Tips to maximize your savings:

1. Find stores that have rewards programs – I shop at The Barn (Air Miles), Shopper’s Drug Mart (Optimum Points), Zellers (HBC Rewards) and Real Canadian Superstore (PC Points). Of course, I shop at other stores as well if they have great deals, but I love the above stores because of their rewards programs.

2. Combine coupons with sales – This is the number one way that you will receive great savings. Know when your stores’ flyers come out and compare these sales with the coupons you have on hand. If you have a bunch of coupons for a sale item and the price, after coupon, makes the item free or close to it, go ahead and grab a bunch and stock up.

3. Know what a good deal is – Start a price book. Walk through your favourite stores and write down every item that you regularily purchase and the price, size, etc. By doing this, when you see a flyer with an item on sale you will know whether or not it is a good sale by referring to your price book to see how much it costs normally.

4. Know the stores in your area – Call up each store in your area and ask to speak to the manager. Ask him/her all sorts of questions including what kinds of coupons they accept (printed, competitor coupons,etc.), if they double/triple coupons and if they have store coupons (coupons you can only use at their store).

Where to find coupons:

1. Online – There are many, many sites online that offer coupons. For Canadians – Save.ca allows you to select up to 20 coupons and you get them mailed right to your home! Americans – try Coupons.com where you can select a bunch of coupons and print them out.

2. Ask the compaines – Look at the back of your favourite products. There should be a phone number and/or website address. You can call or email the companies and flat out ASK for coupons. Not every company will send you some, but you will find that quite a few of them value your loyalty enough that they will mail coupons to you – sometimes they are even coupons for free products!

3. Ebay – Try searching Ebay for coupons and watch how many pop up. You can purchase packages of coupons with savings of $100+ for only a few bucks, including shipping. This is great place to find specific coupons (baby, pet, food, etc).

4. Newspapers/Magazines – In the US, there is a Sunday newspaper that you can purchase that has tons of coupons in it. Unfortunetely, in Canada we do not have this. However, occassionally, there will be a newspaper that has a handful of coupons that you can cut out. Not near as many as our lovely American friends get though! You can also check in magazines for coupons and will probably find a couple but not that many.

5. Coupon Trades – Join some coupon/freebie/deals forums (SmartCanucks.ca is a great one!) and most of them will have a coupon trade section. In there, you can search for specific coupons and when you find what you want, you message the person with them and offer them a trade (check out their profile to see what coupons they are interested in). Be careful who you trade with – make sure they have a fair amount of positive feedback.

6. In stores – Every time you are at the store, you should take a few extra minutes to walk down each aisle and check for coupons. They will be in front of the products, attatched to the shelf. Take as many as you think you would need, but remember – never take all of the coupons. That is just proper coupon ettiquette.

7. Friends and Family – If your friends and/or family get a paper, and they don’t use coupons, ask if they can save them all for you.

Other Tips:

1. Look for unadvertised sales – Alot of the time, stores will have sales on items that are NOT in the flyer. These items usually go on sale because the store has too many in stock. This is why you always need to bring ALL of your coupons with you everywhere you go! You never know when you will find that next great deal!

2. One Coupon Per Purchase – This does NOT mean you can only use ONE coupon. It means you can only use ONE coupon on ONE item. So if you have 5 coupons for ostrich feathers (why would anyone buy those? HAHA), and you have 5 packages of ostrich feathers, you can use ALL 5 coupons. If a cashier tries to tell you otherwise, ask to speak with a supervisor. If they are just as clueless, get the manager.

3. Purchase travel size items instead of the larger sizes – You can almost always get these products for free with coupon. For example, I had 10 coupons for Johnson’s Baby Oil $1.00 off and at Wal-Mart, I found the travel size bottles on sale for $1.00 each making these free! Read the coupon carefully before doing this, though, as some coupons state that they cannot be used on trial sizes.