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Save Money By Stacking Coupons

October 20th, 2007 · 14 Comments

I’ve written previously how I have been stockpiling coupons from my newspaper and local stores. In the past few months I have saved a substantial amount of money by combining store sales and coupons with manufacturer coupons – this method is referred to as “stacking coupons”. I set up a fairly easy system to store the coupons so I can find them easily. Then using The Coupon Mom Site, I check weekly sale ads and match those items with store coupons and manufacturer coupons. My best successes so far have been at Target at Publix.

Here is a recent example. Ragu Old World Style Pasta Sauce was on sale at my local Target for $1.25 per jar. Target currently has coupons on the Super Target Website for 75 cents off one jar. There is also a manufacturer coupon that was in the newspaper a few weeks ago which is good for $1 off when you purchase 2 jars of Ragu. Since I needed to purchase 2 jars to use the manufacturer coupon, I’ve used those numbers in the following example. So, let’s crunch the numbers:

Sale Price of Ragu = $1.25 x 2 jars = $2.50
Target Coupons (2 at 75 cents each) = $0.75 x 2 jars = ($1.50)
Manufacturer Coupons = 1.00 x 2 jars = ($1.00)

Total cost for 2 jars of Ragu sauce = $0.00

You can print off as many Super Target coupons as you would like. Print them off at home or at the Target Store at the kiosk where you can print out gift registries. Since I have been purchasing 5 newspapers per week, I was able to replicate this deal 5 times. That means I have 10 jars of Ragu Pasta Sauce that cost me nothing. If you are wondering what I am going to do with those 10 jars of pasta, you might check a post I made quite a while ago for creative uses for pasta sauce.

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Tags: Coupon

14 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Melissa // Oct 22, 2007 at 4:06 pm

    What an awesome sale! I have been saving my Ragu coupons and with this Target offer you can’t beat this deal. Thanks so much for the heads up!

  • 2 The Simple Dollar » The Simple Dollar Morning Roundup: Cinnamon Rolls Edition // Oct 23, 2007 at 9:31 am

    [...] Save Money By Stacking Coupons There are lots of good tips tied up in this story – I’ve done similar things before and used it to stock my pantry. (@ not made of money) [...]

  • 3 Adam // Oct 23, 2007 at 11:10 am

    This may be a silly question, but are these coupons only good at SUPER Target, or can they be used at a “regular” Target? We are not close to a Super one (the closest is almost 2 hours away), but we frequent a regular store.

    Thanks for the good article! We are trying to do better about using coupons, so this really helps!

  • 4 Shayla // Oct 23, 2007 at 12:19 pm

    How does The Coupon Mom web site compare with The Grocery Game? http://www.thegrocerygame.com. I’m currently a Grocery Game subscriber but The Coupon Mom system looks very similar…and it’s FREE!

  • 5 Not Made Of Money // Oct 23, 2007 at 12:43 pm

    Adam: They are Super Target coupons (printed from the Super Target website) but I’ve never tried them at the regular Target store. If I didn’t have a Super Target nearby, I would just give them a try at my regular Target to see if they worked!

    Shayla: I prefer the Coupon Mom site. Based on the stores available in my area, the Coupon Mom provides the same information for free.

  • 6 MillionDollarJourney // Oct 23, 2007 at 3:26 pm

    Great post. Another tip, if you stop online @ staples, you can stack their online coupons. For example, if the coupons are for $10 off $100 and $15 off $150, providing that the total purchase is above $250, you can stack both coupons for a total of $25 off.

  • 7 Weekly Roundup #1 (Oct 27, 2007) - myinvestingblog.com // Oct 27, 2007 at 12:53 pm

    [...] Not Made of Money:  Save money by stacking coupons [...]

  • 8 Rebecca // Oct 30, 2007 at 11:10 am

    Cooking Accomplished! has been a great find for myself and several of my friends. The concept is simple; you go online, pick the entrees you want and the date you want to assemble them. The difference between Cooking Accomplished! and several other businesses like this in Portland, is quality! The owner is a trained chef. They have a commercial kitchen where all the ingredients are prepped by Shelley and her staff. Many of my friends, prior to joining me for meal assembly sessions at Cooking Accomplished!, admitted to serving and eating frozen or pre-cooked meals several times a week and to dining out two or three times a week. We decided since we are worried about nutritional value and using quality local ingredients we would research meal assembly as a solution to reducing time spent shopping and preparing dinners with the goal of eating healthier. The only assemble-your-own meal company that we found in Portland, that had great selections, high quality local ingredients and prepped all their food in-house is CookingAccomplished! in Lake Oswego. Since I started preparing meals at CookingAccomplished! I’ve also signed up for a couple of great cooking classes. My son attended a kids class as well and he can’t wait until the next one. Shelley has done a fantastic job of creating a quality experience!

  • 9 Kimberly // Nov 8, 2007 at 12:23 pm

    I understand the concept of Stacking Coupons, but my question is, don’t most stores only allow you to use one coupon per item? I thought the small print on most coupons say something to the effect of not to be combined with………etc. How do you get around that?

  • 10 Not Made Of Money // Nov 13, 2007 at 6:36 am

    Kimberly,

    Target and Publix allow me to use one manufacturer coupon along with one store coupon. Target store coupons can be found at the Super Target website. Publix usually has the Publix coupons in the sale flyers located at the entry to the store. You can stack these because they are different types of coupons. Even better is to find an item on sale and then also use a manufacturer coupon and store coupon to lower the price further.

  • 11 Judy // Nov 15, 2007 at 10:45 am

    Great shopper!! Keep up the good work, and thanks for passing along your helpful information. Thanks…

  • 12 Save Money By Stacking Coupons | Coupon Dude // Nov 26, 2007 at 12:45 pm

    [...] Read the rest of this entry. [...]

  • 13 bill // Dec 7, 2007 at 1:18 am

    The concept of stacking coupons is a great idea. Keep up the good work.Very nice blog also. Keep up the good work and thanks for the info.

  • 14 Dee Thompson // Jul 8, 2008 at 1:23 am

    I stick by centsible.net’s grocery flyer page for my coupons. Instead of looking through the newspapers for my coupons, I just go straight to the grocer I’m using, view their sales online in the flyer and print off coupons from the same site. This site doesn’t even require you to log in and they have most grocer’s listed. Its at http://www.centsible.net. They have another page on manufacturer’s coupons too at http://www.centsible.net/printable_coupons.shtml

    You might want to check that one out to to help with the stacking. Great finds. Thanks for sharing your info!

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