Being as I have to balance a budget as well as my writing life, I attended a class recently about clipping coupons. Sounds rather elementary, I suppose. Clip a few coupons for breakfast cereal and save a few cents, right? Wrong!

Coupon clipping has become a fine art in this electronic day and age, and some of the coupon experts out there are putting scrapbookers to shame. My instructor had a stack of three large notebooks filled with page protectors and hundreds upon hundreds of slips of paper. There were even store receipts for proof. Shockingly, a pro coupon clipper can actually save more money than is spent, and in some cases get money back!

One of the most interesting things I learned was that it’s possible to use two coupons for one item, as long as one is a manufacturer’s coupon and the other is a store coupon. If that item is on sale, you can sometimes save so much money they have to give you a few pennies back. Crazy stuff!

I decided to give this a go. Luckily, there are a few stores who still double coupons, so I tackled one popular chain first, targeting their weekly Buy One Get One Free list with my coupons. I saved a lot of money, but still spent more than I wanted. Interestingly enough, the groceries lasted me two weeks. The draw back: There was a lot of high calorie junk food and frozen foods.

Week 2 I did much better at popular fancy chain’s Buy One Get One. I spent $58 and saved $58. However, I still had to go to another store where I buy my meats and produce.

It’s coming along. I’m now a devout printer of internet coupons. Even though they can’t be doubled, everyone takes them, so why not? I have found the best sites to be Coupons.com and Southernsavers.com. I clip everything out of my newspaper and have now started clipping coupons on mailings and the back of my store receipts. Who would have thought holding a pair of scissors could be so addicting?

As the economic atmosphere in our country turns toward frugality, I’m thankful I attended a simple evening class about saving. I thought I was pretty thrifty, but you CAN teach an old dog new tricks. I look forward to finding more ways to make life easier. Now, if I could only find more ways to save time!


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