Blogger Bargains: Buying coupons to stockpile

Monday, May 30, 2011

Buying coupons to stockpile

The question of the day is, how many of one items is "enough", and is it worth it to purchase extra coupons? The answer to this question is going to vary from person to person. Generally speaking, you should not stockpile more than your household can use in about 3 months. Sales generally rotate around about every 3 months, so why store much more than that. If you want to buy and extra 1 or 2 to donate, GREAT! But lets not get greedy and empty the shelves of stock so that nobody else can buy any. If you wish to buy a large volume of an item, it is simple courtesy to the retailer as well as other customers, for you to call the store ahead of time and ask them to order you the larger volume. So where do you get the coupons for that many items? There are several ways.

You purchase several Sunday papers each week. Some suggest you should buy a paper for each person in your family. I suggest you ask non-couponers if you can have their inserts each week instead, or simply trade coupons with a friend/family member so that you each get extra of the items your family uses a lot of (for example, I would happily clip my pet food and coffee coupons in trade for school lunch supplies or diet coke coupons).
You use the printable coupon websites, keeping in mind that many websites will let you print two copies of each coupon per URL. That means that if you have more than on computer, you can sometimes print two of each coupon per computer.
You buy them. Coupons can be purchased from a coupon clipping website or off many auction sites. Problem with this is that you are at the mercy of the seller when it comes to the coupons being valid coupons (not fraudulent ones) and how fast they ship. You have to ask yourself, is the item going to still be on sale and in stock when your coupons arrive? How much are you willing to pay to save? You should never pay more than $1-$2 for a stack of coupons from such sites.