How To Start Couponing: A Beginner’s Guide (2024)

Commitment to Our Readers

GOBankingRates' editorial team is committed to bringing you unbiased reviews and information. We use data-driven methodologies to evaluate financial products and services - our reviews and ratings are not influenced by advertisers. You can read more about our editorial guidelines and our products and services review methodology.

20 Years
Helping You Live Richer

Reviewed
by Experts

See Also

10 Extreme Coupon Tips for Normal PeopleHow To Find Promo Codes — The Expert's GuideDoes Couponing Really Save you Money? - Milli BankPromo Code Reliability Study: Which is the Best Coupon Site?

Trusted by
Millions of Readers

Have you ever been grocery shopping and just before ringing you up, the cashier asks, “Do you have any coupons?” A “yes” answer can make you feel like you’ve hit the jackpot. Read on to learn more about how you can save some money on future grocery bills by couponing.

What Is Couponing?

Most people usually think of a coupon as a printed ad that can be cut out to get a discount on products or services. Savers typically clip printed manufacturers’ coupons from newspapers, magazines and flyers they receive in the mail to save money at store checkouts.

Today, though, couponing primarily is done via digital platforms, making it even easier for you to save money.

How To Coupon

With the change in the coupon landscape, is it still worth it? Do you actually save money? The answer to both of these questions is yes.

Learning how to coupon isn’t difficult, but it requires organizational skills and a commitment of a decent amount of time every week. You’ll need to set up a system of gathering and sorting them so that you can easily find the ones you need when you’re looking for them, and finally, remember to use them.

There are two main ways to coupon:

1. Paper couponing
2. Digital couponing

1. Paper Couponing

No matter what method you employ, be mindful of the expiration date. Sort your coupons frequently to find those that expire in the next 10 days or two weeks, and dedicate a sheet in your binder or a section in your accordion file to coupons expiring soon.

Find Your Paper Coupons

Before you can develop that system, you’ll need to find coupons. Start looking for them in these places:

• Sunday papers: They contain “books” filled with coupons to clip, primarily for groceries and household items, such as cleaners and detergents.
• Weekly store ads: Your local grocery store ads, often found in the Sunday newspaper, sometimes contain coupons to clip, such as $2 off a $6 purchase from the dairy department. The circulars generally are available at the store’s entrance.
• In-store coupons: Your supermarket might have a machine located near the entrance that dispenses coupons if you swipe your store loyalty card. These can contain offers for everyone or ones specifically catered to you.
• Checkout coupons: When you pay for your groceries, the store clerk might hand you some paper coupons along with your receipt, and those could include offers based on what you just bought.
• In the mail: Depending on where you live and your local stores, your weekday mail could contain some great deals.
• Online coupons: These are available on a variety of websites that you can download and print.

Organizing Your Paper Coupons

Once you’ve clipped, you’ll need to organize all of your snips. They don’t do you any good sitting in a pile on the kitchen table. Here are some methods to help you with your organization.

• Extreme couponers: These savers often shop with a binder filled with plastic sleeves containing hundreds of paper coupons. They often label the sleeves by type of item such as condiments or produce, then put each coupon that falls into that category into a sleeve.
• Accordion file: Found at most dollar stores, these organizers have tabs that can be labeled and can help to separate your coupons. You’ll want to expand to a binder system if you get enough volume.

2. Digital Couponing

Clipping digital coupons requires no scissors or little pieces of paper to keep organized. However, this doesn’t mean it is necessarily less time-consuming.

Find Your Digital Coupons

If you don’t have online accounts with your favorite grocery stores, create them now on your home computer or tablet or by downloading the store’s app. The same goes for big-box stores like Target as well as drug stores like CVS and Walgreens.

On the store sites, you’ll find savings to sort through, and then you’ll “clip” coupons to your account. You can wade through them one by one or do a targeted search if you’re looking for something specific.

These “clippings” will stay in your account until you use them or they expire. To use them, you’ll present your linked loyalty card at the register — or in the case of stores like Target, enter your phone number on the terminal — and watch your savings come off before the final amount due is tabulated.

You also can locate savings on designated coupon websites.

Organizing Your Digital Coupons

A downside to this digitalization is that these savings are scattered throughout cyberspace on one coupon site or another. A couponing journal can help. Start with a small notebook to record and organize the coupons you’ve clipped. Dedicate pages to specific items.

For example, create a page labeled “Shampoo” and record the coupons you’ve clipped by product, amount, store and expiration date. Your entry will look something like this:

• Pantene. $2. CVS. 4/1/23

Cross off the entry as you use it or as it expires. Use standard notebook paper for this task, and be sure to alphabetize the pages as you go.

5 Tips for Better Couponing

Now that you’ve begun your couponing journey, these additional tips will prove valuable.

1. Match your shopping list with expiring coupons
2. Buy only what you need
3. Coupon stack
4. Read the fine print
5. Don’t pay more than you need to

1. Match Your Shopping List With Expiring Coupons

You might not have salad dressing on your shopping list, but you have a great coupon for $2 off your brand that expires this week. Buy the dressing this week while you can benefit from the discount and have it on hand when you run out.

2. Buy Only What You Need

You don’t need that salad dressing this week, but it’s a staple and you know you’ll use it. But what if you see a coupon for black olives for $2 off and notice in the store circular that the same brand is on sale for $2.59? Cash in your savings and you’ll get olives for 59 cents.

It’s a great deal — if you like olives or have a recipe that requires them. If the can sits on the shelf for three years and you wind up tossing it, it wasn’t a good deal.

3. Coupon Stacking

If you have two $1 off manufacturers coupons for the same brand of laundry soap, you can’t combine them to get $2 off one bottle. But that doesn’t mean you can’t double coupon dip on the savings in some instances.

It’s called coupon stacking, and if you’ve got a manufacturer’s discount and a store discount for the same item, you certainly can “stack” them as long as the store allows it.

4. Read the Fine Print

Before you put the item in your cart, read the coupon requirements to be sure you have the right size and quantity. The coupon might be good only on a tube of toothpaste that’s 3.5 ounces or larger, for example. The 2.7-ounce tube you have in your hand won’t qualify.

5. Don’t Pay More Than You Need To

You have a coupon for $1 off a jar of national brand peanut butter and clip it, intending to use it. But when you get to the store, the peanut butter sale price is $4.99. The store brand you usually buy is $3.69. Use the coupon and you’re spending 30 cents more than you have to.

Final Take

The savings with coupons can be significant. Even if you save just $10 a week while grocery shopping, that’s $520 at the end of the year — $520 you can put in savings to build an emergency fund, put toward the down payment on a car or use to invest in stocks. And the reality is, the more effort you apply, the more you can save.

Caitlyn Moorhead and Kathy Evanscontributed to the reporting for this article.