Back to Basics

We get  emails asking us  fairly basic and simple questions. So I thought I would put up a Back to Basics post every now and then, to help with the details of this new way of couponing. You can read this in its entirety on the top of our site under the link of Freebies 101

• Make a 2nd email account- You will find that as you sign up for free products or contests, that you will start to receive A LOT more spam. But you will also get more offers for coupons, and other use full info. I would HIGHLY recommend that you take a few minutes and set up a 2nd email account. Use a free email service, and use this as you enter in give aways, surveys and contest. This way you can have your personal email account free of all the extra mail.
• Don’t give out to much personal info- You will need to give them your name, address, phone and email. Many companies want a lot more info too, they want to know, birth dates, how many kids you have, and much more. They want this info to find out more about the people that are using their product. So if they ask how many kids I have I tell them, BUT if they ask their names, will use a different name. I don’t think anyone needs to know what my kids names are, just for a free bar of soap. When they ask for my birthday I always give them the the correct month and year but I change the “real” day. This helps protect my personal info. NEVER give out your credit card or SS# for a giveaway, unless you have done a lot of homework and know its legitimate. If they ask for your phone number, unless you actually want telemarketers calling, don’t give the correct number.

Readers question: “This is probably a dumb question but I am new to this! When you say the 5/17 red plum and 6/21 smart source etc, what is that?”

Answer: First this is a great question, we all have to start somewhere and the coupon lingo can be a little overwhelming at first. In the Sunday paper along with all the store ads you will find coupon inserts.  These are put out by different companies, the 3 most common inserts are the Red Plum, Smart Source and P&G(proctor and gamble).  Not all areas get all 3  inserts, for example most of Eastern Idaho does not get the Red Plum or P&G.  It appears that the Smart source seems to be available in most areas.  It can be a little tricky because the coupons I get in my Smart Source are sometimes different from the coupons another city will get in theirs.  Larger city’s tend to get more coupons or higher value coupons.

I am blessed that my local paper the Idaho Press Tribune gets all 3 inserts, plus they have an “A Thirfty Mom Paper Deal”  that allows you to get multiple Sunday papers for only .60 cents each delivered to you door.  Having multiple coupons has been the secret to my saving hundreds of dollars a month!

Some manufactures who allow you to print coupons off their site will use a Flash program. Or run a Java script. Don’t worry about trying to figure out what that all means. Just look for a drop down bar that comes down below your address bar on top of your page you are trying to print. Click on that bar and click on what ever it ask you to “allow”. It could be please allow ActiveX, or could be please allow Java script. If its on a site that is a major company you can “probably” trust it. If that still doesn’t work try installing the FREE java program:

Java by Sun microsystems

Trouble Printing Coupons? Here is a part of a larger post you can read on top of our site under the link Trouble Printing

First what we do at A Thrifty Mom is:
Copy the link address. The “www.bricks.coupons.com…..whatever”.
And then Switch browsers! There are really only 3 to worry about.

FireFox
Internet Explorer
Google Chrome – not used much, so usually it’s the top two.

Paste the code in the opposite browser and print away.

Second – what I think is the more complicated way.
Find the 2 letters and switch to a variety of other 2 letter combination’s.
A FireFox link:
hxxp://bricks.coupons.com/Start.asp?tqnm=ri5peuo65798407&bt=wg&o=74976&ci=3&c=GM&p=HyRwaQe
Do you see the “wg” in the code… it’s red. By changing that code to a “vi” or “wi” in Internet Explorer will fix the above issues.
You can swap these codes around till it works in the particular browser you are using. If you don’t want to do what we do.
Now if you are a MAC user, on Safari, you can also replace the “wi”, “vi” or “wg” with a “xs”. Or if you see a “xs” (rare) you can replace with the above 2 letter combo’s.

Well I think just having the other browser already installed is the easiest way, but it’s up to you to choose. Hope this helps.

We get  emails asking us  fairly basic and simple questions. So I thought I would put up a Back to Basics post every now and then, to help with the details of this new way of couponing. You can read this in its entirety on the top of our site under the link of COUPON 101.

• What coupons do you save? I clip and save almost every coupon. The only time I don’t save a coupon is if it’s something I would never use even if it was free. So I keep 99% of my coupons. On Sunday when the coupon inserts come out, I spent about an hour clipping them out of 5 different papers. I put them in stacks of similar products. Like all the shampoo goes in one pile, all the cracker coupons in another. By clipping them out of the paper you are able to get rid of a lot of the bulk. Who wants to keep 50 papers around their house. From here you need to organize them, I keep all my coupons in a coupon binder ( I plan to do a post on this next week)
• Why do I clip and save every coupon? I save every coupon because I never know what is going to come on sale. Or when I might find an item on clearance, and if I have all my coupons in a binder, with me. Then I am able to take advantage of both the coupon and the sale. Before I started my binder I can’t tell you how many times I would buy something that I had a coupon for at home but I just forgot to bring it. Or I didn’t plan to buy it that week, but when I got to the store it was one sale. So I missed a great way to save even more money.

Every now and then we get an email or two asking fairly basic and simple questions. So I thought I would put up a Back to Basics post every now and then to help with the details of this new way of couponing. You can read this in its entirety on the top of our site under the link of COUPON 101.

Where to find coupons:

Blinkies- These are the little black boxes with the red blinking light that spits out coupons. You can find these little units on the selves in some stores, like Albertsons and WalGreens to name a few. Go ahead and take a few and save them for your coupon stash. But only take a few, remember to play nice and leave some for the next coupon hunter.

Ask around- you would be surprised how many people just throw them away. I have 2 very sweet little old ladies that share their papers with me every week. My husbands work gets Sunday papers. And they just toss them come Monday morning. So he grabs the inserts for me. Once your friends, family, co-works and neighbors know you like coupons they are normally happy to help save them for you.