Reality TV shows featuring extreme couponers often show shoppers filling their carts with thousands of dollars of groceries, and then paying nearly nothing at the cash register. While this seems enticing, it isn't an ideal situation for most households. In fact, many items that extreme couponers in those shows buy aren't going to help you make dinner for your family. Buying items just because they are low cost isn't the best way to become an extreme couponer. Instead, the key to extreme couponing success is to stockpile groceries and products your family needs and uses.
How to Stockpile Effectively
In order to create a useful stockpile, you will have to be diligent and plan your families needs according to store sales cycle. To better understand sales cycles, you need to know that most items go on sale every six to eight weeks. This means when an item goes on sale, you should buy enough of that item to last your family until the next sale cycle. In order to plan accordingly, you should record when you buy a particular item on sale. It is also important to know that the average sales cycle for most commonly used items is approximately six to eight weeks.
Where to Find Discount Deals
Once you know how to create a stockpile, you are ready to start finding deals. The first thing you will want to do to find coupon deals is to find a coupon blog to follow. The best coupon blogs will offer price match-ups and deal scenarios for your favorite store. Often times these deals will appear on a coupon blog site days, or sometimes weeks, before an actual sale begins.
Another great tool for finding discount deals is to sign-up for your favorite stores email list. Stores often send out sale announcements to customers on the email list. This heads up allows shoppers to have enough time to plan a particular shopping trip.
Where to Find Coupons
After you get a lead on a great sale for your stockpile, you will need to acquire the appropriate coupons to buy the amount of product you need. Finding an abundance of coupons can be easy, but you often have to look for them to be successful. The easiest way to gather the most coupons is to ask your friends, family and neighbors to save their coupon inserts for you, you can also buy newspapers to get the coupons you need, but newspapers will cost you money. Another resource for excess coupons is to purchase coupons from a coupon clipping site. Coupons from a coupon clipping site will cost you, but the cost is relatively low compared to the amount of savings you can get from using the coupons.
How to Build Your Stockpile
Stockpiles aren't usually created in a single shopping trip. Instead, it usually takes many trips before your stockpile looks like a stockpile. When you begin couponing to build a stockpile, you will need to buy sale items and the items that you need for your family. As you continue to extreme coupon, you will need to buy less of what you need, because you already have it, and will only need to buy items for your stockpile. Eventually, your stockpile will turn into a mini-grocery for your family.
Starting couponing and being diligent about shopping is the best way to build your stockpile. Once you begin to accumulate a healthy stockpile, you will be amazed at the amount of money you are able to save while still buying food and items that your family needs.
Kara Fielder is a working mom with two kids who understands the importance of frugal living. She enjoys sharing her tips and tricks by blogging regularly for a variety of websites. For promotion codes, visit the link.
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