How Do I Get So Many Coupons?

I am asked all the time how I get so many coupons that I get my deals with. I know people are curious because a lot of them would like to do the same thing so they can get lots of multiples of items like I do. So this is how it all started:

I started out my couponing by buying 3-4 copies of the Sunday paper. I would get 4 coupon inserts so I would have 4 multiple coupons of the same coupon. Once I started running into killer deals in the stores and I only had 4 coupons, I wanted to be able to get more than 4 items! I figured 4 Sunday papers were just not enough.

So then I started buying 8 Sunday papers at a time. This really helped with my coupon deals because being able to get 8 sale items versus 4 really helped me out... ( My family of 4 eats A LOT! LOL) So I did the 8 papers a week thing for a while.

Then I told my mom about couponing and finally got her interested, then she told me one day that she could get me lots of coupons. I figured she was talking about like a handful or something like that. So one Monday she brought me the coupons she was talking about and to my suprise, she had a stack of about 20 FULL coupon inserts from the previous Sunday's paper! I was like, YAY jackpot!


Every since then, every Sunday my mom scores me atleast 15 coupon inserts of SmartSource, RedPlum, and P&G... whichever inserts happen to be in the paper that weekend. So I have however many she gets me, plus the 6-8 I buy for myself. I have been cutting back on the amount I buy for myself since my mom has consistently been getting me atleast 15 inserts a week.

Next, if there is a super good coupon that I know will save me a lot of money, or if I see something in a sales ad on the first day the ad starts and I know I can get an incredible deal on it with a coupon, I will order lots of them on Ebay. For example, the 36 bags of cat food I wrote about in my last post, all of those coupons were ordered off of Ebay. The main reason for this was because those coupons came out the Sunday before I started couponing so I didn't have any. Even if my mom would have gotten me that particular insert with the cat food coupons in it, I still would have ordered more off of Ebay because it was too good of a deal to pass up.

The price you will pay for coupons on Ebay really varies, if it is a popular coupon then you can expect to pay 2$ - 10$ for a set of 20 coupons. (Note: I would never pay 10$ for the coupons but I have seen auctions this high before.) A lot of times I luck out and find the coupons I want for 1$ for the auction and 1$ for the shipping or even less than that. Example, the 40 boxes of Bagel-Fuls I got from Super S, I ordered all 40 coupons from Ebay for about 4$ shipping included, it seemed like those were not very popular coupons.

So that's it folks, that's how I get so many coupons! I know everybody doesn't have the ability to get 15 or more coupon inserts a week, but I have seen many people have lots of luck asking family and friends for theirs if they don't use them. Also, you can check your local coffee shops, a lot of people read the paper and leave it behind, coupons and all! Another thing to note, some cities have 2 for 1 Sunday papers where you can get 2 papers for the price of 1, my city doesn't do this but if yours does I would definitely snatch up 4 or so.

It seems like the rule of thumb about coupons is, you get as many newspapers as you have members of your family. If you have 4 family members, you get 4 Sunday papers. This seems to work for a lot of people. The golden rule about stockpiling food and other items is that you stockpile enough of one item to last your family 12 weeks. The reason for this is that everything goes on sale in 12 week cycles. It may not be the exact same brand or style, but you can pretty much guarantee that peanut butter will go on sale every 12 weeks, or hot dogs, or tin foil, or anything else. The whole point of the 12 week rule is to never pay full price for anything again!

So it really depends on how much food your family goes through to tell how many coupons you need to stockpile a particular item for 12 weeks. I like to go crazy and stockpile a particular item to last my family a year or more (if it doesn't expire quickly). This is just my style, I know some people don't have the space to do this. I am very lucky in the fact that I have a 3 bedroom house and my third bedroom has been turned into my huge walk-in food pantry!

I hope I explained everything you were curious about! If not, leave a comment and I will answer any other questions you may have.

Stay tuned for pictures of my stockpile coming up some time this week!