Pageant!

Today I was up in Secaucus participating in a scholarship pageant! It was a ton of fun but not much of my thought went into coupons.

Fundraising and Donating

Next week I plan to look into different charities and start to decide where to donate, what items are needed and  what items can I buy the most of for the least amount of money. My initial thoughts are to choose some where local (within Burlington county) and it seems that health and beauty items are easiest to buy so I could donate those items to programs that benefit women. I also have to come up with a way to raise the money that I will use to buy the items. Ill look into everything over the next two weeks so that when I come back from spring break I can put a plan into action.

Mentor meeting 8

Since I will be on a field trip tomorrow I had my mentor meeting today. It we brief because Mr. Reising had something else to take care of but he seemed impressed by the amount of money I saved during my 2 shopping trips this week. We also began to discuss ideas of how I will use coupons to donate things to charity. Mrs. Sardo gave me the date for the next faculty meeting so I plan to email Mr. Wigley asking permission to attend and ask the staff to donate their coupon inserts.

response from the Krazy coupon lady!

The Krazy Coupon Lady emailed me back this weekend and today I spent some time reviewing her answers and checking out some of the links she posted. Her responces to the interview questions I sent last week are as followed:

The best way to find deals is to check out our store matchups. Each week we take the ad from several stores and match the sales up with the available coupons. We then post the information for you to use. You can view them by clicking "Find My Store" at the top of our home page. If you are looking for local deals that we don't cover, I would suggest going to Google and typing in the name of your closest city and something like "coupon blog".

There are several great stores to shop at. The BEST stores depend on what region you are in. I love Albertsons, Safeway and Publix. Drug stores like Walgreens, CVS and Rite Aid also have great deals and you can often get free items.

We have created a stock up list with our rock bottom prices for most items you could think of. This includes our super cheap and free items. Click here for the link.

It's very important to have multiple copies of a coupon. This allows you to really stock up on an item when it's free or very cheap. Often newspaper offices will offer "couponer discounts". They will allow you to have several copies of the Sunday paper delivered to your house at a reduced rate. If there is a particular coupon you are looking for, you can purchase multiples from online clipping sites like thecouponclippers.com. You can also print coupons from the Internet. Check out our Printable Coupon Database where we have thousands of coupons listed for you to print from your computer. You can access it by clicking "Print Coupons" at the top of our home page.

Stores will usually have somewhat of a sale cycle. A certain kind of item will be on sale during a particular time of year. We have created a list of these cycles. You can view it here.

If you can devote 1-2 hours per week couponing, you should be able to save a lot of money! I generally save 75%-85% off my monthly grocery bill for my family of 5. As you can image, couponing has helped us tremendously to get in control of our finances and pay off debt. I will also purchase cheap or free items to give to shelters and food pantries in my area. You or others in your community could also accomplish those achievements for yourself, your family and those around you.

My number one tip would be to save your coupons for a sale. Clipping a coupon that is $0.25 off is not going to save you a large amount of money unless you combine that coupon with a great sale or promotion.

I would also like to mention that our book is a great tool that will be able to answer ALL of your couponing questions. It is available for purchase here. Good luck with your project and have a great weekend!

all you have to do is ask

In the section titled "all you have to do is ask" in the last lecture Randy describes a trip to Disney were 4 year old Dylan wanted to sit in the front car of the monorail and Randy's dismissed the idea thinking that they would never be allowed to. Randy walked up and asked and the conductor gladly let them sit down.

I think with my project I need to just ask. If a question pops into my head instead of just dismissing it and believing the answer is no I need to just ask. The worst that can happen is that the answer really is no. But with out asking I will never know and could miss out on a great opportunity or good information.

2nd shopping trip

Using the CVS circular that came in the sunday paper yesterday today I planned another shopping trip to CVS.
I purchased everything in one transaction.
I bought halls cough drops, jelly beans, snickers easter candy, whisk laudry detergent and bumble bee can tuna. The regular price for these items would have been 21.00. I used the 4 ECB from last week plus 4 coupons and paid 2.85 + tax and recieved 2.99 ECB back.
This trip was like paying $3.86 for  $ 21.00. Thats a savings of 81% !

sunday paper

I picked up the paper today and this week it includes a smart source and red plum insert plus a Hasbro insert with coupons for toys. A toys r us circular was also including and by combining sales at toys r us with coupons from the Hasbro insert you can get some good deals on toys for Easter presents !