How to Print Your Own Money, Legally of Course. (Coupon Primer)

Times are tough and money can be hard to come by. Sometimes I wish I could just print money. Well, I have found a way to do that. Well not print U.S. Dollars but things people will trade you for money. COUPONS!!! I know coupons and coupon people are getting a pretty bad wrap right now but my line of thinking is; if they didn't want me to use them the company wouldn't make PAY to have them sent to me.

Here are a few pointers from a regular gal who has a few kids and not a lot of time to invest in couponing.

The number one way to save with coupons is to make sure you always bring them with you. You cannot use a coupon that is sitting in your house "waiting" for you to use it. So invest some time clip that coupon and bring it to the store with you.

Look at your sales papers. After you have organized your coupons in a way that works for you (I'm a coupon binder kind of girl) go look at your sales papers. To maximize your savings potential you want to match coupons to items on sale. Here is an example. If a store is running a buy one get one free sales (bogo) then you can use one coupon per item. I recently purchased some packing tape that was on a bogo sale. The price was 2.00 per roll. One roll was free. I had a 50 cent off coupon so I used 2 coupons. So before the sale it would have cost me $4.00. The store gave me $2.00 for the free one and then I used my 2 50 cent off coupons and it brought the total to $1.00. So that is 50 cents per roll of packing tape.

Always read your coupon. There is nothing more frustrating than carefully choosing your items only to figure out in the middle of your transaction that your coupon is for something else or worse EXPIRED! Stores do not accept expired coupons. Watch those dates and read the fine print.

It is always helpful to know your stores coupon policy. If you don't want to invest too much time into couponing then you can probably just ride on the fact that if the store accepts coupons and your coupon is for the specified item you won't have a problem. For the people who want to go a step further you can look into price matching and overages. There are a few stores that will actually give you cold hard cash for grocery overages. I personally took home over $4.00 from my local super store using a coupon for some razors.

You can become even more extreme by tracking what is called a sales cycle. Every 6 weeks to 6 months stores will put various items on sale. One week it may be shampoo or cleaners and the next it will be food items. There are numerous charts and ways to track these cycles to help maximize your coupons. When an item is at it's rock bottom price then you know it is a good time to use those coupons.

So start simple and work your way up to a level you feel comfortable with. Look through the Sunday newspaper at their coupons. Maybe there is something in there for items your family uses or you have wanted to try. Then check some places online like coupons.com and you can print for FREE any of those coupons. You most likely won't see savings and hauls like you see on TV but in this slow economy every dollar helps. Happy Couponing!