Since there are so many new readers to the site… some of you wondering if you should start couponing or not, I thought I would re-post this for all of you who want the breakdown if couponing is really worth your time.
As we start this new series “Starting Fresh in 2012 with Couponing”, I want to get very, VERY real with you all. People have seen the couponing TV show, or have heard how great couponing is. But, they have gotten an un-realistic view of the amount of time it takes to really save money.
Couponing Takes Time! With us starting from the very beginning of couponing, for newbies and veterans, that is something you have to realize and understand. Couponing is not easy. It takes time to organize, time to decide what you are going to purchase, and it just takes up part of your life.
The majority of us are Moms. We have things we do, kids to take care of and homes to keep clean. Some of us have part-time jobs. Some of us are single Moms. So, how do you find time to coupon? You’ve gotta make time. And that is what it comes down to. You are either in the position where you really need to coupon to make things work, or it isn’t that important. I’ve found that the most important things in our lives are the things we make time for. If you don’t feel like saving money, and working to do it is worth it, then couponing might not be for you. I don’t mean that to sound harsh…as it can sometimes come off that way in writing, but I’m trying to give you a realistic version of how couponing is. Yes, it is rewarding to grab great deals and save money for your family. But, in the end, the time sacrifice might just not be worth it to some of you.
Our Personal Experience
For our family, we were in dire need and couponing was something I HAD to make time for. Money was super tight and a part-time job wasn’t an option for us. And although it took me time, couponing helped us make ends meet and really made a difference in our budget. And on top of that, we built a 6-9 month food storage in only a few months!! So, yes, it took time, but in the end it really was worth it for our family. Couponing has helped us save so much money that it has helped us pay off debt too!
How Much Time Should I Plan on Spending with Couponing Each Week??
That is a GREAT question! If you really want to coupon the right way and build a stockpile/food storage for your family, you will probably be spending 5-10 hours a week couponing. (Some people take less…only 3-4 hours per week.) It takes me about 45 minutes to 1 hour to cut all of my coupon inserts and separate them into piles. Then, about 20 minutes to add them to my baseball card inserts. (Just an FYI, I get 5 copies of the Sunday paper. So I am cutting 5 copies of the paper in that amount of time. If you aren’t that fast, you will get there and I will show you how!)
Breakdown of Possible Coupon Time:
- 1 1/2 – 2 Hours of Cutting Coupons and Organizing (Once a month, pulling out expired coupons- an extra 20-30 minutes)
- Going through Grocery Matchups on Freebies2Deals.com or through the ads yourself (30 minutes- 1 Hour. Bloggers usually SAVE you time by doing the matchups for you!)
- Grocery Shopping 2-3 Hours a week… depending on how many stores you go to and how far along you are with your stockpile. (I find that some weeks I don’t even need to go shopping because my stockpile is already full of the items “on-sale”. So I leave those items for everyone else to grab instead.)
- Total time: 5- 10 Hours Per week. (If it is taking you more time than this to coupon each week, then you might have something keeping you from being efficient.. maybe a problem with organization, or something similar.)
Ok, So it Takes Time to Coupon, I Get It. But What is the Payoff?? Is it Worth it??
In my opinion, YES!! In one year of the Sunday paper, you can see about $8,000 worth of coupons. Now, I definitely don’t use all of them. And you won’t either. So, let’s say that you used only 1/3 of the coupons. That’s a savings of $2667 a year! Let’s be even more conservative and say you only use 1/4 of the coupons. That’s still a savings of $2000 a year for ONE COPY of the Sunday Paper!
And, to make the scenario even crazier, if you are getting multiple copies of the Sunday paper, you can multiply your savings by the number of copies you get. So, if you get 3 copies, you would easily save $6,000 a year on your grocery bill, have an awesome food storage for emergencies, and never have to waste your TIME, heading to the store to pay full price to pick up something you ran out of at home.
So, Let’s Compare your Coupon Savings to a Part-Time Job
Now, if you are spending 10 Hours per week on coupons, that is 520 hours per year. Divide that by your $6,000 Coupon Savings. If you considered couponing a part-time job, you would be making $11.54 per hour to coupon!!
If you only spend 8 Hours per week on coupons, that is 416 hours per year. Divide that by your $6,000 Coupon Savings. If you considered couponing a part-time job, you would be making $14.42 per hour to coupon!!
So you get my drift!! Over $14 per hour to coupon…. now you need to decide, is that something you can make time for??? And is that worth it to you?
Ways to Make it Less Time Consuming
Time can be wasted doing anything. So with couponing, being as efficient as possible is super important.
- Be Organized. That is next on our Starting Fresh in 2012 with Couponing Series and it it really does make all the difference in your time. You will find you don’t have any time to coupon, if you can never find the coupon you need. We will go over different methods and list everything you need to get started.
- Pull Out Expired Coupons Once a Month. Don’t waste your time pulling out expired coupons each week. You will find the majority of your coupons all expire around 1 month- especially the P&G coupons. So, by doing it once a month, you will have most of the expired coupons out of your binder when you are adding the new P&G coupons in.
- Be Organized at checkout. We will go over this in more depth too. Being able to check out quickly will save you a lot of time too!
- Find a store that keeps a good stock of the on-sale items each week. This can be super hard. But, if you live in a highly populated area of couponers, you will find things fly off the shelves. One of my personal secrets is that I travel further away to get to a few stores that don’t have very many couponers visiting that store. I might have to drive 10 more minutes, but I never have to deal with not getting those items I was hoping for with my coupons. (We will talk about this one more too!)
- ONLY use coupons when you can get the name brand item for less than the store brand! This will only happen when you can stack an awesome in-store sale with the coupon. If you use the coupon alone on regular priced items, you will find that the store brands are always cheaper. Otherwise, you will mistakingly get frustrated thinking that coupons don’t save you money. Stacking is KEY to saving money!
Couponing does take time. But, hopefully after all of the information I have given you above, you will realize that couponing really can make a huge difference and save your family a lot of money. And, in my opinion the time it takes to coupon each week is worth it. If you are taking more time than I listed, 5- 10 hours per week, then something is holding you up. I will be going over everything about Couponing from the very beginning over the next few weeks. So, try to figure out what it stopping you from being successful and I will give solutions in the coming weeks so you can finally make couponing work for you!
And for all the newbies, hopefully this post has helped you decide to jump into couponing. It really is the BEST thing I have ever done for my family. And the financial contributions I have been able to make to our budget because of couponing have had lasting effects!
READY TO START?? Here are the rest of the posts in the Couponing Series so you can learn and fix those common mistakes newbies make. If it were me, I would read them all. They cover the MOST asked questions from readers:
- Starting Fresh in 2012 with Couponing: Organization is KEY!
- Starting Fresh in 2012 with Couponing: Time, Time and TIME! Is it Worth My Time??
- Starting Fresh in 2012 with Couponing: What Do I Do with Expired Coupons?
- Starting Fresh in 2012 with Couponing: Bring Your Arsenal to the Grocery Store
- Starting Fresh in 2012 with Couponing: How to Be Organized at Checkout.
- Starting Fresh in 2012 with Couponing: How to Get Healthy Food Deals When Couponing!
- Starting Fresh in 2012 with Couponing: Matching Coupons with Sales!
- Starting Fresh in 2012 with Couponing: When Products are Sold Out!
Jenn
Couponing does take time, there is no getting around that. There are some weeks when i’m exhausted and I think why am I doing this? Isn’t my time valuable? But when I save $15 – $25 at the grocery store ( recently I saved $40!) then it makes it worth it. Yes my time is valuable but this is cold hard cash that stays in my pocket. I will clip coupons while relaxing watching TV, I will clean out my binder as well. I just make the most of my time so it doesn’t feel so overwhelming. I enjoy sites like this too that give me a heads up on deals I probably already have coupons for. Thanks!!
Alison
I try to pricematch at Walmart and use some coupons. What gets me is an ad for cereal and it says select varieties and you don’t know til you get there which ones and it never seems to be the ones I’m holding coupons for. Planning goes down the drain. Any help with that?
Leslie
I have not been successful the price matching at WalMart. I go to a local store that doubles coupons. A few weeks ago I bought 18 boxes of General Mills cereals in 4 different trips. I did not have to buy all sugary cereals either. They had the plain old Multi Grain Cheerios on sale with everything else. My coupon was $.75 off of one box and they were on sale for around $2 in the 2 stores I use. My final price for them was between $.50 and $.75 per box. Look for the sales in the flyer. Most of them will tell you which ones are on sale now. They are not as vague as they used to be. I hope this helps. If they don’t have them in stock, get rainchecks. 🙂
Alice
Couponing is awesome when you manage to score the deals you planned. But for those times when you do everything legitimately and coupons won’t scan or what not, you just get unpleasant checkout experiences – like cashiers and their managers saying “one coupon per purchase” means you can use one coupon total and there’s no way to win that argument. Yesterday I hit multiple stores and items are out of stock or the rewards don’t print and just getting nowhere in the end and getting a huge hassle at the checkout counter. It’s these days that make me want to give up couponing altogether. It really depends on if you get a coupon friendly store with coupon friendly cashiers but even then you can’t always time their shifts. And I never know which store has items in stock because it’s random. I find going to those stores just for getting great deals itself is the biggest time consumer. Just had to rant… but would I give up couponing really? Nope, can’t go back once you start.
Nina
I agree couponing takes time but i have found it to be worth every minute. I prefer to cut my coupons out and file them in a binder (baseball card sleeves). This helps me familiarize myself with what coupons I have so when I look at ads certain items will pop out at me. One thing I strongly believe is DO NOT do all your shopping at Walmart, even if they double coupon and price match (which are great things), It’s easy to get carried away thinking you are getting a deal when sometimes you can get it cheaper elsewhere by factoring in store rewards into your purchases. Don’t get me wrong, I love shopping at walmart for great deals but other stores can surprise you and may even have a larger stock in supply than walmart, look at your options. Another rule I live by is I only get items that my family and I will use and once I get a stock pile sufficient for our needs and I know we can use before it going bad I stop buying that item until I deplete half of my supply. It doesn’t do anybody any good to hoard items you possibly cannot use. Happy Couponing! Once you get the hang of it, it’s hard to buy anything without a coupon.
Shyanne
What newspaper do you subscribe to Melea? Do you know of any current deals on some? I was getting the paper out of Utah County but they wouldn’t deliver to Salt Lake County. In Salt Lake County they will only let you get two of each and it costs so much more! Any tips, deals, or ideas from anyone would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!
Shelly Blades
Very Well Said!!!!!!
In todays world your crazy not to coupon
april aakre
I absolutely love this post and it is so true. I hear excuses all of the time from people they dont have time to coupon. I shread this post on my blog on facebook
Amanda
Thanks for posting! I have just gotten disgusted and frustrated with couponing. I can never find the coupons for the stuff we use, plus I seem to buy things I wouldnt normally buy when i use coupons. I have found that if I watch the ads and… shop at a couple of stores that I do just as well as using coupons. the other thing I run into is after I have spent hours getting my shopping lists, coupons and stuff organized, I get to the store and 90% of what I was going for is gone. So now I dont do it anymore. i just spend my time comparing prices before I go out and Am still able to keep my grocery bill in check.Plus we are snobs when it comes to toilet paper, shampoo/conditioner, toothpaste, ect. so stocking up on the cheap brands does us no good…LOL….I give everyone kudo’s that are successful at couponing!!
Sara
I have heard that with couponing you CAN’T be brand loyal. I get that, because it is VERY rare that I find coupons for the products I use. In our house I use as much 100% natural, chemical free, organic, vegetarian/vegan, naturally sweetened, etc. products as I possibly can. Most of the coupons I see are for products that I would never stockpile in my house, even if they were free. So, is there a way to make couponing work for me?