Between teaching you how to coupon in 15 minutes per day I wanted to give you

some tips that helped my husband and I when we first started. The first one is about

completely changing your mindset about shopping and coupons altogether.

A little over three years ago our family was thrown for a loop when I had to quit my

job and we became a one income family. This had a big impact because we had just

had our first baby and were worried about finances anyway. We tried everything to

fill in the gaps of the lost income from delivering newspapers to trying the infamous

online survey websites.

What we didn’t realize for a few years was the real answer was lying right before us

in an age old practice. This practice is called couponing and it really gains momentum

during economic times like we are experiencing now.

This wasn’t our first time to try coupons as another means to saving money, but the

previous approaches were flawed from the start. We didn’t realize this, of course, or

we would have been doing it the way we are now for a long time. Successful

“Couponing” is all about your approach being consistent, disciplined, structured and

liberal.

At first it may not seem that those traits go together, but they do and they are very

important to making this work. The basis, the real bottom line of making couponing

work is that you can’t buy the brands you want all the time. You can get the product,

just maybe not the brand. This site has an impressive source of online deals

The change in mindset is right there, you can get the product you need, just not the

brand. Sometimes the brand will be available, but don’t pass up savings in the name

of comfort. You may be able to get cereal on this trip to the store, but you might need

to get Cheerios instead of Fruit Loops because the coupon makes them $3 cheaper.

In the long term this becomes even more complex, yet obvious, as you don’t buy

some items for months because you stock up. To get started though, you just need to

shift your mind to another place.

Say you really want to have tacos this week but you don’t have any tortillas or shells.

However, frozen pizza is on sale for a fraction of the normal cost and you have a

coupon. Tacos need to wait, you are having pizza.

You don’t need to go so far as to start buying things that you don’t need or won’t use

simply because they are on sale. This is savings for the sake of a game, not savings for

the sake of your bank account.

This means that when you are online printing coupons or you are clipping coupons

from a newspaper or magazine you need to do a lot. Some people will tell you to clip

everything and their idea is right, but the logic is wrong in the end.

You don’t want to get in the process of buying just to buy or saving just to save, it’s a

bad habit to start unless you are one that wants to donate to charity the things you

won’t use. Just clip anything that you may use, regardless of maker.

If you love all chips but Doritos are your favorite you might have to eat Lays until

your Doritos have a coupon. It is a matter of saving and being comfortable, getting

what you need, not necessarily what you want.