Coupon tips

As the prices go up on everything, one thing that I have started is couponing. The sales have been great lately and I usually save about 50% or more.

I have listed some of the sites I visit regularly to get deal scenarios and coupons.

Here are some tips for the printable coupon sites:

-Not all stores take printable coupons. The only store I personally have had problems with is one Rite Aid store. It might have been the cashier and not the store policy because the coupon I was trying to use was a printable from the Rite Aid website.

-Printing coupons takes a lot of paper and ink. I save on paper by using the backs of junkmail papers.

I do several things to save on ink. First off, I refill my own print cartridges with a black refill kit from Walmart. The kit costs like $10, and you can fill several times. I estimate the cost to be about $2.00 per refill.

Secondly, I set my printer to only print in black ink. To do this go to File. Click on Page Setup. Then click Printer. Click Properties. Set Print Quality to Fast Draft and click on Black Only.

Another tip I learned from personal experience is that I couldn't get coupons from Smart Source and Cool Savings to print off in Internet Explorer. After many emails and trying things, I read a post somewhere that said they could print any coupons using Mozilla Firefox. So, I would suggest downloading that to your computer. There are free places online. I don't remember the site I used.

After printing your coupon, make sure you hit your back browser button and print another. There is something called "bricks" on many coupons that only allow you to print two of each one until the manufacturer "resets" the coupons. It can take months for that to happen.

My last tip is to watch for store coupons. CVS frequently has CVS coupons, Walgreens, Target and Kroger periodically have their own, too. You can use both a store coupon and a manufacture coupon on the same product. This is known as stacking.

Example: Last week Kroger had Suave shampoo 10/$10. I bought 3 for $3.00. Then, I used a .50 off 2 manufacturer coupon, (which Kroger doubles coupons up to .50) So, that brought it to $2.00, then I had a Kroger coupon for $1.00 off when you spend $3.00 or more on haircare coupon. So, I got 3 bottles of shampoo for $1.

Awesome huh?

I'll give some more examples from last week to go on, because this doesn't look like a good shopping week according to the online scans.