I can remember way back, all the way to 2007, when couponing was waiting for the Sunday paper to arrive and clipping the coupons I knew my family would use out of each insert. I would go through my grocery list, hoping some of the things I was purchasing would also be an item that I had a coupon clipped for and head to my local grocery store. After shopping, I would check out my savings and be thrilled when I would save $10-$15 each trip. Our weekly grocery budget was $100, and that was being frugal and optimistic. It was a part of our budget I had worked on shrinking but knew that it was a long shot having a 1 year old and growing famiy. That was 2007..

Now, in 2010, I now do a new type of shopping with coupons called “strategic” couponing. Strategic couponing is when you use coupons on top of sale prices to save more money. Couponing has come a long way since I first started in 2007. More and more companies are coming into the world of online coupons utilizing resources such as Coupons.com and Facebook to put out high value coupons that you can print online and use in stores. People have learned the tricks of couponing, like waiting until an item goes on sale to use the coupon and buy multiples of the same item (called stockpiling) to save the maximum amount of money on an item. Each of these are a big part of strategic couponing.

Some strategic couponers have learned how to do this so well that they have built their own websites, such as my own at www.EasternShoreMom.com, where we do “matchups” or maps to the sale ads to make your shopping with coupons easier. Matchups include each sale item, the coupons available for those items, where to find the coupons, then how much the item will be out of pocket. Why are matchups a big deal? Because now couponers don’t have to do the work of finding the coupons for the items they want, the work is done for them. You can simply type in any search engine your favorite store then the word “matchup” and it will most likely bring up multiple deal blogs that specialize in mapping out the sales ads for that store.

Back in 2007 I was thrilled with my $10-$15 worth of savings each week and unable to shrink my grocery budget any more than that. Now, with my strategic couponing skills under my belt, I spend about $30 a week on groceries and save closer to $80 each time I shop. The effort I put into couponing is the same I did three years ago, however I am shopping smart and stockpiling when a sale rolls around which is maximizing how much I am saving on each item. Our grocery budget is the last of my worries and we have been able to put more than I ever believed into savings just by cutting that one cost, while cutting my coupons.