Bringing home the bacon is a common saying used when people are describing who brings home the money in the family or when a person is successful, but to a coupon shopper, bringing home the bacon can be much more than a figure of speech. My family was first introduced to coupon shopping a few years ago by a friend who was part of a coupon deal website and the name of website was rebateszone. To show us how much coupons can save you at the grocery store, she gave us a coupon for bacon and told my mom to use it at the store. My mom took the bacon to the register and gave them her coupon, when the cashier went to tell her how much she owed, they were both shocked to find out that the cashier actually owed her money! My mom left the store that day with a package of bacon and two cents in her pocket! The fact that my mom “Brought Home the Bacon” that day, got my family hooked on coupons ever since. Coupon shopping can take a lot of work, but it is rewarding in the end.
To get discounts by using coupons, the first step is to locate the coupons. The Sunday newspaper has multiple ads in it every weekend that contain coupons. Some extreme coupons shoppers buy multiple newspapers every week so that they can get more coupons from every paper. At one point, my family got six newspapers every Sunday. The internet is also a good source for finding coupons. There are many coupon websites that will tell you exactly what products each store has on sale and where you can find the coupon for those products. Some websites even tell you how much the product will cost or if it will be free! It helps to organize the coupons in from the newspaper and internet so that they are easy to find when you need them. When organizing the coupons, it helps to organize them by the store you are going to use them at and when they expire.
When shopping at the store, it is important to remember that multiple coupons cannot be used on the same product. Because of this, it is important to make sure to use the coupons that will get you the best deal. It is also important to know that some coupons have limits on the amount of product you can buy. For example, the coupon that allowed my mom to get free bacon had a limit of two packages. So with one coupon, my mom could only get two packages of bacon. Another thing to remember about the grocery stores is that some coupons can be doubled and tripled. If a 50 cent coupon is doubled, it becomes a dollar coupon. It is rare that a coupon will become tripled, but some grocery stores assign special weeks where they triple every coupon that is used.
Shopping with coupons can be time consuming, but it is all worth it for the amount of money that can be saved in the end. I have grown up watching my parents prepare for every grocery store trip by cutting out coupons and searching ads for the best deals. I have seen bills that are 100 dollars before they use their coupons that are reduced down to ten once the coupons are added. It is shopping trips like these that make coupon shopping all worth it, and make me want to take what I have learned from my family into my own life to make sure I am getting the best deals I can. My goal is to pass on my knowledge about coupons to others so that they too can say they “Brought Home the Bacon” just like my family did.
