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| Photo by Terrance Barksdale |
Concept: Earn money while spending it.
Couponing has been in vogue for a few years now, especially across the Atlantic. Indeed, the cradle of couponing may be located in the United States and Canada. There, some families do not hesitate to spend 4 or 5 hours a day looking for discount coupons in order to reduce their shopping budget as much as possible.
Couponing Obsession: A Real Money-Saving Trend
It must be said that brands have understood the real challenges of couponing, and in particular the fact that a brand issuing coupons will often be more attractive to consumers than brands that do not issue coupons, even if they are more expensive. In addition, many brands also offer coupons and other discount codes, either in magazines or on specialized websites.
So the search for these codes has become something of a job in itself, but also a way to cut down on bills and expenses and all this without depriving yourself. But even if the phenomenon has subsided somewhat in certain countries, some still practice the art of couponing to save money. Be careful, though; it takes a lot of time to get the coupons, but hey, if the time you put in allows you to earn money, why not?
Some Techniques for Successful Couponing
In the United States and Canada, some families get free shopping with the help of coupons! In other countries, such a result would be difficult to achieve, as the majority (if not all) of major retailers do not accept the accumulation of different coupons for the same product. Nevertheless, you can still significantly reduce the budget allocated to your purchases, as following the advice below can save you up to 50% of your budget.
Step 1: View Coupons and Discount Codes
If our Canadian friends have websites specifically dedicated to coupons (www.joinhoney.com) in other countries, it’s more difficult to get your hands on these pricey moles.
Still, to get it, we strongly invite you to consult promo code sites on the web, but also check out the sites of the different brands whose products you want to get because it’s uncommon for them to offer coupons. Not there. Again, you can also find coupons in print or on the back of receipts. Better yet, catalogs of coupons are given to you when you shop.
Finally, a little technique for getting coupons for free Don’t hesitate after purchasing a product to send a letter to consumer service (optionally omitting to stamp it) informing them that you are disappointed with the quality of the product and would like a refund. If you would only get a refund if the product was the subject of a “satisfied or refund” type offer, then the brand should respond by sending you some coupons for other products.
Step 2: Check out the coupons available and create your shopping list.
The day before you head to your store to do your traditional shopping, take stock of the coupons available to you and find a strategy to optimize their use. In fact, sometimes it would be better to take advantage of a reduction of $1 rather than a reduction of 50%.
From there, set up your shopping list by systematically adding the discounts you want on each product. This will allow you to quickly check at checkout whether or not all of your coupons have been taken into account.
Before validating your shopping list, make sure all your coupons are still valid, as brands are putting shorter and shorter validity periods on them.
Step 3: Make Your Purchase
Here again, it is methodology that will prevail. In addition, I strongly advise you to group all products subject to reduction together in your cart when they go to checkout.
When surveying the shelves, make sure that the discount coupons are very interesting financially; new commercial offers from brands sometimes make the discount coupons almost distasteful.
Ask for multiple receipts when you go to checkout; it can sometimes be useful to “complain” to get new coupons. For the rest, all you have to do is look at how much you’ve saved with your coupons. On average, you can expect to save between 15% and 25%, but coupon addicts sometimes manage to slash their budget by as much as 50%.
Also, if you have the desire but also the possibility to store, don’t forget that it can sometimes be interesting to buy larger lots with coupons. Thus, in Canada, a woman, in order to save money, did not hesitate to buy about 1000 rolls of toilet paper in order to make the most of these coupons. The economy is indeed there, but should we go that far? up to you…
