“Which deal do you wanna go for? Let’s do times.”
Couponing is quality time for Honolulu residents Angie and Phillip Soto-Balmores.
They spend 15- 20 hours a week preparing for their grocery shopping trips.
“If the name of the game is saving, then I guess couponing is the extra edge to always be like a winner,” said Philip Soto-Balmores.
Philip is a teacher and Angie is a full time college student.
They buy two to four Sunday newspapers a week, just for the coupons.
“It is the most awesome thing in the world to feel like its Christmas every single weekend,” said Angie Soto-Balmores.
“And then we also do internet printables, like facebook, a lot manufactures are on facebook and if you like their pages you can get coupons.”
The manufacturers tend to have a limit of two prints per computer. Angie and Philip have three computers, so they get up to six coupons printed.
“We subscribe to a lot of manufacturers so we get a lot of emails daily.”
The couple writes about their quest to save on their blog "all-couponed-out".
Philip and Angie also keep a mental “price book.”
“ A lot of people keep what you call a price book and that’s usually a list of items that you stock up on, like shampoo or deodorant. Depending on what time of the season and what type of sale is going on. For us, we kind of know whether or not that’s a good price.”
“Right now is the best time for food because of Thanksgiving, Christmas. It’s an awesome to soups, like Campbells have been a really good deal,” said Angie.
All the planning and hard work is paying off, Since January, they’ve saved more than $9,000 and they stopped counting back in September.
Laie resident and stay-at-home mom , Lindsey Pierce has been couponing for two years.
“Because I have four boys and I knew when they grew up they were gonna eat me out of house and home and so I know ok I really need to do something,” said Pierce.
Every Tuesday night she spends hours clipping. “I collect two, three inserts a week and then I also order them online,” said Pierce.
“I do order inserts from the mainland and that’s because those have a lot more coupons in them.”
Lindsey checks store ads to see what’s on sale. She says most stores have a 12 week sale cycle when it comes to sales.
“Using your coupons at the best time is when the items are on sale because then you know you are getting the best deal possible and they’ve marked down the price for you so get some savings on top of it,” said Lindsey.
“When you see something at a really good price buy enough for your family that you can only have to buy it that one time.”
Lindsey also gets coupons by subscribing to “All You” magazine. She says the magazine has a lot of good coupons not found in newspapers.
She started the website: myalohadeals.net to share deals she finds with Hawaii residents.
“It is a lot of hard work but the fun part and the rush for me is seeing I saved 60- 70 percent and I paid that little bit of amount but I got all this food.”
Coupon Keywords
Overage- when the discount of the coupon is more than the price of the item.
“If I wanted to go and buy Loreal visible lift product and says it was on clearance for 50 cents and if this coupon matches up to then product and since my coupon is two dollars I get $1.50 overage,” explained Angie.
You can use the “overage” towards another item you are buying.
Catalina- coupons you receive at the cashier that you can use on future purchases.
Rain Check- The store runs out of an item on sale. Some stores let you do a rain check and get the sale price later when the store is restocked on the item.
“You can go in say, ‘I would like to get this item for a later date and so for example Longs is really cool because they don’t have any expiration dates, so they just write in the specifics to that product and then you can go in at a later date and use the rain check. That’s like the best deal!” said Angie.
For Couponing tips it’s good to follow a blog.
Lindsey’s blog:
Angie’s blog:
http://allcouponedout.blogspot.com/
See the original article at: KHON2 Local News
