you make a mistake and accidentily add a website that you thought was going to give you stuff for free but it didnt end up giving you it. It will keep you from receiving spam. I use yahoo for my couponing e-mail, its not only free but it separates junk mail all by itself.
3. I also use this e-mail for Perks Rewards Cards, Kroger, Meijer, Toys-R-Us, K-mart, Ace, American Eagle, Target, Kohl's, Kellogg's, ect. Sometimes those e-mails can be really annoying so they are easier for me to put them on my junk e-mail so I can quickly delete them since I check my junk e-mail several times a day.

The second thing to remember when couponing online is that if its too good to be true most likely it is. Im not going to go to much into being safe on the internet because most of it is self explanatory. Some sites phish for your information. They will say "we will give you a $500.00 gift Card to whatever store you most frequent on the internet,"(they use cookies to track where you have been on the internet), "just give us your Information AND sign up for one of these," one of the options for you to sign up requires you to sign up for a monthly club. They may not charge you for that first month but any other month after you must make a monthly payment. So they ask for your personal banking information etc. The best thing to do is to stay away from these types of things.

Thirdly is DO NOT OPEN AN E-MAIL IF YOU DONT KNOW WHAT ITS FROM!!!! Going back to if you were going out to research freebies and accidentily add something that was phishing for your information and they sent you an e-mail. Dont open it because they are seeing if that e-mail is actually a true e-mail. From there they will SELL your e-mail address to other companies and your e-mail can quickly be overwhelmed with e-mails from spamers and people wanting you to send them $10,000 to a Foreign Country so they can send you 10-million dollars. If your not comfortable DONT SIGN UP!

The Fourth thing to remember is if it asks you to download something be cautious! The freebies and samples should not require you to download anything!

When you sign up for freebies or product samples it will ask you a couple things...
1. Name
2. E-mail
3. Address (they need to have this so they know where to send stuff to)
4. They may ask for your phone number. Give them a landline phone like your home phone number. Its easier to change your home phone number than your cell phone number. In the whole time I've done online couponing no one has actually called me.
5. Your birthday
6. Sometimes the freebie websites will have box for you to check if you want to receive newsletters about upcoming coupons/rewards/etc. If you dont want to receive extra e-mails un-check the box before you send for your samples.

Here are Two sites that are reliable and both have sent me samples and coupons absolutely free. They may ask you to register but you may be able to get the freebies without registering. If not, its not a big deal.

1. http://www.gofreebies.com/
2. http://www.freeflys.com/MoreFreeSamples

There is another website that I have received things absolutely free, just to name a few things like a Playtex Bra, Quaker Oatmeal, Medicine, Bed Head Hair Products, Kroger Private Selection Cakes, etc. Send me your e-mail and I will send you an invitation so you can earn great deals absolutely free.

Old Fashioned Cutting Coupons

This process is the main way I coupon. Something you need to remember when couponing is that it takes time. Time gathering coupons, time clipping coupons, time organizing coupons, but time is money and saving money takes a little time. I have Family and Friends that gather coupons for me and I usually pick them up and go through them on Sunday's or Monday's. Here are some tips to remember when couponing...

1. ASK EVERYONE to save their sunday coupon inserts.
2. Order Thursday/Sunday Coupons option instead of the daily Newspaper option. It not only saves you money but ensures you to those coveted Black Friday Deals. If you dont have money to order the newspaper refer to tip 1. lol
3. Couponing is messy so do it at night when you can lay papers out and not have little ones taking your coupons and eating them lol.

4. Familiarize yourself with your favorite stores Coupon Policy. Some Stores do not take manufacturer coupons and Other stores take coupons that are specified coupons from other stores. Unfortunately as of March 1st of 2013 Kroger's Coupon Policy has changed. They no longer double coupons up to a dollar. And that change has made a big influence of getting products for free or relatively free. Its also good to have a copy of your stores coupon policy with you because sometimes employees are not familiarized with their own stores coupon policies. So if you have it handy there's no really disputing it.
5. Hit up your stores Clearance Shelf. They have a lot of great markdowns which will give you better deals to use with your coupons.
6. If you miss a great deal, don't worry. Stores rotate their sales and so do the product suppliers who give you coupons.
7. Get a binder and either clear business card insert pages or baseball card clear pages to organize your clippings. I organize my binder into about 14 categories You can organize yours however you like, but this is the way I do mine and what works best for me...BABY, BAKING, BEAUTY, BREAKFAST, DAIRY, DENTAL, FREEZER, MEDS, PAPER/SMELL GOODS, PETS, TOILETRIES, SHAVING, SOUP/SAUCE/PASTA, SNACKS. These are pretty self explanatory but I clip the coupons then put each items into their own business card inserts. Its easier to show than to explain so here are some pictures.

8. Couponing is pretty easy and uses simple math. I recommend putting a pad of paper in your binder so you can write down the sale price of an item and then the price after your coupon so when you get up to that checkout line you know exactly how much you need to pay.
9. If you have a buy one get one free coupon and you have a regular coupon for one product you can use both. For example, you have a Buy one Shaver get the second Shaver free but you also have a $4.00 off one shaver coupon. The shavers are usually $8.99 but you find it in the clearance isle for $3.99. You can use both your $4.00 off coupon and your buy one get one coupon. you bought one for $3.99 and used your $4.00 off coupon and then you get one free. Therefore walking out with 2 FREE SHAVERS!!!!!
10. If there is a good deal on items you have coupons for but the store doesn't have enough products on the shelf for how many coupons you have you can ask them for a rain check. The rain check locks in the sale price and ensures you the correct amount for how many coupons you have. For example, you have 10 coupons for ranch salad dressing but they only have 6 on the shelf. You can go up to the customer service desk and ask them for 4 rain checks for the ranch salad dressing to lock in that sale price and if your coupon will expire before they get the ranch product in they can either adjust the price or have it written down that they will honor those coupons.
11. Depending on the stores sometimes those expired coupons will be honored up to 2 weeks. you could also talk to the stores manager and 9 times out of 10 they will honor it.

These are just some tips I've learned along the way. I'm not perfect with my process in couponing but I've done pretty well in gathering up a pretty good supply of food storage. Here are some pictures of some of the freebies I've gotten and great shopping trips.