A Couponer is Born

I became a couponer out of necessity. Our money was running out WAY before our months were. We were relying on credit cards and getting deeper and deeper in debt. I desperately wanted to stay home with my kids - something had to give.

My SIL introduced me to the Grocery Game (a service that you pay for - they provide lists that tell you when to use your coupons). It was good training, but I found that I was buying products that we weren't using. Even if I only paid .25 for something, that was .25 wasted if we didn't use it. Also, the lists rarely included deals on the types of food we usually ate.

I knew there had to be more to couponing than a canned list. Tom Thumb (a Safeway/Randalls store) was running a promo at the time. If you bought $30 in certain products, you would receive a $10 oyno (on your next order) coupon. I figured that someone somewhere must have access to the list of products, so I googled the name of the promo and "list" and ended up finding Hot Coupon World. I thought those women were NUTS, at first. Then I was intrigued. Then I was addicted. A little over two years later, I'm home with the kids, we've paid off $10,000 in debt, and we're steadily moving closer to being debt free. I haven't used a credit card in almost a year and a half.

In February, I gave a very informal couponing class to my dear friend Kam's Mommy Group. Several of the ladies have really taken to couponing, but have lots of questions. Lourdes, my new friend, said the other day, "if I could just shadow you in the store - I think it would help." So, that's what I'm going to try to do here. There are so many wonderful couponing blogs out there - you'll find my favorites in my blog roll. I'm not going to re-invent the wheel, but I will try to show how I'm shopping now and explain how I got to this point. Every family is different, of course. Everyone will have different needs, different methods. Hopefully, I can help give you some ideas. Hopefully, you can give me some ideas!

If you're new to couponing, just remember to take one step at a time. It can be really overwhelming at first. Sticking with it is definitely worth it.

Oh, and btw, Tom Thumb is actually running that same promo right now. I'll have more on that tomorrow.