If you are reading this, you have probably seen someone either on a TV show, news program or even on your social media news feed who has gotten hundreds of dollars of merchandise for a fraction of the cost. Those deals are awesome and amazing... and not every day. There is a TV show that is currently airing that shows amazing deals. Has anyone noticed the disclaimer? Notice how some stores show their names but some blur them out? One stores reward system was featured prominently in the episode. That was not an accident. Stores allow TLC to come in and film giving them free publicity, in order to make it interesting the stores often suspend their own policies. What goes on in these transactions isn't normal and isn't going to be possible for most of you, if not all. What these shows has done is take a normal coupon trick and put it on steroids. Now everything thinks not only can they buy 400 toothbrushes, they NEED to and they are disappointed when they can't. I don't want anyone to get discouraged by these shows or people you may encounter. What they do is like the Harlem Globetrotters, the rules are changed for them so they never lose. You are not a Globetrotter... I am not a Globetrotter. Consider yourself on the rec league at the YMCA. There are no winners, there are no losers, there is no score, you are just doing your best. As you get better you will move up and maybe play in the NBA, and a few of those will even become a Globetrotter, but you won't be one this week, or even this year.
Starting to coupon is like starting a business. You need supplies. The supplies are not just the binder (box), sheets, dividers, and scissors, they are the coupons themselves. A coupon for General Mills cereal will not come out every week. It will come out every 4-6 weeks. Very rarely do coupons come multiple times a month, and for some reason its the yogurt and crescent rolls coupon. So it will take you 4-6 weeks to gather the majority of the coupons. Some coupons only come out once a year, like coupons on turkeys come out near Thanksgiving, Pepsi issues coupons around Memorial Day, school supplies in August etc. The first few weeks you will have a few coupons splattered in a few sheets in your binder, a few weeks later you might need to buy more sheets! I set this class up this way for a reason. Some of you have last week's coupons, so by the time I tell you how to shop CVS next week you will have two weeks worth of coupons only. I picked CVS as the first shop for a reason, one its almost everywhere so a lot of people have access to one. Two, in the ad itself it bases the deals on that week's coupons so even if you only one week of coupons you can still get the deals! Granted the more coupons you have the more deals you can get, but I can almost assure everyone will get one deal or freebie next week with only one week of papers. If you try and go grocery shopping on two weeks of papers, you are not going to save 100%. You may save 3%. And that is a victory because you are just starting to build up your supplies and coupon inventory. You scored a basket. You saved a little. You are not Kevin Durant, but you are scoring!
Just like Durant and the Globetrotters you need some fans. It sucks when you score 3% off your grocery bill and no one is excited. I have been there. You need support. Find someone, anyone to brag too. If your significant other or BFF doesn't get it, find a friend, use the group to brag about your successes, post it here whatever, just have someone encourage you. If you saved 1% one week and 3% the next week, brag about that too. You are getting better. In the beginning you are not profitable. You spent 10$ on a binder and sheets, 4$ on paper, and a buck on some scissors and you save 3$ at the store. The first week, you might be negative, you might break even. You might not have used one single coupon. Please don't get discouraged. If you are broke, buy envelopes at the dollar store until you save enough for a binder. Get a .25 cent folder and keep the one set of inserts you took from your mom's house and cut at the store. Do what you can on your budget. The best advice I can ever give, is save your receipts. Save them for the first month and add them all up at the end of that first month, see how you did. By then you should have at least saved something. Be proud of whatever that number is and keep learning. Tuck them away and go back six months later and add it all up. If you stick with it, that number will blow you away.
You will also make some mistakes. I thought the first month that 2$ was an awesome price for cereal and stocked up. It was an awesome price for me at the time, now not so much. Don't begrudge yourself for spending more then than you do now. If you miss a deal, forget a coupon, mess up a deal, don't sweat it. Most deals won't make or break you. I have been couponing for four years, and I totally messed up a deal the other day. Twice. I had to redo it. Twice. I'm human, you're human. As long as you are saving and trying then its working!
For some people that live in states like I do, getting that huge 97% savings on your average grocery trip will just not happen. I can't get coupons for every single thing that I want, my go to grocery store doesn't have a savings card, or double coupons. Some things I just have to pay for. Stores that double coupons and have crazy rewards are great for couponers... but they aren't great for everyone else. A store that doesn't double often has cheaper prices on every item all the time. The stuff you have to pay full price for is cheaper but you don't get the huge savings. I will tell you a secret, those grocery stores just mark their stuff up and then give you a huge savings to make you feel like its cheaper. Its a gimmick, most grocery stores have similar profit margins and since they buy all their stuff from the same people that just means they are selling it at the same prices. If I can save 30% at my go to store, thats really great and I will get things much cheaper than buying them all at the gimmick store. The trick is to buy the cheap or free stuff from the gimmick store and buy everything else at the everyday cheap store!!! Doing that is more work, but I assure you that means more savings.
No comments:
Post a Comment