~Maximize Your Loonie!~

How do you stretch your loonie to it's fullest potential? Think of those areas in your life that are the easiest in which to over spend. For most of us, it's on food and entertainment. You can use simple strategies to maximize how much you get from your money. First thing I will tackle today is by using coupons.

As discussed in yesterdays' post you want to collect every coupon you can, stock up on the ones you will use and not use them just because you have them.

The simplest way to maximize your loonie is by using coupons in conjunciton with sales at your local stores. Every week I go through the flyers and make a list of where I can shop for the best price on items I need with the coupons I have. Once you do this for a while you will learn that stores go through a cycle with products of when they go on sale. Once you learn this cylce you stock up.

How I do this efficiently is I have a pantry list of items that I keep in my purse notebook. These are items that either I am running low on or we use frequently enough that I could purchase extra if it were a good deal. I hardly ever run out of anything using this method because I always buy when it is on a good sale. Once I have enough of it I remove it from my list. One thing I stock up on is Tide. I use Tide to wash my clothes. Expensive some might argue, why not use no name brand. I could but I like Tide. So I maximize my loonie by waiting until Tide goes on sale and collecting coupons to use and then stocking up. By doing this I haven't paid over $2.99 for a 32 load jug of Tide in 6 months. I do the same with Bounce, and Downy.

Many people use a price book to track the prices at different stores during different seasons. I do this to a lesser extent, tracking the sale prices and location for key items I buy. After some time you will know the prices. A simple search on the internet will find you resources of information in regards to times of the year when items are on sale.

My next post will cover the organization of coupons. Check back for those details in a few days!