O.P.E.S. (Part 5): Briefing On Savings

Be staying organized, prepared, and efficient while shopping, you should see your weekly savings increase as you become more experienced using coupons and finding deals. I would also suggest, if you don't already, to keep track of the money you save. Seeing your savings written down and watching it add up every week is a great way to stay motivated to keep couponing. Financially, having your savings recorded will help you to stay on budget by seeing exactly where your money is going, allowing you to set higher savings goals for yourself when you become an experienced coupon user.

To help you keep track of your savings, I've added a new spreadsheet available to you entitled "Savings Made Easy." I did not create this sheet myself and do no take credit for it, however I wanted to share it with you as it's a wonderful tool. This spreadsheet allows you to keep track of how much you save on a monthly basis. It also includes a rebates tracker to help you to keep track of all the rebates you've submitted and received or are currently waiting on. Please feel free to download this as well if you feel you could benefit from it. You can find it located on my download page and is available in ods (Open Office) or xls (Excel) formats. 

O.P.E.S. (Part 4): Briefing On Efficiency

Being efficient is a great way to reduce daily stress, allowing you to achieve a high rate of productivity with less time spent doing a task. A great way to increase efficiency is to improve both improve organization and preparation techniques. If you have those two techniques down pat, being efficient will naturally fall into place.   As I like to say, "work smart, not hard." Today I will discuss a few more techniques I hope will help give ideas to increase your own efficiency.

1. Shop when the stores are less crowded. I love to shop on the weekday around 10am. This time at least for me, my No Frills is practically empty. This reduces the stress of fighting the crowds allowing for more concentration which will lead to more efficient and faster shopping. In addition, because they don't have a line up at their register, the cashiers are also less stressed and more willing to help. Making the chances of having any issues about a coupon or a price match decrease.

2. Take advantage of price matching. Almost every grocery store price matches against competitor ads. This allows you the coupon user a way to "have your cake and eat it too". In the end, this saves you both time and gas, allowing you to get all your deals at one store by using other store flyers to get the better deals. The only catch with price matching is usually a bit of hassle. However, as I've shared in my earlier posts please feel free to view my download page to download a price match data spreadsheet. Using the spreadsheet will take take the hassle out of price matching, allowing you to increase your savings, adding to the amount you already saved by using coupons. 

3. Spend less time searching on Google with these tips to produce faster results. Ever search for something only to end up an hour later with nothing but stress and still no results? These few pointers can be used to search for anything on Google more efficiently. But for todays examples they will be geared to finding coupons and shopping deals online.

Either/orGoogle normally searches for pages that contain all the words you type in the search box, but if you want pages that have one term or another (or both), use the OR operator -- or use the "|" symbol (pipe symbol) to save you [coupon | code | gillette]

Quotes
If you want to search for an exact phrase, use quotes. ["charmin printable coupon"] will only find that exact phrase. [charmin "printable coupon"] will find pages that contain the word charmin and the exact phrase "printable coupon."

Not
If you don't want a term or phrase, use the "-" symbol. [-expired coupon codes] will return pages that contain "coupon" and "codes" but that don't contain "expired."

Including

If you want to include all words in a search, use the "+" symbol. [coupons +codes +gillette] will return pages that contain  "coupon" "codes" and "gillette."

File types
If you just want to search for .PDF files, or Word documents, or Excel spreadsheets, for example, use the "filetype:" operator. For example I will search: ["coupon policy" filetype:pdf]. This will give me a result of every PDF file available that includes the phrase "coupon policy."

Site-specific
Use the "site:" operator to search only within a certain website. [site:smartcanucks.ca coupons] will search for the term "coupons" only within this site. The "site:" operator can also be used to search within a specific domain such as [site:.ca coupons] This will give me a result of all sites that end in .ca and also contain "coupons."

O.P.E.S. (Part 3): Briefing On Preparation

Preparation is also extremely important if you want to successfully save money shopping. A great way to begin is by writing a list of things you will need for the week and a budget of what you are looking to spend. It's also good idea to review your initial list asking yourself regrading each item whether this something you need right now or can it wait. A general rule of thumb to follow is to only buy non-necessity items when they are on sale and it's a great deal. By doing this you're not only saving yourself more money in the end you're also sharpening your skills at finding great deals in the future.    

Now it's time to begin racking up the savings by going through the store flyers and gathering all the coupons that pertain to the items you wish to purchase.  Unless an item is on sale for a great deal or a necessity that you just remembered you needed, try to make sure you don't add anything else to your list other than what's on the list already. This will simply add to your overall cost and decrease your savings defeating the purpose of saving money entirely. 

To help me with this, I've created a shopping list calculator on excel. It allows me to know exactly what I need to buy regarding the size and price of the items, preventing purchasing the wrong item. It also allows you to account for coupons by  automatically calculating the price based on the quantity minus the value of any coupons you use. It doesn't include taxes, but it's wonderful for when you're on a budget by letting you know exactly how much you're looking to spend/save. I just print it out when I'm done and it helps me stay on track in the store. 

Here's an sample of what it looks like below. If you would like to use this spreadsheet for your own use, visit my download page to download it in either ods (Open Office) or xls (Excel). For easy editing all you have to edit are the categories that are in green or black, the red categories will automatically adjust accordingly, be careful not to edit any cell under or in the red categories as this will cause the formula to not work.
                                (click image to enlarge)

If you're not already, I would highly recommend visiting smartcanucks.ca, It's an incredible site with extensive amounts of information regarding deals in canada, all the current grocery coupons available, current Canadian store flyers and lots more. It's all around a great site for anyone who wants to learn about couponing and saving money. You can also visit flyerland.ca to view flyers from stores across Canada. This way you could get one step ahead on planning your shopping trip before the actual flyers even reach your doorstep. There are many great sites you can use to have coupons sent to you for free as well. They are listed on the homepage, please feel free to visit them and sign up if you already haven't.  I would recommend collecting all the coupons on those sites, even the ones for products you normally don't buy, as you may be able to buy that product for extremely cheap or free during a sale, or use it in a trade. Either way you win! Keep a look out when you're shopping as well they're usually many coupons available either on pads near products, or on the products themselves, Remember the larger collection of coupons you have the more likely you will be prepared to start saving big! 

Many stores price-match as well. It's unfortunate however that many people are fearful of price-matching for reasons such as angry customers behind them being held up in line, or fumbling around when trying to find the item in the flyer, those alone are huge stress factors that unfortunately make people avoid that opportunity to save even more. Dreading price-matching myself I decided to switch the tables around to make sure I was fully prepared. The sheet I created as a result, takes the pain out of price matching and reduces time spent at the register. I took it for a field test yesterday at my local No Frills and it worked wonderfully. The cashier's who used it were extremely pleased, as I was making their job easier for them as well, and were impressed on how organized I was... all I did was hand them the sheet along with the related flyers and they breezed right through the process... I was done checking out much quicker than normal and didn't have an impatient line of customers waiting behind me! So for those who are uncomfortable with price-matching this sheet will take that once dreaded task and turn it into an extra money saver.

Please feel free to download this as well if you feel you could benefit from it, it's also located on my download page to download it in either ods (Open Office) or xls (Excel). Here's an example of what is looks like below.

Well that's all for today, I hope this helped give some of you some ideas on how to better prepare!  Always remember, the more prepared you are today, the more ready you'll be tomorrow.