I'm sure there are some folks here who "clip coupons"

[Imma]

I use hardware store coupons all the time. Wel have a fixer upper so we need lots of DIY stuff all the time.

In my town there are 4 different large hardware stores right next to each other. The competition is fierce, which means they all take each other's coupons and match each other's prices. So if I get a 25% off coupon from one of them, I'll use it at the store where the product is cheapest. I prefer buying from 1 particular store, because they are part of a loyalty scheme that rewards me in points that I can use to pay for groceries. Sometimes I get coupons for double points or 100 extra points etc, so I go to that store, ask for price matching with the cheapest store, then get maximum loyalty points from the preferred store and use those points for groceries.

I know this sounds a bit cheap, and my s/o is too ashamed to go to the store with me sometimes :) but this has saved me hundreds over the past few years. DIY items can get really expensive and the price differences are often quite big. And with 4 big stores in the same street, they know they are going to have to be competative.

[Bracken_Joy]

I really only save coupons for bed bath and beyond. That way, I always have a $5 off a $15 purchase coupon when it comes time to replace our soda stream canister (only once every 3-4 months, so not worth doing a "hack" with a bigger tank).

Ohhhh, thank you for mentioning this!

I have only exchanged once, at Target but am due again. It never occured to me that those BBB coupons would be good for that!

And I do use the online coupons from kind soopers and safeway as they often have them for cheese, milk, and eggs. I find that it is usually cheaper to buy store brand than it is to mess with coupons (which I used to do a lot) so I value my time now and pass on the coupons.

They did just recently drop the price of the swaps at our location from $15 to $14.99. So I just grab a $0.99 travel toothpaste. They get used (husband travels for work), so really it saves $4 now vs $5, but still worth it =)

Glad I could help!

[okits]

I think she was getting rebates and needed the label and a receipt

Oh, okay, thank you.  We don't have anything like that for alcohol in my province so that explanation never even occurred to me.  A few hundred bucks a month from that is great, too bad it's hard to do, now!

[Acastus]

I used to clip coupons, but now that we shop the walls of the supermarket - dairy, produce, meat, frozen - we do not buy enough name brand items to save much money. And the farmer's market? Fahgetaboudit. Wegman's has pretty reliable store brands, though not universal. I maybe use enough coupons to offset the cost of the newspaper. If I believed the coupon sections, I would think America spends $50 on HBA's every week.

[Erica]

I think she was getting rebates and needed the label and a receipt

Yes thank you for saying it better than I did. It was quite easy, soak 10 min and peel the upc off. Let it set (I live in Calif) and dry. fill out a rebate form, create a receipt, smack a stamp on and your good to go. About 85% of the 100% sent of these resulted in rebates.

This was a little over 20 yrs ago

[elliha]

I use coupons if I find one for things that we normally buy but I am much more invested in trying to find other reduced price items like things on sale. It is also important to know the price of things to know if the reduced price is cheap for real or not. I have a couple of things that I stock up on when I find it for a low price: detergent for both washing machine and dish washer, tooth paste, hand soap, children's tooth brushes, canned tomatoes, pasta and pasta sauce for example. I buy bulgur wheat (which we eat a lot of) and rice in bulk from stores that sell food from other countries. I plan to add olive oil to the bulk purchase items not so much because it is cheaper, it is only a little cheaper but in order to not have to constantly buy olive oil. We use a lot of it. I don't usually buy steel cut oats in bulk but I did find a lot of it on clearance earlier this spring and the price was very low so I bought about 4 kilos of it. It might take a while to get through that amount but we will eventually.

One hack I do have is at the Lidl store. I will check the sell by date for meat that is on sale and if the sell by date is 2 days after the offer ends or less than that I don't buy it and take a chance that they will do a double reduction on the last day of the sale with both a reduction for being towards the end of the period where it can be sold and being on sale. I have bought meat very cheaply that way but there is a risk that they will run out but then you can buy it for the regular reduced price if they have added packet with a later date.

[Not Your Monkey]

Current deal at my local (PNW) Safeway:

Jennie-O ground turkey at $2.50 per package.
Coupons.com has $1.50 printable coupon
Safeway in my region will double a coupon up to 50 cents for the first 4 coupons
Ibotta is a website/app that is offering $1.40 back per package of Jennie-O purchased

Means I got 4 packages of lean ground turkey meat for free plus I made $3.60 (paid $2 out of pocket, got back $5.60 in rebates that go into my PayPal account)

So yeah, coupons are a total waste of time and all you can possibly get are super processed foods 😆