Coupon Basics

Whether you’re new to coupons or you’ve been using them all your life, it’s a good idea to skim over the basics. While there are a lot of variables, depending on the store you’re shopping at, these are the bare boned basics to using coupons.

(Please DO NOT copy this information and post elsewhere without my permission.)

Types of Coupons

Insert Coupons: Coupons from your local paper
Printable Coupons: Coupons that are released online for you to print from your home
Blinkies: Coupons from the “blinkie machine” at the grocery store. You can find them down many different isles, they dispense coupons and usually have a red blinking light on them
Tearpads: Coupons that are in the form of a pad where you can one tear one off the pad
Hangtags: Coupons that are hanging around the product itself, for example on a bottle of soda
Peelies: Coupons that are on the product itself, that can be peeled off
Catalinas: Coupons that print at the register when you’ve bought a certain product or spent a certain amount

How to read deals on MissTightwad.com

I try to keep the way I post deals pretty uniform to make it easier for you to read. Every once in a while, due to the way a sale or coupon is, I have to change it up, but for the most part this is an example of how to decipher the deals I post using a color coded example:

Miss Tightwad’s Potato Chips – $1.00
Use Coupons:
-$1/1 – Miss Tightwad’s Potato Chips (from xyz newspaper insert)
Final Price: $0.00

Name of item – $saleprice
$1 – the amount that will be deducted when you use this coupon
1 – the number of items this coupon is for (example: if this number was 2, you would have to buy 2 of them for the coupon to go through)
Miss Tightwad’s Potato Chips – Description of the item on the coupon
(from xyz newspaper insert) – where the coupon is from

These colors won’t be present when I’m actually posting a deal, I’m just trying to show you the different aspects and explain what each part is. Now many times there are several coupons available for an item. In that case, I would just list the coupons available to use. This way you can figure out which ones you have and use the one that gives you the best deal.

“Stacking” coupons

There are many stores that will allow you to “stack” coupons. For example, at a lot of stores you may use a manufacturer coupon AND a store coupon. Needless to say, you can get a much better deal this way.

*I will do my best to add to this as I think of things that should be mentioned, but if you have any questions or suggestions feel free to contact me!