A Quick Guide to Couponing

There are four basic ways to get coupons. I combine all of these ways since you can get different kinds of coupons each way.

Use Internet Printable sites
Sunday Paper Inserts
Blinkies, Tearpads and Peelies at the Grocery Store
Buy/Sell/Trade

Use Internet Printable sites

Here are some sites you can print coupons from, they have different coupons. A lot of manufactures also have coupons on their websites. On the forum www.afullcup.com they have a coupon database. You can search for coupons sorting things by printable coupons and find a lot of coupons that way. Also on the blog websites listed in the reference section put up the store ads for the week with the matching coupons and they give you links of where to print them. You can normally print two of each coupon per computer by using the back button after you have printed the first one.

http://www.coupons.com
http://www.coupons.smartsource.com
http://www.redplum.com/

Sunday Paper Inserts

This one is pretty self explanatory. You can either buy Sunday papers or go find coupons in newspaper recycle bins. We have one paper delivered to our house each Sunday so I have an idea what coupons were in that paper. Then of course I also do the fun "dumpster diving" (i.e. looking through newspaper recycle bins.) Most Sunday papers have two pamphlets of coupons. One is published by Smart Source and one by Red Plum. Once a month there is also a Proctor and Gamble insert as well.

Blinkies, Tearpads and Peelies at the Grocery Store

These are just the little coupons you see attached to boxes for $ off if you buy it then, the displays you see that have pads of coupons attached to them and the little coupon machines at the store. I "collect" these even if I don't have a sale to use them on right then and put them in my coupon binder to use later.

Buy/Sell/Trade

This is an easy way to get coupons if you want multiples of things. You can buy/sell/trade on A Full Cup or Hot Coupon World forums. You can also buy coupons on eBay or these two sites are pretty good.
http://www.thecouponclippers.com/
http://www.couponsthingsbydede.com/
I don't do a lot of buying of coupons since I can get most of what I want printing from the 4 computers we have and dumpster diving. There are often coupons that don't come in our paper's inserts so I do buy or trade for those or my sister sends them to me.

Abbreviations - You will find a lot of abbreviations on these sites that are confusing at first. This is a great key to abbreviations.

Warning! Some of these people that do couponing are CRAZY! They do 30 different transactions at a store, stockpile things and have big garage sales to sell their stock, etc. You will definitely come across them if you use the forums at all. Most of them are just a little bit crazy like me. :)

Resources

Forums
http://www.afullcup.com
http://www.hotcouponworld.com
http://www.couponmom.com/

Blogs
http://www.frugallivingnw.com
http://www.fistfulofcoupons.com