Is there anyone who buys the newspaper for the coupons? I used to be an avid couponer, but found that I was spending more on the newspaper than I was saving with coupons. I have only ever purchased one Sunday paper at a time, but have heard of people buying more to get more coupons. Does this end up saving you money? It seems like if I was losing money on buying one newspaper then buying multiple newspapers would really be backwards for my saving. What are your thoughts?
Newspapers in the UK don't carry anywhere near as many coupons as those in the US. However, you sometims see papers opffering coupons for say, £5 off a £40 shop. If they're offering one for the supermarket I prefer then I'll often buy two papers and then split my shop into two lots of £40.
I have thought about doing that, but I never have. There's a website DontPayFull.com that you can find a bunch of items and print off a ton of coupons for free. The only thing is that they usually expire a month from the time you print them off and the food items change after you print them off. But it still really helps to get some money off when you go buy in bulk at grocery shopping time. I try to remember every time I go because we could really use the help with that. It may not seem like a lot sometimes but it all adds up! I've seen extreme couponing shows and sometimes I want to be like that haha.
Newspapers are good for news mostly. These days you can go online to the store's site per se walmart.com or walgreens.com and there you can find their weekly ads. CVS is champion for weekly ads and they're in every State I believe. Supermarkets like safeway.com have their weekly ads online. I've seen Ralph's supermarket online as well as 10dollarmall.com for clothes & accessories. For men clothes try JosABanks.com they always got sales. Coupons I found most stores don't like the printed from computers too. Safeway.com with card you can put on your safeway card automatically and at checkout it's taken out-great & easy. Check store about coupons they got picky about it. Good luck and happy savings!
I buy 2 Sunday papers if there are coupons inside. I do not have a subscription because there are about 10 weeks in the year when there are no coupons (holidays, mostly). In my town, the Sunday paper is $2. It used to be cheaper, which is annoying. Anyway, that's $4 a week on the paper for me. I have been tracking my grocery spending and saving, weekly, for 4 years now. I am currently AVERAGING $25 a week in coupon savings. This is ALL coupons, including printed coupons, store coupons, and newspaper coupons. I figure, it is currently worth the $4 for my 2 newspapers as long as my coupon savings eats that each week. Every once in a while when there is only one insert, I will actually flip through it to see if I will absolutely save $2 by buying that paper, and if I think I won't, I don't buy it.
One thing I really like is that one of the grocery stores in towns cuts out coupons for people and puts them in the front of the store. All you have to do is sort through and take what you want. The irony here is because that particular store doesn't have a lot of name brand products, so you can't really use the coupons there.
I usually use the coupons that come in the mail and that's about it. Like you said, buying a newspaper solely for the coupons ends up being more expensive in the long run.
I used to buy newspapers for the coupons, but the Sunday paper is now $2.00 around here and it is not worth it to purchase unless you get more than that in savings for items that you want to buy. We also get free circulars in the mail around here on Tuesdays and there are a lot of coupons in there and so I usually just scour through those now and avoid the expense of the Sunday papers unless there are articles and news feeds I want to read about anyway.
I found out from that extreme couponer show that a lot of them get their coupons from discarded newspaper bundles from other people, and they often get it from relatives or rummaging through trash. I think having that much or at least just a substantial amount of free papers is key to making the most use out of coupons, and if you have to pay for each then it might not be worth it. I have seen some of the people there only use papers they buy but I don't think it's applicable for everyone since some papers might have less coupons in them.
I have found that I can print coupons from online or download digital coupons through grocery stores' mobile apps that are comparable to or the same as most grocery coupons in the newspaper. For this reason, I do not buy the newspaper for coupons. We receive a free local shopper in the mail each week, which has some Smart Source coupons in it worth saving. For the most part though, I use digital coupons saved to my mobile account at each store, such as Mperks at Meijer and Kroger digital coupons. I like having the coupons digitally because it saves time.
I couldn't tell you the last time that I read a newspaper. In fact, I couldn't tell you the last time that I saw a coupon in a newspaper, because various members of my family still continue to read them. Usually I can see what they are reading, but I haven't seen one in a long time. I don't know of anyone who uses coupons from them anymore either. Most people can get them online and print them off to use in stores, and you can go looking for them on specific websites.
