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Extreme Couponing Start-up Kit
Coupon Matching – Planning a Shopping Trip
Nov. 17th | Posted by Extreme Couponing
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Finding the Deals and Matching Coupons
The hardest part about couponing, extreme couponing or not, is doing the weekly coupon match-ups and planning your shopping trip using those coupons.
I guess I wouldn’t call it “hard”, just time consuming. I usually set aside 2-3 hours each saturday to search for deals, print and cut coupons and then make my shopping list/plan. I then usually spend another 2-3 doing the actual shopping. At the end of my shopping trip for the week, I have normally invested about a half a day. Not too bad if you consider how much I save by investing that time!
Planning my Extreme Couponing Shopping Trip
What “Couponing” Equipment Do I Need?
Here’s a photo of my kitchen table on a typical Saturday while doing my coupon match-ups, cutting coupons, printing coupons and making my list.
On the table you’ll find:
- My Laptop (with the Extreme Couponing Kit printable coupon database page open)
- My Printer is Just Around the Corner
- Coupon Inserts
- Local Sale Flyers for the Week
- Paper & Pen
- Coffee!
The General Coupon Matching Process – Step by Step
1. Gather the supplies listed above.
2. Look through the new weekly coupon inserts to get an idea of what is in them.
3. Look through each stores weekly sales flyers, watching for any item that I might have remembered from the new coupon inserts.
4. If I find a good deal that could be great, but I don’t have a coupon in my stash of Sunday paper coupon inserts, I will search the printable coupon database for one, or do a general search online to see if I can dig one up.
5. Write down the items that I decide to buy, along with the coupon info that I’m using for each item (or use an excel shopping list sheet, which is included in the Extreme Couponing Start-up Kit)
6. Clip or print the coupons that I need for this shopping trip and any others that I want to have along “just in case”.
7. Separate coupons for each store I plan on shopping at and either put a paper clip on them or stick them in their own separate envelopes (depending on how big of a stack I have to bring along). I do this as I go along, creating a pile for each store.
8. Print out my shopping list that I’ve entered into the Excel spreadsheet. (You can write it all down by hand too if you like, this is how I started)
That is the process from a birds eye view. Some people have more time for shopping and head to the store many times a week, when a new coupon is issued online or when they learn about a great coupon deal. I do almost all my shopping once a week because I’m a single mom with a full schedule (business, college and children). Do whatever works best for you!
I have found that some stores do not stock the new sale items until weekdays, so when I go to get them on the weekend, the shelves are nearly empty. In these cases, I’ll have to make an extra trip to get those great deals and complete my shopping. This can be a big inconvenience and forces me to sometimes re-think my shopping plan in order to get the correct number of items needed for some coupon match-ups. But it’s not always this way, thank God!
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