I'm always looking to save money on the cost of food. Coupons are a great way to do this, but having them in an envelope or one of those small, velcro tabbed file systems was not working. First off an envelope is just to unorganized.. the small file systems leave it to you to either sit and wonder at the best categories to put on the tabs.. or to buy 2 sets to have a tab for each suggested label they give you. Now I'm sure many do perfectly well with these methods.. but it was not working for me. I had found the website for the Couponizer some time ago. While I liked the look of it... $20 for a coupon organizing system seemed a little pricey. I finally caved. My husband does not want to set a budget when it comes to food. So I told him fine, then we will start using coupons more and more.
Being me I found a coupon for $1.00 or $2.00 off the purchase of the Couponizer system.. with shipping the total price was $23.70. I did NOT tell hubby till it arrived. He thought I was nuts to spend that much to sort coupons to save money. I told him that my goal was to have it pay for itself in the first month and then anything else was a bonus.. my ultimate goal is to have one or more of those trips where I buy oodles of items.. and pay less then $10.00, lol.
Today was my first official day of using the Couponizer. 2 local stores had fabulous sales to begin with, and are close together, so we did both. Well I'm please to say that the Couponizer did very well. I planned my shopping with the circluars and used the enclosed shopping list with the ones with coupons checked off. Then had my potential use coupons neatly in the section for 'coupons for this shopping trip' I had a large stack of coupons and that did cost me time in sorting thru the stack to find the one I wanted, but was a learning curve. As I found the items and my coupons i placed them in the pocket for 'checkout' and headed to checkout. At the first store I saved $10.69 with the coupons. In the second store I saved $13.23 for a total of $23.92. Plus was able to find a coupon for $1.00 off for an item that the woman ahead of me had. While I hoped to have it pay in the first month.... my Couponizer paid for itself in the first day! I was very impressed. The checkout woman asked me about it in the first store and I gave her the website name www.thecouponizer.com to check it out for herself. (If you're reading this post please click on my affiliate link in the upper right hand side to get to the website.)
To give you an idea of my new shopping buddy I thought you'd enjoy some pictures:
the outside of the organizer on top and what you get with the system on the bottom.
one section of the coupon mat on top and the entire thing stretched out on the bottom. There are a lot of categories, lol.
These pictures show the pockets. On the top is the pocket for 'Coupons for this shopping trip' and 'Checkout'. Pretty self explanatory. On the bottom, when its time to put the coupons in the organizer sections, each section of the organizer has it's own corresponding pocket. Just take them off the sorter and put them in the correct pocket, quick and easy.
The picture on the top shows the additional categories other then groceries. There are sections for entertainment and travel, shops and retail, restaurants and a few others. I love having a pocket for rebates as I never keep my rebate forms where I can find them. On the bottom is the last pocket which has a nice list for tracking coupons and the savings.
The front and back have a nice sturdy piece of lightly frosted plastic to protect the book. A purchase well made in my eyes and experience.
