Extreme Couponing?

I consider myself an extreme couponer, but not in the sense that I go into a store and get 30 bags of dog food for free, leaving none for the other shoppers (and I don't even have a dog!)

Nope, extreme couponing in my book means saving my family extreme amounts of money on products that we would normally use.

I just came home from my local Harris Teeter.  How much do you think I paid for this stuff?

1 box of Cheerios, 1 bag Kettle potato chips, 2 bags Bertolli Meal soups, 3 Ragu pasta sauce, 1 Breyers ice cream, 2 Suave Professionals hair stylers, 2 Wish Bone salad dressings, 1 Country Crock butter, and 4 Kraft shredded cheeses.


Just guess. 

If you guessed somewhere in the range of $3.00 you were right!  Not bad, especially when you consider that the price for just one bag of Bertolli soup was $8.19!

Here's my tip-of-the-day for racking up on the grocery savings.

Use free product coupons strategically.

If you're wondering where to even get free product coupons in the first place, you should follow my deals Facebook page, The Deal Scoop.  Lots of companies on Facebook give away coupons for free products, and I always try to give a heads up.

Also, emailing companies is a GREAT way to get free product coupons.  If you like a certain company's products, just visit their website to find their email address and shoot them a line or two telling them you like their product and asking them if they have any coupons they could send you.  Be sure to include your mailing address.  You'll be surprised how many of them will send you coupons for free products, sometimes several!

So, when you get those wonderful coupons, don't do a happy dance and run out to the store to get your freebie.  Do a happy dance, and then put the coupons in a specific place where you won't forget about them.  Save them up for the next time your store has a promotion on that product. 

For example, in the picture above, my store was giving an automatic $5 off when I bought $15 worth of specific products.  These promotions are almost always counted before you give your coupons.  I had several free coupons for some of the qualifying items, so I used the freebies to get my total as close to $15 as I could and then bought other items I wanted to finish it out.  So, if I had $10 worth of items I was already getting free with a coupon, I could throw in a $5 carton of ice cream to get up to $15.  $5 would come off from the promotion and $10 would come off from the free coupons, leaving me to pay $0.  Score!  I just got free ice cream and I didn't even have a coupon for it!  See how free coupons are great strategy pieces in the coupon game?

Like I said before though, make sure to put them in a specific place and check them once a month or so to make sure you don't have any that are expiring soon.  It would be a shame to let a coupon for a free product expire and not get to use it at all just because you were saving it for a better deal.

Do you use coupons?  Do you have any tips to maximize your savings?