I am a coupon nut. Each Sunday, I purchase the newspaper and clip ALL of the coupons. I also occasionally purchase All You magazine at Wal-Mart because it has $30-$40 of good coupons in every issue. Another thing that I do is send off for a lot of free samples, and many of them send me coupons. This adds up to a LOT of coupons (and a lot of money saving!) Some are discarded into my "Can't Use" envelope, where I distribute them among friends and family. I save most and file them into my coupon caddy. I initially knew that I would have a lot of coupons to keep track of, so I came up with the idea of a coupon database. In Microsoft Works Database, I have created a document that has these headers: Brand, Terms of Coupon, Expiration Date, and Quantity (how many of each that I have). This takes a little bit of time each week to enter the new coupons, but it has saved me a ton of time when I am looking at sale ads and want to know if I have a corresponding coupon. Also, you can print out a copy of your database to take with you so that you can easily know in a store whether you have a coupon. Works for me!
