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I’ve learned a few tricks since writing the first part of this article on stocking up on food items and other good stuff with the help of coupons combined with sale prices. Here are some tricks that I’d like to share with you:

First, a word about ethics:  The web sites will limit the number of coupons you can print. Photocopying coupons is considered coupon fraud. Each printed coupon has its own codes, and duplicates are not legal to tender. They are counterfeit. It is fair game to clip several coupons for the same item, or to use more than one computer to print them out, because they are separate and discrete coupons.

Coupon management: You can greatly expand your ability to cash in by making an effort to collect many sets of those Sunday newspaper coupon booklets. Where to get them? The most straightforward method is simply to subscribe, or buy extra Sunday papers. The couple of bucks a month per paper should pay for itself many times over.
But we’re all resourceful types, right? Okay, cheapskates. Free is better. Store coupon flyers are usually on display for the taking. You can ask friends, relatives or neighbors to save the Smart Source, Red Plum and other newspaper inserts for you. If they clip too, maybe you have a dog, and they have a baby, so you can trade Huggies coupons for the Purina.

For more adventurous souls, dumpster diving is an option. Don’t get too grossed out at the idea. It isn’t all that eewww. Recycle bins contain only paper, and the worst of it is the newsprint I get on my fingers. The newspaper distribution office closest to me has a recycle bin where the carriers discard unused papers. I visit it about once a week to loot the bodies. Is it legal? Sure, with permission. The workers in the warehouse and the delivery truck drivers have been friendly and helpful when I explain what I’m after. They’ve even scared up flyers from the warehouse when I couldn’t find them in the bin. Best check on the feelings of your local newspaper personnel before diving.

You can cruise your neighborhood when people put out their recycle bins, asking if it’s okay to take their old newspapers, of course. Sometimes fast food places or coffee shops have newspapers lying around. Ask them if the Sunday coupon section is fair game for a paying customer.

Another source is Internet coupons you can print out. These can be found through www.couponmom.com. Sometimes you can go straight to the manufacturer’s web site and find offers there, as well.

Another legitimate use of coupons is stacking. If store policy will allow it, you can combine a manufacturer’s coupon with a store coupon on the same item. For instance, the other day I bought a bag of Millstone coffee using a Publix coupon worth $1.00 from their flyer in combination with a $2.00 Millstone coupon for a savings of $3.00. However, you can’t use two of the same kind of coupon on the same item.

Let’s say you’ve collected stacks of coupon flyers, now what? They can get out of hand if you don’t organize them. Amazing how paper stacks left together reproduce in the dark. Remember the Tribbles from Star Trek? Too bad that paper doesn’t purr or cuddle.

I suggest you file the pamphlets by date. I use one of those expandable file holders with a separate file folder for each week. You can find the distribution date in itty-bitty numbers on the outside fold of the flyer. Of course, you should go through each of them, cream the coupons you expect to use soon and put them in your go-to-store file. But you would be amazed at the useful coupons for products you never thought you’d want. My suggestion is, keep them until the coupons are out of date. Why? Money makers. They pop up unexpectedly, and having them on hand is like gold.

How to access the right coupon when the sales come up? Revisit www.couponmom.com. In good ol’ Mom’s web site you will find a searchable database of coupons. With reasonable accuracy you can find out the date and type of flyer where the brand of coupon can be found. The major coupon brochures are listed, such as Smart Source, Red Plum, and Proctor & Gamble (P&G). The database is refined by geography, though there may be differences in value or availability within a region. Printable coupons can also be accessed from this site. There are other web sites that provide help in your quest as well.

Good so far? It gets better. In Mom’s web site you can find the store specials for your area, complete with coupon match-ups and estimates on savings by both price and discount percentage. In our region four grocery stores are listed, two of which were just added, along with national drug and variety store chains.

For example: When I looked up the Walgreens specials  a few weeks ago, I found they offered Breathe-Rite strips in the sample size for 49 cents each. The item was tagged as Free in the database. Actually, it was much better than free, because the coupons were worth more than the product. Cha-ching! The database designated which week and which flyer offered the coupon. I clipped all seven coupons from my stash. They were worth $1.50 each, good for any size Breathe-Rite packages. I didn’t need the strips, but included them in a charity package to my church. After sales tax, each purchase netted me about 94 cents, times 7. Almost $7.00 I could apply to anything in the store.
Walgreens, you say?  Isn’t that a drugstore?

Don’t overlook the drugstores for food products! CVS and Walgreens both stock a limited inventory of groceries and other products of use to preppers, beyond the expected band-aids, vitamins and drugs. Most are pricey, but both chains offer sale prices on a number of items each week. I’ve bought canned meat and instant oatmeal for half the usual retail price at CVS and Walgreens. Some products generate rebates, or “catalinas” good for the next purchase. These are advertised in the weekly store flyer as well as the previously mentioned database. There’s an art to navigating the use of the catalinas that come with the purchases, and store policies vary.

First, Walgreens. This chain does not issue special cards that qualify you for specials and track your purchases. Stealth preppers need not worry about Walgreens building a dossier on you, and you can go back and buy as many of the rebate offers as you wish, as long as you play the game according to their rules.

Recently Walgreens offered a number of items that were essentially free after the rebates. Some were Proctor & Gamble brand products, along with other manufacturers. A few were money makers. For example, I had a number of $1.00 coupons for Crest toothpaste, and the store offered a full price rebate.  I paid $2.99 plus sales tax for the $3.99 item, and after paying for it, I got a voucher for $3.99, good on the next purchase at Walgreens.

Rule 1: The store only offered one rebate per purchase of a particular item, so I had to make separate transactions for each purchase of Crest.

Rule 2: Turning around and using the Procter and Gamble voucher on the same brand family product would disqualify the rebate offer on the second tube of Crest toothpaste or on Pantene shampoo, another P&G product that offered a rebate. So, when I bought a second tube of Crest with another $1.00 coupon, I again paid $2.99 for $3.99  toothpaste in a separate transaction and received a second catalina for $3.99.

Thus I had two catalinas for $3.99 to spend on Walgreens merchandise. Here’s where it gets sticky, because of restrictions. 

Rule 3: Whatever you purchase with the catalinas and coupons must total more than their value before sales tax – they won’t pay you the difference.

Rule 4: I learned the hard way that at Walgreens you can’t use more coupons than items in a purchase when stacking catalinas, manufacturers’ coupons, and store coupons. I had two rebate catalinas already, so had to buy at least two items for a minimum total price of $7.98 before sales tax. It gets complicated when you have a number of coupons to apply plus the store coupons found in the weekly flyers and want to get the maximum benefit. Dried fruit at $l.00 a box or a carton of eggs if they are on sale may make up the extra items needed and still provide good value.

CVS: You need to sign up and get an Extra Care card to take advantage of their deals. When you enter the store, you can scan the card in a machine and it pops out coupons. You might get $4.00 off a $20.00 purchase, or a buck off a bag of candy. Most of them are for products I don’t want, but some have been money savers. Because the store tracks your sales, you might use caution about heavy purchases of Sudafed and other red-flag drugs and merchandise.

For a buck you can buy a “green tag” to put on your personal shopping bag. Every day you make a purchase the cashier scans the tag (remind her) and after four visits, you get a coupon for a dollar good on anything at the store. The store saves money on plastic bags and my little greenie has paid for itself many times over.
CVS offers rebates on certain items each week much as Walgreens, but they are not as restrictive as to how you use your catalinas and coupons at the checkout. However, because you are using the card and they track your purchases, if the Crest rebate offer is only good for one purchase, you can’t go back for a second deal on the same card. It’s up to you if you want to sign up for multiple cards or get them for family members.

I’ve had some nice surprises at checkout. Recently I made two separate purchases because I wanted to use the rebates from the first toward the second. Out popped an unexpected $5.00 coupon good on a $15.00 purchase! It just so happened I had enough items in the second run-through to take use it. Because I had other coupons to apply, I handed the cashier the $5.00 catalina first to make sure my purchase maxed out at over $15.00 so I could take full advantage of a huge savings.
Rite-Aid apparently offers similar deals, but I can’t advise on their ins and outs because that chain doesn’t play in our area.

Electronic coupons: They are available some places, and come up on the Coupon Mom e-mailings, but I haven’t yet had any success in accessing them for the stores in our area. This must be a Silicon Valley thing.

Here’s another example of how to stretch the cash until it screams for mercy. Last week Walgreens offered melatonin supplements for $3.00 with a full rebate in the form of a catalina. I had $2.00 coupons for the same product. So I paid $1.00 for each bottle of melatonin in separate purchases, and received a $3.00 catalina for each one, for a $2.00 profit. I paid $3.00 for three bottles of supplements, and had $9.00 worth of catalinas to spend. This week Walgreens had a sale on canned Hormel corned beef for $1.99 with a limit of two per purchase, which was a bargain price. Canned Blue Diamond almonds were priced at $2.00 each, another good special. I had two coupons for 60 cents off two cans of Blue Diamond nuts. I bought two cans of beef and four cans of almonds for my stockpile. With the $9.00 worth of catalinas and $1.20 in coupons, I paid $1.78 for the $11.98 purchase. (There is no sales tax on food or vitamin supplements in my state.) The cash outlay for the six cans of edibles plus the three bottles of Melatonin totaled $4.78 for a $30.00 full retail value.

Aggressive coupon shopping takes time and attention, but as the savings and the stacks of groceries add up, I’m finding the payoff well worth the trouble.