Beginner's Guide

A Beginner’s Quick Guide to Couponing
By Sherri Causton Huter
The most valuable tool for you as a new couponer is going to be this site http://www.savingsguru.ca/.
Take the time to read the FAQ, the Coupon Guide & Coupon Terms, a serious wealth of information!
Study your prices so you can learn what a good price actually is. Beware of sales, not all are good!
Next, please, get a binder, some hockey card protector sleeves, and some binder separator tabs to keep all of your coupons organized.
The most prized tool in couponing for me is my gmail account. Make sure your entire family/extended family has one too.
Having multiple coupons when the perfect storm hits, is key. The perfect storm for me is when an item is at its lowest price, you have a high value coupon, AND you can get money back for purchasing the item on one of your money-back apps. Thereby making your item FREE, or even better, actually, making money by purchasing the item!
There are four different apps that I know of for this. They are zweet, checkout51, cartsmart, and snapsaves. Get them all and make sure all of your family/extended family members have an account as well.
Okay, so with everything above put into place, now you’re ready to gather some coupons. Check “Canadian Coupon Guide”, “where do you get all those coupons”?
Study your coupons, read them carefully. The wording on coupons can be quite tricky especially if you’re not familiar with them. Things you need to take note of are:
·        Sizes – such as “400g only”
·        Flavors/varieties – such as “lemon scent only”
·        Exclusions – such as “not applicable on trial size, travel size, value pack, gift pack, and bonus packs”
·        The best coupons are the ones that state “valid on any (1) product”. These can be used on trial/travel sizes which is a great opportunity for a freebie. Some other things to note in regards to the wording on coupons are:
·        Expiry date – a coupon is valid until the end of the shopping day on the expiry date.
·        Pictures on coupons – unless otherwise stated, you do not have to purchase exact item in the picture, go by the wording on the coupon.
·        One coupon per purchase – means one coupon per item. One coupon per transaction - means one coupon per item, per transaction. If you want to use more than one coupon to buy more than one item, you’ll need to break it into separate transactions.
·        Not valid with any other offer – means that you can’t use this in combination with another coupon. This does NOT mean that you can’t price match & use your coupon.
·        The huge NO NO of couponing is reproduction! This is fraud. You cannot reproduce your coupon in any way, shape, or form. It is illegal and you can be prosecuted.
Some stores such as Target have their own store specific coupons. This is great because generally, these stores will allow you to use one store specific coupon PLUS a manufacture coupon.
**If your store has a great Catalina, break your items into separate transactions to get as many coupons as you can. **
Almost every day, if not every day new deals are added to this site. All of the best of the best deals are here. Each best deal, details how to get the specified item for the lowest price, and a lot of it can be FREE.
Bookmark this page; it IS your new bible!

Happy Couponing & Happy Savings

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