{Couponing help anyone? Part TWO}

Welcome to part TWO of my blog series!

If you're just joining us, this is my FIVE part coupon help series! Here are the topics, along with the first topic that has already been covered, just click on Part ONE to head directly to that post.

Part ONE: Coupon Lingo and More

Part TWO: Getting Started/Collecting Coupons (covering in today's post)

Part THREE: Coupon Organization and More

Part FOUR: Learn How To Navigate Coupons Sites/Blogs

Part FIVE: Wrapping It Up! 

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Today's post is going to be "lighter" than yesterday's since I threw quite a bit of information at you ;-)

So, now that you know some lingo and have other information about couponing, where in the heck do you even start?! Well, start by collecting coupons, of course! hehehe! There are two places you can find coupons.

The first place, by grabbing your Sunday newspaper!

For me, it's the Spokesman Review, for Olympia/Tacoma/Seattle it's The Olympian, The News Tribune, etc. For deals on The Olympian or The News Tribune to have these papers delivered straight to your door so you won't have to fight for them at gas stations or news stands...go HERE. Paying for a subscription might be something that you'll want to wait on until you really get the hang of couponing because you might not feel like it will be worth paying that until you know how to maximize your savings with couponing. For our family, we just buy 2 newspapers a week at a nearby gas station unless it's a "doubles" week - which I'll get into later what "doubles" are - where we buy upwards of 4 papers at a time :-)

Here are my newspapers I just bought this last Sunday.

 
What I'm going to do now, is walk you through the anatomy of your newspaper, what to look for, what to keep, what to RECYCLE (please, please, please recycle - you will be going through a lot of paper each week), and more.

What you're looking for in your papers are the coupon inserts. Here are the ones that I found in last weeks paper...

Looks like an entire booklets of ads, BUT WITH COUPONS!! :-)

There are four different types of coupon inserts to look out for Red Plum (RP), Proctor & Gamble (PG), SmartSource (SS) and General Mills (GM). With the Spokesman Review, there's an insert called "PARADE" which will sometimes had a random coupon in it from time to time. Here is what the PARADE looks like...

While you're looking for your inserts in each paper, you'll run across all kinds of store ads, etc. Only pull out the ones that you think you'll need or for places you shop at regularly. The adds I usually like to keep are the local grocery store ones. Or it I know I might be visiting Best Buy sometime during the week, I'll keep that one too :-)

Unless there are in store coupons in the ads, I only keep one copy of that particular ad. For example, you don't need two of the same Best Buy ad, since they're identical ;-)

Here's a quick 2 minute video from Fabulessly Frugal where Monica goes through her Sunday paper, just to kind of reiterate what I explained above and to give you a bit more of a visual...



The second place, an online coupon database like Coupons.com (which is the site I trust THE most). I won't really take any time to go over internet coupons, but for more info, visit Coupon Printing 101. The Printing 101 explains it just like I would :-)

Hope you enjoyed today's couponing segment and that you're looking forward to more!! 

Please don't hesitate to comment on this post with any questions or concerns, etc (I can directly reply to your comments as long as your blogger account isn't set as "no reply blogger" - take a look at my comment form to find out more details on that). Or, you can email me directly at cblakley0531@gmail.com - Just in case your email gets sent to my SPAM folder, write "Couponing 101 Post" in the subject line so I know you're not a spammer :-)

**Disclaimer: I was in no way paid by FabuLESSly Frugal to write this series for my readers. I honestly just love couponing and this site THAT much. I wanted to share all my new knowledge with you!**