This post was inspired by Precious' Money Saving Challenge series. You can check her blog out at Frugal Makes Cents.
Now that 2011 is here, it's time to get going on preserving your family's income.
Let me say how I hate, yes-HATE! to give our family's money away.
...To much to the Government(who is quite inefficient in how they use it and waste quite a bit).
....To businesses and stores for their overpriced products.
While some of this spending is necessary(and required by law to boot), with the discretionary spending, I try to do what I can to reduce the amount we let leave Chez Sluggy.
One of the areas where you can slow the money hemorrhage each month is by controlling your food spending!
One way to reduce your food spending is by using coupons.
If you do use coupons, now is the time to do a little maintenance on your system before you get inundated with the beginning of the year flood of coupons!
So I spent a little piece of my time today going through my Coupon Inserts from the latter part of last year and clipping out any coupons that have not expired by 12/31/2010 that I think I may use/need in the coming months.
I spent 2010 labeling my inserts and filing them. I only clipped coupons as needed each week.
So I had quite the stack of inserts to sort through.
For now, I'll put each pile of coupons into one of the pencil cases I have, with all the Jan. expiring coupons in one case, the Feb. expiring coupons in another case, etc.
I'll reconsider going back to using a coupon binder for my system this month. If the amount of actual FOOD coupons picks up I probably will. 2010 was a very poor year for manufacturers releasing Food coupons(except for the junkier food ones)into circulation. I found I used far more internet printed coupons than manufacturer's coupons printed in the newspaper inserts. It was so one-sided I am considering no longer buying the Sunday paper for coupon inserts and using a clipping service instead for the few coupons I would require.
Do you plan on using coupons more or less in 2011?
Do you have a system to keep them organized that works well for your?
Please leave a comment or question.
Sluggy
"I found I used far more internet printed coupons than manufacturer's coupons printed in the newspaper inserts."
ReplyDeleteTotally agree with that! It seems like the coupons that pop up on the Internet for short periods of time (like a lot of the facebook/mfr deals) are for much higher value. The printed insert coupons seem to be more like 50-cents off 2 or something like that where it hardly pays to use the coupon sometimes. Kinda depressing. But yay for IPQs, as long as the stores keep taking them!!
I'll keep getting my one delivered Sunday paper for the inserts but then buy select coupons either from MyCouponHunter.com or off ebay if I want a bundle of something in particular.
My current system is a binder for the grocery coupons and a coupon wallet with dividers for the RA/CVS/Walmart coupons (mostly non-food).
I agree with what both of you have said. I believe that as businesses struggle in this economy, we will see fewer and fewer good coupons. But I plan on "cherry picking" whatever I can for as long as I can.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with you that way too much of our money goes to beaurocratic inefficient government. It was a real eye opener when our property tax bill came yesterday and they actually print on it that almost 60% of the taxes we pay in our county goes for medicaid which is mandated by the Federal government. UGH!
Thanks for the shout out also. I hope we all have a terrific 2011!
Pretty--Sounds like you've got a system that works for you. I just don't have the volume of food coupons anymore to justify all the clipping and binder sorting. I've been using a pencil case/envie system for Rite-Aid for most of 2010 and another envie for all my other food coupons. Inserts get labeled and filed and I clip as I need them.
ReplyDeletePrecious--60%, seriously!?!? Wow....
The deals are truly going to decline in 2011(they declined in 2010 from 2009 levels too). Combine less deals, with more people being more careful with their shrinking incomes and hunting for deals and the competition at the stores is going to be fierce this year. I'm hoping for the best but preparing in some ways for the worst.