Newspapers and Stockpiling

I attended a great workshop today given by three women who attend my church. Their website is www.truecouponing.com. I suggest that you visit their website and subscribe to it. You will have the weekly updates emailed out to you if you do.

I am a bit overwhelmed with a few things, so I am going to write several different posts on couponing instead of one long post.

The first thing I want to talk about is a sales cycle. I knew before today that they existed, but now I know how they work. Things usually go on sale every 12 weeks. Meaning ketchup is going to be on sale every 12 weeks. Laundry detergent is going to be on sale every 12 weeks. Insert the product and it will be on sale about every 12 weeks. Your job is to think about the size of your family. How much laundry detergent do you need for 12 weeks? Well, I do about 8 loads of laundry a week myself. If a bottle of detergent does 40 loads, then I will go through a bottle in about 5 weeks. I usually over-estimate my needs. Let's say I go through a bottle a month. Well, that would mean that for a 12 week period, I would need at least 3 bottles of detergent. Everything needs to be bought in multiples of two (more on that later), so when it's on sale and i have the coupons I would need to purchase 4 bottles of detergent. So think about how many of an item your family would need to get through 12 weeks. Do you have a large family? Then you might need 10 or more of an item.

Understanding how much you need allows you to determine how many newspapers you need to purchase each Sunday. At the very least, you need to get 2 because everything needs to be bought in multiples of 2 to increase your savings. Personally for my family of three plus one dog, I subscribe to my newspaper and as of today have 4 papers delivered every Sunday. It is cheaper to subscribe to the paper and get a deal on Sundays only than it is to buy them from the gas station every Sunday. UNLESS, you know a street hawker that will give you a deal if you buy multiple papers from them. If you live in the Tampa area, please email me and I can help you get a deal on your subscription. If you do not live in the Tampa area, call your newspaper's bulk delivery department and see what kind of deal they will give you.

You have to rethink the way that you shop. You are going to build a stockpile of items when they are at the rock bottom price. You are going to begin moving away from the idea of going shopping and buying everything you need for a week or two. Instead, you're going to learn to shop for free from your own pantry.

The first thing you need to do before you continue is begin thinking about how much your family needs. Then call your newspaper or make friends with a street hawker and order your papers. Please remember that you will save FAR MORE than you spend on newspapers if you do this correctly.