Sunday, The Beginning of the Money Saving Week!

Good morning! It’s a beautiful day here in Southeastern Wisconsin! What is on your agenda? Gardening? Headed to the beach? My Sunday routine always starts with a trip to the convenience store for a paper! Sunday is the best day of the week to start saving money!

I have found the best way to start your coupon collection is to buy a paper every Sunday (holiday weekends tend to not have coupons, so I usually skip those). There are many ways people like to organize and collect coupons. I’d like to share my method, which I compiled from a number of different blogs, taking the ideas I like best from each blogger.

To start – I cut every coupon. If you look in my binder, you will see coupons for diapers and denture cream, neither of which we use of course. The reason I cut all the coupons is simple – free. I follow many other bloggers to help me learn, and they often will post coupon ad match ups, and if you have the right coupons, you can get the item for free. If I have an opportunity to get diapers for free, or even denture cream, I can find local shelters and nursing homes in dire need for these products, and I figure it costs me no more time to clip every coupon than it would to decide which I want and which I don’t.

When I started couponing, I had a little plastic coupon file with thirteen slots in it. Since I cut every coupon, that didn’t take long to fill up, and it was quite a mess to dig through at the store. It took me a while to realize that if I wanted an organizational system to hold all my coupons, there was no way it would be able to fit my purse, LOL. Enter my coupon binder.

Yep, it’s pink! Like it? This large contraption actually helps me cut my shopping time, and my grocery bills! I have been consistently saving 40-50% on my grocery bills! :)

Just a quick tour of my binder – I keep a pack of post it notes in the front pocket, to jot down sales I see in the store, or to keep my coupons labeled by store for future trips.

The front flap on my binder opens up to reveal a spot for pens and pencils and other little odds and ends.

There is also a zipper in that front part, and it is perfect for a pair of scissors and a calculator. The calculator is a great thing to have along, sometimes I use it to keep a running total of my groceries, or sometimes it’s handy to figure out per unit prices.

Inside the front cover of the binder is sort of an expanding file. I love this for my restaurant.com gift certificates, and my grocery store flyers. I also keep printed internet coupons I haven’t gotten around to clipping yet. It’s a very nice feature.

Next is my table of contents. I printed this one from hip2save.com, try following this link, you should be able to find the table of contents in my binder. Sometimes I think I’d like to add new categories, but in the long run, this is pretty perfect to start out with! It seems like a lot of categories, but the more categories, the fewer coupons in each, and in the long run, the easier it is to find what you have, at least I think so. :)

My next page is where I store my shopping list. I use an excel spreadsheet that I’ve programmed to keep tally of the totals for me. If I ever get it perfected, I’ll post it for all of you to use too, I promise! Right now, it may just drive you all crazy, LOL.

The next page is an empty sheet protector I use to keep all the coupons I’ve organized by store for that week’s shopping trip. The coupons are sorted with a paperclip and a post-it note for the specific store. It’s working well for me so far, but I’m always open to new ideas!

The very first category I put in, which is not listed on the table of contents I used, is my store cards. I used to keep them in my purse, but they were always so hard to find, so I decided to put them in my binder! The pages are meant for baseball cards, and they fit the store cards perfect. I also use these pages for my coupons. I’ve also used 4x6 photo pages in some places, for bigger coupons, but I like the size and quality of the baseball pages better. I also know you can purchase pages with 4 pockets, or pages with long skinny pockets meant for currency. I think by the time all is said and done I will have a million types of pages, and a type of coupon that works best in each one. I plan on creating a binder just like this one for my mom, so if I keep buying pages, we can split them up between the two binders.

My tabs – I hate them, LOL. I really want to invest in some high quality plastic dividers, but as impatient as I am, I purchased some inexpensive stick on tabs, and used some white cardstock from my craft room. Don’t get me wrong, they serve their purpose for the time being, but eventually, I will invest in the higher quality, because sometimes these dividers get hidden behind the photo pages because they are a tad bit wider, but it’s a work in progress!

This is what the coupons look like in the baseball pages. I keep one coupon type in each pocket. By type, I mean if I have three $1/1 Truvia coupons, they will all be in the same pocket organized with the coupon that expires first on top, but only that coupon. So I know exactly what I have. When I started, I’d put a few similar coupons in one pocket, because I didn’t buy enough pockets, but now I have enough, so each coupon has its own pocket. It makes it so easy to see what I have! :)

So, this is my binder! What do you think? How do you organize your coupons? I’d love to see what you do, it’s so nice to be able to learn from each other!