In our house we have special nicknames for my fiancée and his skill for coupon shopping. We tease him about his obsession but we all love to reap the benefits. Last Sunday he came home telling me how the lady behind him was acting upset with her body language for taking so long in the self checkout line and sadly, he had not even whipped his coupons out yet. I know from personal experience that the coupon process can take so much time that it makes you ask yourself if it is even worth it. Somehow though, when he starts doing his coupon thing it makes you definitely pay attention and not only that but you get so excited to watch. The lady behind him in line was so impressed after watching his coupon skill she had to tell him how amazing he was for being a man and taking so much time to save so much money with coupons. I basically teased him that he is now getting hit on by ladies at the grocery store because of coupon coolness. I have to personally say that it is a very attractive thing to see a man doing domestic chores. I told him the only thing that would have made him more attractive to the lady at the store would have been if he had our 1 year old with him.

I would usually be the one to go threw the Sunday paper and clip some coupons now and then. Most of the time, I would forget them at home or they would expire. I knew you could save money with coupons but I could never seem to get it to work for me like some people I would see. The first time I saw a woman in line save $80 on a $100 bill, I was so impressed I knew there had to be a way I could pull it off too. I came home and told my fiancée about the savings I had seen this woman do and you could almost see the dollar signs in his eyes. At that moment, a coupon monster was created.

He has gone threw a few different systems over the last year but now he has it down to almost what you could call a coupon science. He does his “bidding” sometimes during his lunch hour or on his way home from work and it is so fun to see him come in the door with his arms full of groceries and receipts to brag about. (Please see attached images for a few of our actual receipts and proof of savings.)  Sometimes I can’t believe how much money he saves with coupons so I’ve decided to share a few of his little secrets with you in hopes that you can save your family some money too. We all need as much help as we can get during these hard financial times and cutting corners on our grocery bill is something that everyone can benefit from.

• Buy multiple Sunday papers at a time so you can cut more than one coupon. Now this can be time consuming so ask the kids or your spouse to pitch in some help. He skims one newspaper for the coupons we know we want and that makes it easier to go threw the other coupon inserts.
• Visit Coupon Dede to purchase a wide variety of coupons online. This site was unfamiliar to us at first but we are really happy with it. You can purchase your choice of coupons for around 5-8 cents and they mail them right to you. This is worth the purchase if your local grocery store doubles coupons (i.e. 75 cents becomes a $1.50 towards the item).
• Browse your grocery store circulars for the week. Get familiar with the sales and the coupons. The real deal is when you can buy something that is on the $10 for $10 sale and you have a $1 coupon for the item. It basically becomes free at that point. These are the sales to use your coupons on.
• Stock up on the items on sale that week. Sometimes, it is hard to find room for all the goodies he brings home but it is worth it in the end. He has been doing this for enough time that we rarely run out of any of our necessity items. This also saves us on a huge weekly bill. We can now just go to the store on the weekend for the staples and things that needed to be bought fresh. We were spending about $200 + a week for the 2 of us and about $50 more for the baby. Now we spend on an average, about $50-75. If we splurge that week, maybe we take it to $100. This has helped save a lot of money for our budget and I hope it helps you save too. Coupons are your friends!

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