Coupon 101

Are you one of those people who loves to save money? Or are you one of those people who needs to save money?

I'm someone who love to save money as well as someone who needs to save money. I'm a mom of 5, and only my husband works, so this is what I've learned about couponing over the last year or so.

So lets get started!

The first thing you need to do is either subscribe to the Sunday paper in your area that contains coupons ... Here where I am its called The Baltimore Sun.Or you can just purchase it every Sunday from your local Newstand or grocery store. I myself subscribe to the paper and purchase at least 1 to 3 on Sunday's while out getting my morning coffee.

Next thing you want to do is go through the coupons and see what you would use and cut those out.

Then you should check your local grocery store ads for that coming week. If you have a coupon and an item is on sale then it's a total bonus! I love those kind of buys!

I normally check out the CVS ad first because you earn Extra care bucks which are coupons that can be used only at CVS but can be used on ALMOST anything in the store.

For more tips keep on reading below...

As times get tough for many middle & low class American families, its time to start scrimping and saving what little we do have at the moment.

So here are my tips for how to "save money without killing yourself...

1) Cut back to basic cable (if you don't watch it enough, just get rid of it for a while, our cable used to be $200 a month)

2) Only use your cellphone for a phone (get rid of your house phone, that will save you at least $49.95 a month)

3) Clip Coupons for everything that you can get your hands on (for groceries, restaurants, clothing, and anything else you can think of) or look up coupon codes for online shopping, just use google to locate some (its really not hard, you just have to look a little harder sometimes).

4) Use restaurant gift cards- Log on to Restaurant.com you can get $10.00 gift cards for $3.00, $25.00 gift cards for $10.00, $50.00 gift cards for $20.00, $75.00 gift cards for $30.00, and $100 gift cards for $40.00 ... So check em out! Great deals on restaurants, and you should be able to combine that with a coupon if you have one for the restaurant you are going too!

5) Whatever you save on shopping, eating out, entertainment, etc, transfer to your savings account so you don't spend it on other things.

6) Spend more time at home, so you aren't out driving around wasting gas. But if you are like me and my family, we hate to be home, then try to find things you can walk too (it's great exercise as well as a money saver).

7) Unplug things when they are not in use, because they still draw electricity, therefore waste your money on your gas/electric bill.

Other things you can do to "save" money would to be to sell items that you or your children no longer need. Such as all those toys that your kids have gotten too old for, or just never played with, clothes they have outgrown, etc. You can sell them at yard sales, flea markets, on ebay.com, etc. But once you've made the money from selling things, put that money right into your savings account so don't spend what you've just made!

I know it sounds easier than it really is to not spend the money that you have sitting in your savings account, but you have to really make sure that you don't spend it so you have money to fall back on in case something happens. With the way this economy is at the moment, so many people are still on the verge of losing their jobs, homes, cars/trucks, etc.

I've gone through phases of using coupons over the years. Sometimes I use a lot, sometimes I don't use any.

I only clip coupons that I know I will use, which saves me money because I'm not buying things I don't need or use.

With couponing, you need to know when items go on sale, normally this happens around holidays, special seasons, and some items only go on sale every 6,8, or 12 weeks.

If you really want to save money with couponing, it's best to keep a price book of all the items you buy on a regular basis. This way you can track how often it goes on sale and plan your shopping trips around when the items you have coupons for go on sale.

Sometimes certain stores double and triple the face-value of a coupon up to 99 cents or $1. The catch is sometimes it's a specific time frame that they do it or on a specific day. Not all stores do this, but if you have a store that does this then use this to your advantage (but do not commit coupon fraud).

So where are some places to get coupons?

• Coupons.com
• Redplum.com
• Smartsource.com
• Sunday Newspaper
• Friends/Family
• Coupon Swap
• eBay
• Off items you are purchasing
• Receipts