It definitely makes a difference when you organize your coupons, so what is your best method for organization? I know a lady that keeps the return envelops that arrive with her bills (she pays online), and she uses those envelopes to keep certain coupons together for certain stores. She labels each one with the name of the store, and then separates coupons that she will use at a particular store. For example, one store allows double coupons, so she uses coupons there first, especially for higher priced items. Do you use a lot of coupons? Do you have a system?
I have collection of so many coupons including food coupon, discount movie and also for shopping coupons like cosmetic products, clothes, footwear and winter jacket. Actually these collection is divided between me and my sis. We are going for shopping by category wise coupon, so today we are going to use food coupon.
I make an excel sheet where I write them in. It's a little bit more of work, but I'm able to organize them quit simply. I made a cologne for date, name and what kind of coupon that it is, so I can easily have an overview of what coupons I have.
At one point, I bought a binder that zippered closed and used baseball card plastic protectors to separate my coupons. I saw the tip on a website, I think it was something like Coupon Diva or something like that (it was a long time ago). I wish I had kept up with it, the binder had pockets for a calculator and pens, room for my shopping list, and plenty of room for the coupons and inserts. It was a little pricy to start, but if I had kept up with actually getting the best out of couponing I think it would have been beneficial. My biggest problem isn't having the coupons, it's having the time to figure out the best way to use the coupons and actually keeping track of what I am and am not using when shopping. Most of my shopping trips end up being rushed, run in, grab what I need, run out, so I have never found success in it. Plus, I haven't figured out an efficient and effective way to clip coupons and get organized at home without it being a very time consuming process, so the cost-benefit ratio hasn't worked out for me. I'd love to be better at it because it would be beneficial to my budget for sure!
