First and foremost the best place to get a variety of coupons is your local Sunday newspaper. This past Sunday my paper said on the front page over $735 worth of valuable coupons inside! I didn't actually add them all up, but assuming they are being honest that's a lot of money that could be saved. Granted not every coupon will apply to you, but even if just one percent of the coupons are on something you would buy, you will save 7$. My local paper only costs 2$ so there is a good chance I am going to save more than I spend. People you see featured on coupon shows sometimes have hundreds of inserts, they either dive in recycle bins for them, buy hundreds of dollars in papers a week, have a network of people give them to them, or have other resources. I applaud them for that. I don't have a large network, I can't spend hundreds on papers each week, and I have no desire to hang out in a recycle bin at this point so I buy what I feel I need and what I can afford. I have a large family for today's standards, so I buy from 4-10 papers a week. Most weeks I am in the 4-6 range. Some weeks I wish I would have bought more, but most times 4-6 works well for me. If you are single, or married with no kids, you can probably buy less papers. If you are a Dugger, you will need a few dozen coupons. I advise to start low, buy one or two a week. Then in a month or two see if you want to buy more. Some of the early stores I am going to teach limit deals to 1 or 2 per family so there are still a lot of deals that can be done with just a paper a week.
There are also printable coupons. I need to cover a few things about printables before we talk about where to get them. First rule of printables. NO PHOTOCOPYING COUPONS. Yes, I needed to yell that. Every rookie couponer gets the brilliant idea to photocopy coupons, especially the printable ones. It is very logical, who would ever know?? We live in a day of really crazy technology and the manufacturers are ahead of you. I promise, they know. Each printable coupon not only has a barcode, it also has a serial number. Those serial numbers can be traced to the IP address they were printed from. If you print a high value coupon and make 150 copies and pass them all, the police might show up. I am not kidding. Copying coupons is fraud and is illegal and you can be prosecuted. Each computer can only print two coupons in most cases. I know that limit sucks. I get it. I have one computer. I encourage you to use what you have, borrow other computers, or trade with friends, but don't photocopy! You will have to download software to print from these coupon sites. It does put some sort of tracking system in your computer. I wish there was a way to not have them track you, but because of the large amount of printable coupon fraud this is the way it is done.
Now that you know what not to do with printable coupons, you need to know where to get them. There are several sites to use. I personally use Swagbucks to print most coupons because I earn points for coupons I redeem. Those points can be used to earn free gift cards. If you are a Swagbucks user, you can print coupons from the discover tab. If you aren't a Swagbucks user you can Sign Up Here!
You can also print from coupons.com, Redplum, and many manufactures use their own sites, and facebook to print coupons from as well.
Again you can print 2 of the same coupon per computer. If you have 4 computers you can print each set of coupons 4 times. Sometimes, often at the start of a month, coupons reset and you can print two more of each. Coupons.com will allow apple users to print from their mobile app if you have a certain type of printer but android users can not at this time. As an android user myself I understand that this is not cool and total technological segregation.
About 75% of coupons will come from those two sources, but some will be found in the store itself. Coupons can be placed on items, usually stuck to the item itself, you peel it off so they are often called peelies. Those coupons will say what you need to purchase to use and if you can use it on that item that day. On some peelies it will say 1$ off two. If you buy two, and both have peelies you can only use one that day, but you can keep the other for another shopping trip.
You can also find pads of coupons in stores called tear pads. Those tear pads usually look like a notepad of paper but are just stacks of coupons. I found a tear pad on chips the other day. Don't hesitate to take and use those that day on items. But please remember to only take what you will use, tear pads often go quickly and no one wants to be left out!
That should give you a good idea of where to get coupons. Next we will focus on how to organize them so you can actually use them!
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