Frugal Family: If It's Free, It's for Me

Have you ever been to a flea market or yard sale and wondered how some folks can sell boxes of brand new toiletries and other items for just a fraction of what they cost in stores like , Walmart and ?

I had the opportunity to speak with Lower Macungie resident Linda King, who does just that. She saves a bundle on daily necessities and makes a nice little chunk of change on the "leftovers" as well. All it takes is a little time, effort and research.

King has been an “extreme couponer” since her late teens.

“I started cutting out coupons when I was in college. I was broke and supporting myself. I remember a box of cereal was $4. The grocery store doubled coupons, so I started buying a Sunday newspaper to get coupons to buy food and have not stopped since,” King explained.

Since then, she has saved almost 50 percent on her monthly grocery bills.

Fortunately, King is willing to share her secrets.

The key to mega-saving, she said, is to match manufacturers’ coupons from the Sunday paper to weekly specials offered by big box stores.

You can buy several copies of the Sunday paper for $1 . This allows you to get multiple sets of coupons to use immediately and to keep on hand for future deals. In the long run this practice equals huge savings--for some, thousands of dollars each year.

Online coupon blogs can tell you the great deals you can get in combination with each week’s circular coupons in your area.

HotCouponWorld.com has forums for different stores such as , CVS, Target and Walmart. It’s a national website that extends to local stores as well. Other coupon sites such as Couponcravings.com and AOL's Shortcuts.com are well-known for their savings tips.

Coupon blogs relay information about items available for free or at a very low price when combined with a particular week’s coupons. The bloggers do all the legwork for you, which is a huge time saver.

Let's take Walmart, for example. Johnson & Johnson’s Reach dental floss is regularly 97 cents. The J&J coupons offer $1 off each item. Thus, consumers can get three cents back just for buying the floss, if other items are purchased in the same transaction.

Items like floss usually have long expiration dates, so that’s an easy one to stock up on, King said.

King added that another great way to save is by taking advantage of CVS’s Extra Care Bucks customer rewards program, which prints coupons at the bottom of CVS receipts. A buyer must register to obtain a CVS Care Card, which is free and can lead to big savings.

By using weekly coupons to purchase current sale items, King is able to build CVS credit, which is then transferred to additional savings on future orders with “Extra Care Bucks." 

A few of the items King has saved on at local retailers include razors, toothbrushes, diapers, pain relievers and Kotex.

“The razors were 'buy one, get one free,' and I had $4 coupons for each, so it made them very cheap,” King explained.

She said she might spend $1 per razor, but it’s a huge savings nonetheless. As an added bonus, King said she occasionally receives a free can of shaving cream when she buys two razors.

If something is normally $1 and a $1 coupon is distributed, King said she knows, “I’ve got five of these coupons, so I can get five free items. If something is 'buy one, get one free' and you have a coupon, you end up getting both for free.”

Kotex will have “buy one, get one free” coupons in addition to an in-store special where they offer “buy one, get one free,” so you end up getting both for free.

“It’s beautiful,” King said.

King said she’ll stock up on Sunday papers if she sees coupons for “buy one, get one free” deals, since it’s inevitable that one or more of the big box stores will offer a good sale at some point.

Clearance sections are not to be missed either.

King makes out like a bandit on products such as hair color. Clairol Natural Instincts and Nice ‘n Easy are occasionally on clearance at CVS for just $2. With a $2 manufacturer’s coupon, King gets these items for free, and they still add value to her accumulating CVS "Extra Care Bucks."

A report from another popular couponing website, Coupons.com, says "more than $1.2 billion in digital coupons savings was issued in 2010, representing a 41 percent growth over the year before."

That's some serious savings.

Interestingly, the report concluded that "adults with a household income of over $100,000 are twice as likely to have redeemed coupons printed from an online source than adults with household income less than $35,000. Also, adults with college degrees are almost twice as likely to have used coupons in the prior six months as those who didn’t graduate from high school."

“It’s free money the manufacturers are giving out, so it’s crazy not to take advantage of it,” King said.

She admitted it takes a ton of time and a lot of effort.

“There’s no greater thrill than coming home with several bags of stuff for free because you cut out coupons,” King said.