Using Coupons to Trim Your Family Food Costs

Coupons have often been touted as the best way to save money on your food budget. This can be true if you follow some guidelines. Using coupons can be a big money-saver if they are used right. The key is to understand what coupons can and cannot do. Here are some tips for using coupons to trim your family food costs-

· Only buy products that you really need or actually use. While coupons can save you significant amounts of money towards your family food costs, too many people buy products they do not really need or use just because they have a coupon. Shoppers must really consider if a product with a coupon is such a good deal if it will only sit on the shelf in their pantry or cupboard. In addition you should be careful not to buy products you do not really need. Again how good a deal is something with a coupon that you do not really need when you are trying to trim your family food costs?

Clipping coupons can stretch your food budget.

· Be careful where you get your coupons from. You might be able to find coupons for products you do use online by simply typing “coupons” in the search form. The down side about finding coupons online is that you must register and disclose your name and contact information in order to get the coupon and free sample. (For this reason, you should consider not giving them your real e-mail address unless you want to receive dozens of spam e-mails every day. Consider using a free e-mail account to register. (check out this article about disposable email accounts). Also, you may want to take into consideration what they might do with your telephone number before you register-perhaps sell it to telemarketers). There are many good coupon websites. There are literally dozens of websites you can visit and register to receive coupons. In addition you can often register to receive coupons and free samples just by typing the name of the product in the URL locator. If you do not want to spend your time downloading and printing coupons there are still many newspapers and other publications that offer coupons. The trick to gathering these is to be consistent and have a usable filing system that will allow you to access the coupons when you need them. Keep in mind that real coupons (as opposed to those found on the web) often have shorter expiration dates. Retailers do this to entice shoppers into their stores on a fairly quick turn around.

· Take advantage of your computer when using coupons. Coupon use today goes beyond simply downloading and printing coupons off of your computer. There are several free sites that offer a downloadable program that will put coupons onto your frequent shopper’s card for a particular store. Here is how it works-You take your frequent shoppers card from any store that you regularly shop at and enter the number into the site. The free coupons are then downloaded onto your card and when you check out at the particular store the discount is taken. The downside to this is that you must do this for each store that you shop at and you do not have a visual reminder of what coupons have been loaded onto your card. In addition you can also use your computer to help you maximize your coupons by checking the sale ads at your store before shopping. The best to way maximize coupons is to use them when the item is on sale thereby gaining additional discount. Taking a quick look online at your grocery stores ads can let you know what coupons to pull before you reach the store thereby helping you save additional money.

· Look for stores that double or even triple coupons. Finally the best to maximize coupons is to look for stores that will double or triple the value of your coupons. Simply asking at the customer service desk at your local grocery store can help you determine if your store will do this and help you save even more money.