Money Saving Challenge 2011....Get Busy with Your Coupon System!

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