Coupon Organizer & Other Organizing Ideas For Clipping Coupons

The high cost of food is a fact of life – we all have to eat. There are however, creative ways to reduce your grocery bill without sacrificing nutritional value. Using a coupon organizer and coupon collecting in general is not only gaining in popularity it also offers great savings on your monthly grocery bill.

Some serious coupon clippers claim you can save an average of 30 percent off your total groceries just by using coupons and refund offers.

To realize these coupon savings takes some effort and organizing. You need to start and maintain a coupon organizer so you can trade coupons and refund offers, save refund qualifiers (boxes, labels, or virtually any other part of the product packaging), subscribe to at least one refund newsletter, and carefully organize and execute shopping trips. To do this right takes several hours a week.

It’s a big investment in time, there’s no doubt about it. However, many refunders look upon it as a useful hobby – one that offers money in the mailbox almost daily.

Still others treat couponing and refunding as an at-home, part-time job. Some real keeners have worked so hard and profited so well, they do it full-time.

If you’re like me and you don’t have several hours a week to spare managing your coupon portfolio, you can still maximize the coupon advantage without giving up any of your free time (obviously the more time you spend at it, the more money you can save).

The first thing an occasional coupon user should do is purchase an expanding check file (I picked mine up at a local dollar store) and categorize each pocket for beverages, cereals, condiments and staples, dairy, health and beauty aides, household, laundry, meat, miscellaneous, prepared (bottled, boxed, canned), snacks, and fast food. Wrap a rubber band around it and keep the file in your purse or in the front seat of your car.

Personally, I use only the big coupons (25 cents or more)and make it a habit to never clip and file a coupon for something I would not normally buy. There’s no value there. When I come across new coupons I can use, they’re tossed into an envelope I carry in my purse. I then move them to the coupon file whenever I have a few moments, such as when I’m sitting in the waiting room of my doctor or dentist, or in the car when my hubby is driving. A couple of times each year, I do a purge of all expired coupons.

The benefit of this system is that my coupon file is always accessible when grocery shopping. Other serious frugal Freddies read grocery store ads and plan their menus around store specials. They try to match up these sales with cash-off coupons and look for stores that “double coupon.”

There are seldom cash-off coupons or refunds available for store brand merchandise, so before you buy see if you have a coupon for a name brand, which may actually be cheaper than a house or generic brand, once you factor in the coupon savings.

It’s amazing what happens with just a little effort and organization. Again, never forget the golden rule of effective couponing: if you don’t need it and would never use it, don’t buy it.