Introduction

Thanks to my Mother, we have always been a family who uses coupons.  Sometimes it would cause us to buy things we did not originally plan on buying had we not had a coupon.  When I moved out of my parent's house and got married in August, I took on the responsibility of trying to use coupons for the groceries for my new family.

Sometimes I would still find myself purchasing "unnecessary food items" because I had a coupon for them.  My husband considers that a waste of money.  His view is that you are not saving money if you are spending more to buy something, just because you have a coupon for it.  My view is that it might be something I would have bought but it was too pricey, and now I can afford it thanks to the coupon.

I am a frequenter to Start Sampling and I have been using that site for years.  It is a legit way to get free samples.  I do consider myself the Free Sample Queen.  A lot of times I get free samples just because they are free.  Other times, I really use the free samples to decide if I want to purchase the item in the future or not.  Another great thing about that site is that they usually send you coupons with your free samples.  Other times you might just get coupons instead of a free sample.  Either way, I have always stocked up on coupons even if I am not going to buy the product.  But I like knowing that I have a coupon in case I do decide I want the product (obviously before the coupon expires).  In conclusion, I highly recommended that everyone join Start Sampling  (and add my username 'c00achica' as a referral, so I get a bonus haha)

With all that being said, I always thought that I knew how to use a coupon.  I figured it always worked best if you happened to have a coupon for an item you were going to buy regardless of if you had a coupon or not. I thought that was pretty much the only way to save money.  It seemed straight forward enough.  You were intending on going to the store to buy Product A for $2.99, you happened to find a coupon for $1 off Product A, and now you have bought it for $1.99 and saved $1! Yay!  Besides the times that some stores double or triple coupons, I never thought there was any other way to use a coupon.

My friend would frequently tell a story of how when her (now) Mother-In-Law was raising her (now) husband and his ELEVEN siblings, she would be so good with coupons that she would manage to get $1000 grocery bills down to just a few bucks.  I thought for sure that she had to be exaggerating with this story.  Aren't there restrictions on coupons?  Aren't there policies to stop things like this from happening?  After all, the grocery stores don't want you to win.  I know from experience how many times my legit coupons 'accidentally' didn't go through the register, or the on-sale item rang up at full price.  And I had to be "That Girl" who had to complain (albeit politely) because they over charged her by 10 cents.  Hey, every little bit helps!

When TLC started airing their new show "Extreme Couponing"  I did not really have any interest in watching it, but one day caught it because there was nothing else on that I wanted to watch.  I stared at the people on this show in disbelief!  They were just like my friend's Mother-In-Law in the story, buying over $1000 worth of groceries and paying only mere dollars for all of it!  I admit, most of these people I believe need to be on TLC's "Hoarders".  They seem to be addicted to getting as much stuff as possible.  A lot of them seem greedy and to me they seem to lack some common sense.  For example, one lady bought over 50 bottles of mustard, for her family who does not even like mustard!  Don't get me wrong, I love getting a great deal, but I don't think I need 50 of everything!  I feel like I hoard enough useless crap, that I don't need to be hoarding unnecessary groceries as well.  I was happy to see that one gentlemen on the show actually donated a multitude of his great couponing rewards (around 1000 boxes of cereal) to a soup kitchen.  That to me just seemed wonderful, and completely worth all the time and effort it took him to do his research and clip his coupons.

The next time "Extreme Couponing" aired, I found myself watching yet again due to the fact that nothing else was on.  I didn't even know that the second time I was watching it was only the second time it had even aired.  The more I watched, the more I still thought some of them were greedy shelf-clearers with a hoarding issue...But I also began to be EXTREMELY impressed with their grocery trips.  I found myself enamoured in wondering if I could figure out how to beat the store at its own game and use the coupons like they do.

couponer".  I could not believe how many forums and websites are devoted to helping people get amazing deals on necessary items!

I told my husband that I wanted to try to be an Impressive Couponer.  I said I didn't need to be Extreme, because I did not need a huge stock pile like most of them have...But I wanted to see what I could get for free or nearly free.  We agreed that I wouldn't get items we wouldn't need or use.  And we agreed that I wouldn't get huge amounts of each item.

And with that I did some more research, and began my (semi)addiction to couponing...