I scored some really great deals this week and I thought it might be nice if I shared some of my best coupon tips to help you save money to.  Here's what I do:

1) I collect as many Sunday papers as I can and save them for about 10 weeks in a large 3 ring binder using page protector sleeves.  I only purchase 1 Sunday paper for the coupons.  I get about 3-5 more coupon sets free from co-workers and neighbors that don't use coupons.  Your real savings come when you have multiple coupons for one product!

2) I sit down every Wednesday to look through the grocery store weekly ads and I try to match up items that I'd normally buy with coupons that I have.  I don't get the Wednesday paper, but I always seem to get those Wednesday grocery store weekly ads in my mailbox.  I've even gone online to the grocery store's website and found their weekly ads in a digital form.

3) I use Coupon Mom Grocery Database to look up which coupons are available for the products I want.

4) I do free coupon swapping for any coupons that I don't have but might want.

5) I print out online coupons at Grocery Games and various other online locations.   Some online coupons have print out limits, others do not.

6) If I can't find a coupon for a product that I use and like, I'll call or email the company that makes the product and ask them to mail me coupons.  90% of the time, they do!

7) I make a list before I go to the store and stick to it!  I clip out only the coupons I want to use in advance and bring those to the store with the list.  I try not to do impulse shopping.  

8) I try to pay attention when the cashier is ringing up my purchases and scanning my coupons to catch mistakes.  And I always review my receipt before leaving the store to look for mistakes.  If I find one, and I have before, I go to customer service and make them correct the problem.

9) I stock pile.  When items that I'll use are one sale, I find as many coupons as I can get my hands on and I purchase a lot of those products.  That way I don't have to buy those products when they're not on sale!  If I can get really good deals, I'll buy extra so that I can donate some food to my local food bank!

10) I ask for reinchecks.  Yesterday I wanted to buy five 5 lb bags of C&H sugar because I was going to get them for .50/each with the store sale and my coupons combined.  Unfortunately, too many people beat me to them and there was no sugar left in that grocery store!  At the checkout aisle, I asked the cashier for a reincheck on the sugar so that I could still get the sale price when they restocked, even though the store sale would be over by that time.  The great thing about this particular store is that their reinchecks have no expiration date so I could wait a month or longer to buy that sugar and still get the sale price, as long as I don't wait so long that my coupons expire!

Believe me when I tell you that if you're disciplined about using coupons, you will see a drastic reduction in your grocery bill!

Okay, now that you know all my couponing secrets,  just for fun I'd like to pose a question to you all.  How much do you think I spent on the groceries listed in the picture above?  Go ahead, click on the image to enlarge.