Tips: Tips On Where To Find Better Insert Coupons

[flash]

Sunday newspapers are the most reliable source of coupons. They also provide savings on a broad range of products. Three publishers print inserts, which are generally “inserted” into the pre-printed ads and store circulars:

SmartSource (SS, one or two inserts each week)
Vlassis (V, usually one every other week)
PGBrand Saver (P&G, usually the first weekend of every month)


It is important to realize that not every newspaper subscribes to coupon publications (inserts). Also, not every newspaper subscribes to the same set of inserts, even within the same city. Even more complicating, coupon value in inserts, from the same publisher on the same weekend, frequently varies by region, even by town! “30 cents on two” in Baltimore maybe “$1.50 on one” in San Diego!

Before you decide good Sunday coupons are not available in your area, do some investigation at a large supermarket, newsstand, restaurant, airport, hotel, or wherever you will find the largest selection of Sunday newspapers in your area. Look through them. You might be surprised. Even the local free “rag” may provide great coupons.

Once you’ve determine which paper has the highest volume of coupons, look through the inserts themselves. Does the front tell you the $ value of the coupons it contains? Are there any show stopper super coupons? Any ultra value, free item, or hard to find coupons? If not, you may not want to waste time, energy, or money obtaining additional copies. If it does, however, it’s time to move into Super Saver mode!

You need to receive the best coupon inserts offered to achieve super savings. Another key to super savings is having multiple copies of the coupons you really want. You need to have a coupon for every item in your shopping cart! If you are going to buy 5 of one item, you need five coupons good on that item! You can achieve this by obtaining multiple copies of the inserts, as inexpensively as possible. There are several ways to do this:

1. Double Check Your Paper: If you have a paper delivered make sure you go through it thoroughly. Frequently extra inserts find their way through the sorting process and into your paper. Don’t assume that you’ve found them all.

2. Call Your Newspaper: If you don’t receive your regular inserts call the paper on that day and request that they deliver them. You are paying for the paper; you’d probably complain if the news section did not come; the inserts are money in your pocket. Make sure you get what you are paying for.

3. Buy A Paper: If your paper doesn’t carry the best inserts, or if you find some really outstanding coupons, you can purchase a second or different paper. Make sure the coupons are physically in the paper you pick up before you buy it. Look through them. You need to balance the cost of that paper against the savings you will actually see. Are the coupons worth the price of the paper to you?

4. Check “Free To The Public” Papers: Many subscribe to the inserts. Get as many as you can.

5. Check At Your Local Store: Many grocery stores discount the price of Sunday papers. Stores also return unsold papers for credit when the next paper is delivered; generally inserts do not need to be returned. Ask the late night shift, you might be surprised.

6. Check Local Restaurants, Hotels, Hospitals, Airports...: Basically anywhere people purchase papers and sit down to read them. Ask people if they are going to use the inserts. If they leave their paper behind, take it before it gets tossed. Make friends with the receptionists, hostesses, lobby managers, and ask them to save them for you when they are tidying up the area.

7. Check Newspaper Recycling Bins: Apartment, condos, hotels, businesses, neighborhoods, communities, even the recycling centers will often allow you to look through their paper recycle. If you live in a town with curbside recycling, taking a evening stroll the night before they are picked up can give you a lot of extra coupons inserts at no cost.

8. Inquire Within Your Community: Ask friends, family, neighbors, even colleagues for their inserts. Most people don’t use coupons, and are delighted to contribute.

9. Start A Coupon Collection / Recycle Box: People are usually glad to donate their inserts at work, in the break room, at church, at your club, your child’s school, wherever people you know gather.

10. Contact Friends, Family, A Coupon Train, and Exchange Coupons Across Locales: They may not want that $2 coupon on toothpaste from their insert, while you may have one they are looking for!

[lisa89]

I got some inserts on Monday from someone that delivers papers. SHe lives about 45 miles away & I was VERY surprised that her inserts where different than mine! I knew of the different values but assumed that was more from state to state, and not from city to city as we aren't that far apart!

Some of hers were better & some not!
Lisa

[GingerClip]

Since the inserts are all manufacturers' coupons, you can still use coupons from another part of the country in your own city, right? For example, if I travel to see my sister for the weekend, I can clip coupons in her state and then use them when I return home?

[GeekyGuy]

I'm assuming and hoping so. As a matter of fact, my local bookstores carry the Sunday paper from NY. So now I'm thinking about picking up one of each a week, provided that the NY Times has the inserts in it.

[amerline]

The NY Times does not have inserts in it. You will be purchasing an edition that is printed for your region. When I subscribed there were a couple times when the NY Times had a single coupon in it from a local store (think high-end local store)

[BostonRed]

Originally Posted by flash It is important to realize that not every newspaper subscribes to coupon publications (inserts). Also, not every newspaper subscribes to the same set of inserts, even within the same city. Even more complicating, coupon value in inserts, from the same publisher on the same weekend, frequently varies by region, even by town! “30 cents on two” in Baltimore maybe “$1.50 on one” in San Diego!

I'm not sure I would use the word 'subscribe' in this case. The inserts are ads like every other in the paper and it is up to SS or V to decide if they want to pay for each newspaper, city, etc.

[queenofthehivemomof5]

Originally Posted by GingerClip Since the inserts are all manufacturers' coupons, you can still use coupons from another part of the country in your own city, right? For example, if I travel to see my sister for the weekend, I can clip coupons in her state and then use them when I return home?

Yes you can use them from other locations. There might be store specific coupons in your newspapers though (Publix, Kroger, Target, and PetSmart are pretty common) and you may not have those stores where you live, some of the store coupons are manf. coupons, but some of them are store only coupons. But the majority of the coupons in the inserts are manf. coupons and can be used anywhere the item is sold.

Inserts from the east coast may have coupons for items not sold on the west coast and vice versa, or there may be coupons for products that are regional items. Like the south gets coupons for some soda called "Big Red" never seen that soda here. Big Red here is gum. LOL Then there is the same item with different names. Hellmans and Best Foods. Edys and Dryers, Deerpark and Arrowhead water, Seneca and Treetop, etc.

[averys_mom_92205]

So here's a question, if my Borders carried say, The Seattle Times, would there be inserts in it or would it be a similar thing to the NY Times? Does anybody know?

[queenofthehivemomof5]

"Times" is just part of the newspaper. I am sure they are not owned by the same company.

Most newspapers are called

Times
News Record
Tribune
Daily Record
Gazette

Etc...

[chanfu]

Originally Posted by GingerClip Since the inserts are all manufacturers' coupons, you can still use coupons from another part of the country in your own city, right? For example, if I travel to see my sister for the weekend, I can clip coupons in her state and then use them when I return home?

Yes, you can use manufacturer's coupons anywhere, provided they don't have state restrictions listed on them. I've only seen that on some winetags, though, never on insert coupons.

This is what makes trading so helpful. You can trade "hot" coupons that you can't use for other, better coupons that you can use. I always try to get multiple inserts when there are pet food frees, for instance, even though I don't have a pet, because I can get good trades for them.

This is also why Taylortown and other posts that list local insert coupons are helpful. You can figure out from them what desirable coupons other areas got that you didn't get and arrange to trade for them. I always go through Taylortown on Sunday, after I've gone through my inserts, to see if there are any coupons I want that I didn't get in my inserts. Then I add them to my wish list.

My area doesn't get the best insert coupons, but we don't get the worst, either. We generally don't get the $1/1 Bounty or Charmin, or the $1/1 Cottonelle; instead, we get lower values for those coupons. We usually don't get the free Electrasols, but last time we got the $2.25/1s. We usually do get the pet food frees, though last time we didn't. We NEVER get Kraft cheese coupons for some reason. The one time we got a desirable coupon that others didn't get was when we got the B1G1 Ziploc bags a couple of months ago. Now I'm kicking myself that I didn't get more inserts that week, because nobody else seems to have gotten this coupon that I can trade with; it seems like everybody else got $1/2.

I did a big free + overage deal on Huggies wipes last month using entirely traded coupons, since we never get Huggies wipes coupons, either.