Im a newbie

[babybeauty77]

IM NEW AT ALL THIS... SO I AM SO LOST. CAN SOMEONE HELP ME OUT, I DONT UNDERSTAND HOW YOU CAN ALMOST GET EVERYTHING FREE OR CHEAP. I HAVE BEEN READING THE GETTING STARTED FORUM. BUT IM STILL LOST, I DONT UNDERSTAND HOW YOU CAN DOUBLE COUPONS NO WHERE AROUND HERE ACCEPTS THAT. SO HOW DO YOU GET EVERYTHING CHEAP AND ALMOST FREE. HELP!!

[Castingbread]

Welcome! I suggest picking one drug store and one grocery store in your area to start with and check out the forums for them here. The veteran shoppers there will have the deals up and coupons to go with them. They will be able to help you with those specific stores and answer your questions on how to get started. It is slow at first, but then you will slowly start getting more and more deals and be pleasantly surprised.

You need to read and learn about trading coupons with fellow couponers on here: say you have a dog another couponer has a baby and you can trade those types of coupons with each other and both get the deals you need.

Find out if your stores take printable coupons and check out the printable coupons listed in that forum on here and print what you can use. Also there are links on this website for coupons.com, etc. that have lots of coupons offered to print each month.

And check out the "give me my money back" forum for rebates. Some you can print online, some you have to find, but often they will say where they are found. Again, you could trade for some.

You can also pay for the service of someone else gathering coupons for you, on here, on ebay or at a "clipping service".

Be patient, know that each week with sales and couponing you are starting to save $$, eventually you will save more, but just keep reading and reading and reading on here and ask questions--you will feel like a huge truck going up a steep hill at first but eventually you will be going down the other side of the hill and will actually have to apply the brakes at times--you just won't need all you can get cheaply or free.

Have fun!

[Castingbread]

Duplicate post: edited to delete. Somehow my computer keeps posting my postings twice the last couple of days.

[tmsmalley]

Not everyone has coupon doubles, that's a very regional thing so they probably don't exist in your area.

You can't get EVERYTHING free or cheap, especially in the beginning. So what you need to do is revise your thinking and consider that you're getting things cheaper for now, then eventually, more and more things closer and closer to free or really cheap.

The magic formula is coupon + sale + stockpile. When you have a coupon and a sale, you use them together and you stock up as much as your supply of coupons, available cash, space for storage and amount you can reasonably use permits. Once you've got some things stored, you can then wait for a super good sale/coupon combo before you buy that item again, so you can wait until Rice Crispies are .25 a box.

Start slow, with one grocery store and maybe one drug store. Focus on paying LESS than you did before and building over time.

Tess

[pasharain]

I said something very similar on another thread, but it's all about comparing prices. I do not keep a price book like some do, but if you get to know the prices of the products you buy most often you will be able to spot deals in order to "stock up" cheaply.

For example, the deodorant I use is pretty much always $2.35 a stick at Walmart (the store I primarily shop). Recently, it was on sale at Walgreens for $2.25 (only $.10 cheaper), but I had coupons for $1.00 off each stick, making them $1.25. Therefore, I stocked up.

Getting as many sources for coupons is also key to stocking up in the cheapest possible manner. You can check the HCW boards for trades on the products you use or buy coupons from a clipping service or ebay. I almost always have to do this in order to have enough coupons for the number of products I want to purchase.

Another thing I do is search for coupons I do not know actually exist. For example, we buy a lot of hormel pepperoni, so periodically I do searches for a coupon on hormel pepperoni even if I don't know that one actually exists. You can search HCW's members Have Lists or type the name of the product you want and the word "coupon" in eBay's search box.

Hope that helps a little.