Expectations

One of the biggest things I learned very quickly was that what I expected to get out of this and what I am getting out of it are two very different things.

I initially looked into this when I saw Extreme Couponers on TLC. "Wow", I thought, "They just bought 1500$ worth of stuff for 30 cents!! So what if it includes 500 bottles of mustard that they could never possibly use? It's just so cool!". Well I quickly learned I wasn't going to be getting 500 bottles of mustard and 70 toothbrushes for 50 cents. But really, who needs that much? Yes it's great if you can do that, specially if you are donating much of it to charities, but otherwise you're pretty much just hoarding.

I'm not likely to be the next Extreme Couponer. Nor am I interested in being the next Extreme Couponer. What I really want to do, is to be able to save money on things I already buy and use. If it's only 5$ okay, if it's 20$ GREAT, if it's more; well then even better.

It does take some time to hunt down the coupons and find decent deals, so you want to make sure you are balancing that time and effort with your outcome. You don't want to spend your life sitting in front of the computer or hunting through fliers to make sure you have EVERY possible offer out there, when you aren't likely to get any practical use out of those items.

 The second big expectation that I had going into this was that I was going to start saving loads of money tomorrow. And while you can start saving money tomorrow with the many printable coupons that are available, it's more likely that it will be several weeks before you can truly put your coupons to use. There are many online coupons sites, which I will list in another post, which will send you coupons for free. This is a great way to get coupons. You simply check off the ones you want, and they send them to your home. Unfortunately, this takes between 1-3 weeks I find, on average, before they arrive. So once you start doing this be prepared to sit around and wait for a while before you start saving money.

  I think it's very important to think about what you want to get out of couponing before you start. I personally was initially very disappointed that I wasn't going to get 600 jars of toothpicks for 1$. But once I re-evaluated my goals, I became much happier with what I was actually going to be able to save. Again, maybe on a 200$ grocery trip you only save 20 bucks, but hey, that's a free night out to the movies.