As the cashier rang up the fourth egg coupon, she said, “I never have the time to go through the paper and cut these out.” The woman bagging groceries said, “My daughter gives me coupons from her newspaper. I have no idea why she still gets it. Who gets the paper anymore?”

This lady . . . for now.

Unlike the years where I would run around to all the national drugstores each Sunday, I only get one paper now. In those years, I got many papers — based on what coupons I could expect in them. That worked for me then because I could pick up the Saturday paper for $1.50 and get all the coupons I needed for the next day’s sales. I frequently got a CVS coupon for 25% off any full-priced item, so that’s where I went to buy my papers — at 25% off. I wasted a lot of newsprint in those days.

Those $1.50 newspapers also had great coupons because it was a lower cost of living area, and coupon values vary by region. Now that I live in a suburb around a bustling metropolis, Sunday papers are $4.50 and the coupons aren’t as great. Instead of a coupon for $0.50 off of one item, I get coupons for $1 off of two items. That may not seem like a big deal, but when you shop at a grocery store that doubles coupons, it means that you get coupons that are worth less.

Coupons from the same weekend, in different regions: 

Nowadays, I subscribe to one Sunday paper, and I’m pretty stingy about that too. I got my first newspaper subscription for free with frequent flier miles, and extended it with a Living Social deal. Every week, I read the Sunday Coupon Preview. If it tells me that there are no inserts in the upcoming paper, I suspend paper delivery. I put it on vacation hold until the next week, and the paper credits me with one more week of delivery. The newspaper also delivers a weekly free advertising packet that included one or two coupon inserts. But they suspended it out of the blue one day, saying that I couldn’t get it if I also subscribed to the paper. That seems ridiculous, because it’s only encouraging me to cancel my newspaper subscription.

The other reason I’m considering cancelling my newspaper subscription is because I order most of my coupons from a coupon clipping service or print them from websites. So, I’m not sure that I get my money’s worth of coupons each week out of that paper anymore. If anything, flipping through those coupons alerts me to order them from The Coupon Clippers. Their coupons are usually the higher value coupons I used to see in my $1.50 Saturday paper. I order as many as I will use before the coupon expires.

For example, in my last order, I got:

• 20 coupons for Almond Breeze Almond Milk. $0.55 doubled is a great discount. We buy two per week and the coupon is good for 10 weeks, so we bought 20. I paid $0.10 for each coupon, so I save $1 on each carton.
• 10 coupons for Pepperidge Farm bread. It’s for $0.40 off of one loaf, and the coupon in my local paper was for $1 off of two loaves. I will gladly pay $0.16 for two coupons that will save me $0.44 more. We buy at least two loaves a week, and the coupon expires in five weeks. All together, 10 coupons means a $4.40 savings.
• 40 coupons for Land O Lakes eggs. At $0.35 off doubled, the hormone-free eggs rival the store brand eggs in price. The coupons are good for 10 weeks and we buy about 4 dozen eggs per week. (You must wonder about my cholesterol count, but we only eat the whites).  Each coupon costs $0.08, so we save $0.62 per carton. After 40 cartons, it adds up to $24.80.

There is a shipping fee of $0.44 or $0.88, depending on how big your order is. With 70 coupons to mail, I paid $0.88. After the shipping and the clipping costs, my last order alone will save me $48.32 on items I buy every week. Check out The Coupon Clippers‘ inventory to see if they have coupons for products that you already buy. You won’t even need your scissors.

Links to The Coupon Clippers are affiliate links. If you use those links, or my new snazzy sidebar link, you pay the same prices but your purchase benefits this little blog. Thank you!