Starting Over
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Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Coupons are great
I've been doing the "extreme" coupon thing for 4 months now, and I'm kind of in awe at how much I'm saving.
I'm getting tons of free stuff. I just tallied up the big stuff and realized that I've spent $203.07 for $589.17 worth of items. This isn't counting the stuff I've saved 50 cents here and there.
I wish I didn't "need" to do it, but it's kind of a rush!
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Re: Coupons are great
Are you stockpiling? Are these things you need? Just wondering how all this works.
I'm stockpiling, and yes, they're things I will need over time. For example, I've gotten 6 50oz bottles of laundry detergent, 7 Sublime Mousse haircolors, 13 12oz bottles of shampoo (Dove, Garnier Fructis), 5 bottles of Fructis hairspray, 4 12oz bottles of body wash, 2 24ct Arm & Hammer laundry single pack shots, and 3 boxes Glad Odor Shield trash bags... a $192.85 original cost, for $54.95.
I don't buy anything that I won't actually use, and always price check what I have coupons for against the brands I would normally buy. It's a lot of work, but I usually mess around with it when I'm watching TV or bored at work, so it's not like I'm "wasting" time.
Thats great if it is something that you are going to use anyway.
I was watching one of those shows before and a lady was buy like 60 boxes of Couscous. She was talking about how she never had it, and hoped she liked it. That seemed a bit ridiculous. If you don't know if you like it, or you buy so much it will go outdated before you use it then what is the point?
Yeah, buying a hundred bags of couscous when you have no clue what it even tastes like is pure stupid. And sometimes you do have to pay attention to whether you think you can get use out of something before it goes bad. I got all excited once that the bread I usually pay $2.75 for was $2, so I bought 2 loaves. Only got through one and the other ended up moldy, so I ended up paying $4 for one loaf of bread instead of $2.75. You can't get greedy with wanting discounts, because you'll end up shooting yourself in the foot and overpaying.
Carrots: I find all of my coupons in the Sunday newspaper, the weekly Red Plum mailer that people think is trash in your mailbox, on the Target website, the Meijer website, coupons.com (and if you sign up with a swagbucks account, you get the same coupons as coupons.com, but also get rewards points thru swagbucks that earn you giftcards), and you can Like product pages on FB and get coupons from them, too. I've learned everything from www.thekrazycouponlady.com blog and the www.afullcup.com forums. You can look at current and future sales ads, see what coupons are going to be in next week's papers, and see matchups with available coupons and sales ads to get the biggest bang for your buck.
The basics you need to know are that you can usually print two of the same coupon from the same printer. If you have 2 computers/printers, you can get 4 of the same coupon. This is important for times when you need to buy multiples of one item to get get best on-sale price. (Buy 3 Get 1 Free, if you have 3 50 off coupons, it's saving you more money than buying 3 to get one free and only having the one 50 cent coupon.) This is even better with places that double coupons like Meijer and Kroger. You can usually use one manufacturer coupon and one store coupon for the same item, and some stores will take competitors copons (Meijer takes Target coupons now. You have to have the cashier manually override them, but if you have a copy from their website showing that they do in fact do this, they have to key it in.) I took 2 $.75 off coupons from Target to Meijer, they doubled them, and added a $1 off 2 manufacturer coupon to get a total of $4 off of 2 California Pizza Kitchen pizzas that were on sale to begin with.
Also, rebates and register rewards are your best friend. I just found a $12.99 Physician's Formula cosmetics item at CVS that had a "Try Me Free" sticker on it for a mail in rebate, and then I got $7 in ExtraCare bucks from it at the register. So essentially, I got the product for free and made $7 to spend on something else in the store. You can also see current rebate programs on the full cup site. I've gotten free laundry detergent, cat litter, glade plug ins, and makeup from submitting for rebates.
You just have to spend the time and be organized. Those are people's biggest downfalls. Sometimes I get lazy and tired of scouring the internet for things, and then realize that I missed out on something cool. Sometimes you forget you have a coupon if you can't find it (I just spent $20 at Ulta, not realizing that I had a $3.50 off $10 coupon that was due to expire the next day.)
You just have to basically keep your eyes open, be diligent, and not be afraid to spend a lot up front to save a lot over time. I've never spent $30 on toilet paper at one time in my life, but the promo going at the time was spend $30 and get a $10 giftcard, so why would I pass that up? It's not like toilet paper is going to go bad!
And don't buy something just because you have a coupon. I'm not going to buy Tide for $11.99 just because I have a $1 off coupon when I normally buy $8.49 Arm and Hammer.
...yeah, that got long. Sorry. You just have to put some effort into it, and you'll really reap the benefits!