I started seriously clipping coupons - It took me quite a while to get myself organized - and a few weeks of buying the double edition of the Sunday paper to build up good stashes of coupons, but now I am really doing well.
I started in March, learned from a friend about a website she used to save grocery money, I couldn't remember the name of it so I googled "Grocery savings" and found 2 places to explore. The Grocery Game, and Sisters of Saving.
I joined the Grocery game for the free 4 week trial, but after the 4 weeks i saw it would be quite expensive to keep the membership up - it is 10.00 for the first store list, 5.00 for each additional - I like to shop at Albertsons, Krogers, Tom Thumb, CVS and Walgreens - (and Walmart for some things as well) SO if i had stayed on the Grocery game list, i would have spent 30 to 35.00 on the list every 8 weeks... That would sort of defeat my purpose of "SAVING" money. So I learned all i could in the 4 weeks I was a member, and now am trying to do this on my own.
I learned a little about Sisters of Saving also - they are only 10.00 a month to join, but again, my purpose is to SAVE money, not spend more. So I read what I could on the website, learned about the "binder" they use, and took the knowledge and made my own amazing coupon binder. Theirs sells for about 50.00 - Theirs includes inserts to sort your coupons, labels, a zipper binder, and a conversion table - and you can buy extra inserts for 7.99 --- to me this was a LOT of money to invest in saving money.
SO I decided to do it myself - I had here at the house, a nice Mead 5 Star Zipper binder,
I found some photo page refills at wal-mart on clearance, 1.24 a package of 10. They hold 4x6 photos which i at first was worried would be too large, but they work great. I bought 5 packages, I have filled about half or so I guess, maybe a little more, but I have room for additional category pages! 
After I got home with my cool pages, and had my neat zippered binder out, my wonderful 21 year old son came in, and said he had some things that might help me - so he brought me some plastic adhesive index tabs, some white reinforcement circles for the pages, and some adhesive labels to label individual pockets.
It took me a couple of hours to organize my Labels, and then add them to the pages, and get them in the order i wanted. Then it took me about 2 - 3 hours total to organize all the coupons I had been clipping for about 3 weeks and get them all in the binder.
Before I put together the binder, i was using legal sized white envelopes, rubber banded together--- NOT a pretty sight!Now it's amazing to shop with my coupons - I just flip to the right page with my handy index tabs, and scan the page for the correct pocket, grab out the bunch of coupons in that pocket and pull out the ones I want. I also keep a highlighter in my binder, and a magnifying glass (At the ripe old age of 45 my vision isn't great, and until I get better glasses i rely on the magnifying glass to help me read small print such as expiration dates!)
Last night I had my daughter help me go through the binder and pull out expired coupons or ones that would expire before I got to the store. Took us about half an hour to do that, and then I had to file about 2 weeks worth of coupons because I have not been grocery shopping in that long. And I always ALWAYS buy the Double Sunday edition of our local paper, It has 2 papers in it, and 2 sets of all the coupons. And after getting home and reading through the coupons and seeing if there is anything in the inserts that I might need more than 2 of, I sometimes buy another set of papers. (This is handy when there are really GOOD food coupons in the paper!)
So what is the point of all this --- savings - I will post a blog later about my first really great savings day with my coupons.
But you don't have to pay someone to get the info to save money - it takes time, dedication to the job, and you have to really be careful what you buy, just because you have a coupon, you have to watch the prices, some stores RAISE prices on stuff that they know coupons will be on. So when you get that double coupon, or even triple coupon, it might really be not such a good deal.
I save at LEAST 50% of my grocery bill each time I go. I shop for 2 weeks at a time, and I do go back between major shopping trips, if we run out of milk, or bread, or the sale that comes up between my 2 shopping trips has some REALLY good deals -
