How much can you really save with Coupons?

I read this over at Koupon Karen and thought I would share.  It's great!

How often do you use coupons?  Every time you shop or once or twice a month?  Either way it doesn’t matter how often you do, as long as you use them because you will save money using them.  Look at them as actual money because when you use coupons you reduce how much actual money you are handing over to the cashier.
Many tell me that they can’t find coupons for most items they purchase, so they don’t even bother using them.  My answer to this is that every penny counts and adds up over time.   We live in a world where we want things INSTANTLY but life doesn’t work like that all the time- at least for the good stuff.   It takes time to accomplish goals, it takes time to learn something new and it takes time to see the savings add up when you use coupons.
Here is an example I shared on my facebook wall the other day.   If you use just ONE $.50 coupon each week, you’ll save $26 after a year, if your store doubles coupons you’ll save $52 after a year using that ONE $.50 coupon each week.  If you used TWO $.50 coupons a week, you’ll save $52 after a year or $104 after a year if your store doubles coupons.  Do you see where I’m going with this?  Imagine what you’d save using more than TWO coupons each time you shopped?

 

What would you do if I gave you a jar of $104 worth of coins?   You could put it away for the holidays/upcoming birthdays,  you could put it towards daycare, you could add it to your grocery budget,  top off your oil tank now that it’s cold in some parts of the US — here are some things my facebook fans said they’d do with it…..

• Leave it in the jar and watch it add up
• Donate it to school
• Take it to the coin machine and go shopping
• Pay a traffic ticket
• Pay a bill
• Give to their children
• Pay Taxes
• Use it for gas
• Buy furniture
• Take spouse out for dinner
• Buy groceries – with coupons of course to make it stretch further
• Buy discount gift cards to stretch it more – LOVE this idea!!!

…. and it goes on.  Check out my facebook post to see what everyone said!  And add yours too!   There is so much you could do with and extra $104 – Would you believe me if I told you that you could have and extra $104 in just a few months?  You could using coupons, of course!   If you use 6 – 10 coupons every single week and take that money you saved using the coupons and put it in a jar, you could have $104 or more in 3 months or less!  And in one year you could have about $500 in that jar just from using 6-10 coupons a week!  That’s a lot of money!
So this is what I’m going to do and I hope you’ll do it with me.  Each week, I am going to keep track of what I save using coupons.  Not sales, just coupons.  (Of course I’ll still shop the sales too!).  I will report to you each week how much I saved with using coupons (double coupons included) just to show you how it adds up.   I will keep a running total from month to month too so we can watch it grow.
If you decide to follow along with me you can put that money you save in a jar and watch it fill up, or use the money you save somewhere else that you need it.  Do what works for you.   If you need it use it, if you don’t watch it grow – but either way keep track of it so you can see what you can do.
This isn’t a race to see who can save the most, it’s just a way to show you that using coupons, even just a few can add up to a lot.