Okay, so hopefully you’ve put some thought into getting those coupons and organizing them in a way that will help you find them as quickly and easily as possible. Now what? You have to think strategy – how you’re going to use those coupons to get the very best deals and save your family lots of money!

• Check the sale ads/store circular. The front page is where they put the really good deals to lure you into the store, but everything in the circular is important to look at. Make sure you read the items that are on sale in smaller print and not just the big eye-catching ones. I know that sounds pretty basic, but this week I almost missed the fact that Endust Furniture Polish is on sale for $1.99 at ShopRite (a $2 savings) and there was a coupon in one of Sunday’s inserts for $2.00 off of one Endust Furniture Polish. I got that item for free this week!
• Multiply your coupons. Try to shop only at grocery stores that double or triple them. I really only had a vague idea of what a double coupon was. Basically this is when the store doubles the value of the coupon (they get reimbursed by the manufacturer for the face value of the coupon so they’re matching it for you). ShopRite doubles up to $1, so if you have a coupon for 75 cents off a bag of Green Giant frozen vegetables, the store will give you another 75 cents on top of it for a total savings of $1.50 off that bag! Pretty good. If the coupon you have is $1 off, they only give you $1.
• Buy things on sale. In order to save the most money you need to buy items at the absolute cheapest you can get them while using a coupon. Only buy something if it’s on sale unless you really need it. That might mean buying something cheaper now that you don’t necessarily need yet, but will later. This touches on the concept of stockpiling, which I’ll get into another time.
• Use your coupons and don’t forget to sign up for the store’s savings card (like CVS’s ExtraCare Card or ShopRite’s PricePlus Club). I use coupons to purchase most of the items I buy each week (I only wish there were coupons to help pay for my toddler’s penchant for bananas). One other thing – you might want to clip coupons for items you wouldn’t normally purchase. You might not like Endust Furniture Polish, but if you can get it for free you might consider starting a box of items that you can donate to a charity. Check out Feeding America’s website where I found a New Jersey charity called the Community Food Bank of NJ, where they gratefully accept both food and non-food items.
• Stick to your list! When you figure out what those great deals are and you go to the store don’t let yourself be tempted by other things…that’s a surefire way to go over budget. This is why I like to grocery shop alone! Some people like to shop with their coupon binder “just in case”, but I like to put everything I need (coupons, list, yes…even a small geeky calculator) for that shop into a zipper pencil case.