Can Clipping Coupons REALLY save you money?

Ok, the answer to the question above is a very simple ‘Yes’ however, just writing that wouldn’t make a very interesting or useful article, so perhaps I should go into a little more detail and hopefully you’ll find yourselves agreeing with me by the end of the article even if you don’t at the moment, and at least it’ll be a slightly more interesting article than that one single word would be.

Coupons are created by manufacturers in order to get customers to buy their product rather than someone else’s. They put them on leaflets that come through your door, on the bottom of adverts in magazines, on the back of the product to encourage you to buy it not just once, but a second or even a third or fourth time as well. These manufacturers WANT you to use these coupons, and they want you to buy their products, so if you already need margarine and find a coupon for their marge, it’s easy isn’t it, well that 30p off is going to make it cheaper than the one you normally buy so you figure you might as well give it a go!

So what if the coupon is for apple juice and you don’t like apple juice? Well, this is a more complicated situation, because there are some cases where you can still use the coupon anyway even if you’re not buying the product it’s for. Some supermarkets will take a coupon for an item even if you’re not buying the product, the manufacturers don’t want them to do it, but the fact is they have told the supermarket that not only will they reimburse them the value of the coupon, but they will also give them another penny on top for the extra work involved in accepting it. The way it works is this: The supermarket gets sent 100 bottles of apple juice every week. Now how many people do you know who use coupons? My guess is not many, it’s something that’s really gone out of fashion quite a lot, which is good for the few of us who still do, as it means that probably at least 90 of the people who buy those bottles of apple juice won’t use a coupon for it. So when you come along with your shopping and your coupons, the supermarket takes the coupon for the apple juice even though you didn’t buy it because they know that they have sold 100 bottles and only taken 10 coupons! This isn’t always the case, some supermarkets adhere to the rules strictly, others don’t and it’s really a case of pot luck whether your local one will or not, but it’s certainly worth a try to ask. One of the way’s I’ve found best to do this is to hand over a few coupons (I try never to use too many and always to try and keep their total value at or below 10% of the value of my shopping unless I’m actually buying the product) and ask ‘Can I use any of these please?’ whilst smiling sweetly. If they hand them all back or even most of them back well it’s done me no harm to ask has it!

Where can you get coupons? – Good question! Some ladies magazines are worth looking in – chat, take a break, woman’s own, mostly it’s the weekly magazines that these appear in, but just have a flick through and see what you find. (If you and your friends put your heads together on this, you could each check 1 or 2 magazines a week so it wouldn’t take long). This method of finding coupons works really well if you do have a shop that will accept them even if you don’t buy the item, particularly if the magazine costs less that the value of the coupons – otherwise you’re really only getting a cheap magazine. The internet is another good place to look for coupons, lots of sites advertise their new products on their sites, and they will often let you sign up to their newsletter, or to be sent bumpf which can often include a sample or a coupon. Other places are newspapers, in-store displays, and stands where people are giving out coupons (and sometimes free samples) in town. Maybe you have friends who don’t like the idea of using coupons, but wouldn’t mind keeping them for you – ask them to keep their eyes open, and cut out any they find to pass on to you.

Imagine, if you spend £50 a week on shopping, and can manage to save an average of 7% of that each week, that would be a total saving each year of £182!

By Suki Bryson

A good place to start looking for coupons and discount codes is the forum