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If you've ever thought couponing is so time-consuming and complicated, everybody's showing us the couponing deals, but no one's teaching us step-by-step how to do it, then you have 100% come to the right place. I'm going to teach you how to coupon in 2025. And let me stop you right there. This is not going to be the couponing that Grandma did or that they showed you on TLC Extreme Couponing. This is going to be really easy, super seamless couponing that you can do on your phone nine times out of 10 for curbside pickup, and no one's going to ever know that you're clipping a coupon. And you're going to save so much freaking money.
So let's start at the very beginning because it is usually a very good place to start. So what is couponing? Couponing is essentially using a manufacturer's offer to get an item for a discounted price. Now, usually traditionally, people are thinking of like the paper coupons that you got in the newspaper or the coupons that you sometimes get in the inserts that come in the mail. No, God, please, no. But over the past like five, seven, eight years, we have seen a surge in digital coupons, which are coupons that are found on manufacturers' apps and platforms that can be applied digitally to your transaction. Now, we'll go over like where to find them and what kind of coupons there are, but that's kind of like the basics. The basics of couponing is using a manufacturer's or sometimes a store's offer to get an item for a discounted price. There's nothing wrong with the item. The item is still just as usable, usable, and just as good. It's just going to be a way to get the item for a discounted price.
So the big overarching concept in couponing is something called stacking. You will hear a lot of couponers talk about stacking. So what is stacking? The ideal stacking situation looks something like this: A, you take a store's sale. So let's say, for example, Target is having a sale on Tide laundry detergent, and the detergent that is normally $12.99 is on sale for $10.99 this week only. That would be a store's sale. Then you're going to take B, a coupon. This can be a manufacturer's coupon or a store coupon, or both. And you're going to apply that to that item. So let's say, for example, if we had the $10.99 Tide, then we had a $3 Tide coupon. So that's going to be stacking a sale with a manufacturer's coupon. The third thing you're going to be looking for in that stack is going to be something called a store reward. So in Target's case, because we're going with that example, Target's running the "spend $50, get a $15 gift card" on household essentials. So you have your Tide laundry detergent that's on sale, you've got a coupon that stacks with it, and then you're going to be getting that $15 gift card back when you spend $50 on household essentials. The last piece that you have in the stack is a rebate. This can be a manufacturer's rebate, a rebate from a platform like Ibotta. You're going to be basically getting money back from this rebate platform on the purchase that you made. So again, going along the lines of the Tide example that we're talking about, you're going to have the $10.99 Tide with the $3 coupon, you're going to get the $15 gift card back for spending $50, and then maybe you submit to the P&G website for a $15 Visa gift card for spending $50. Now you have stacked four different offers to get your Tide, to get your P&G items for dirt cheap. That is the concept of couponing that we are going for, where we're stacking all of these offers together, utilizing every single discount and money-saving avenue that we have at our advantage and putting it towards these items that we're going to get anyways.
But now let's go ahead and break this down. Every single one of those pieces, I want to break and kind of talk about what those look like, what you can look for, and how you can utilize those to the best of your advantage. Again, this is going to vary from store to store. I'm going to go more in-depth in other videos about different stores and how you coupon at places like CVS and Target and Walgreens, Dollar General. I will do a deep dive into those stores, but this is just kind of an overarching explanation of how to coupon if you're looking to like dip your toes into couponing for the first time.
So let's talk about store sales. The first thing that I want to mention when it comes to store sales is they are always cyclical. What do I mean by that? Store sales happen at the same times, at the same frequency, every year, like clockwork. You are constantly going to be seeing the same sales from the same retailers over and over and over. The benefit of this is that we can plan for deals and plan to get things when they're at the cheapest sale price and stock up when we know we're going to have a sale on them. So like, for example, I know in July, right before we have the 4th of July, Target is always going to run a big promotion on their pop, their chips, and their pizza because that is a big, big money maker for them at that time, and they're looking to get a lot of people to buy product at their store when they're about to prep for big Fourth of July parties and stuff like that. Right around the holidays, when everybody's about to be baking, a lot of retailers are going to be putting on sales for things like flour, sugar, butter, all of those things. They're trying to get you to shop at their store. So that sale is going to be a cyclical sale that'll be happening at the same time. Now, you're also going to see store rewards sales happening at the same time. So think Target. They have their "spend $50, get a $15 gift card." That deal pops up for household essentials all the time. Another deal that they run all the time is going to be the diaper deal: "spend $100, get a $20 gift card." Sometimes it's a $30 gift card, but those are sales that happen and pop up very frequently that you can time and know that they're going to be coming up all the time. So you can kind of time your buying and time your spending to be in line with the store sales.
The second thing we want to talk about are coupons. So there are two main types of coupons. The first type is going to be a manufacturer's coupon. Now, you're going to want to look, if it's a paper coupon or if it's a digital coupon, for the word "manufacturer." It's going to always say "manufacturer's offer," "manufacturer's coupon," and that's going to let you know that it is not a store coupon, but a coupon being provided by the manufacturer through the store or through a paper version of the coupon. The reason that this coupon is so important to differentiate from a store coupon is that manufacturer's coupons are used as a form of payment. Now, what does that mean? Because the manufacturer is going to be reimbursing the retailer for the value of that coupon, the retailer takes that coupon and counts it as a form of payment at the register. I keep using this example, but it's a really great example. So let's say again, "spend $50, get a $15 gift card" at Target. It's important to know that your manufacturer's coupons count as a form of payment because you don't have to spend that full $50 at the register in order to get that $15 gift card. Because the $3 Tide coupon or the $4 Pampers coupon or whatever you're using, if it's a manufacturer's coupon, it's as if you were handing the cashier $3 or $4 in cash because they count that as money back from the manufacturer at the register as a form of payment. So you don't have to spend $50 out of pocket because you're spending money with your manufacturer's coupons. Hopefully, that makes sense. The more you do it, the more it'll make sense, I promise.
The second type of coupon that we have is a store coupon. And these are coupons that the store puts out themselves, that are only available at the store, and the store is responsible for reimbursing themselves. So these ones do not count as a form of payment. They essentially count as a discount. So that's going to be things like CVS. They have things called CRTs, which stand for cash register tape. Those are CVS store coupons, and they are not reimbursed by the manufacturer. They are simply put out by CVS to reward you for shopping. Target has Target Circle offers, which again, are just offers that are coupons available just for the store, sometimes just for you, and do not count as a form of payment. It's important, though, to differentiate between these two because nine times out of 10, you are able to stack a manufacturer's coupon with a store coupon because they are two different types of coupons. And because they are not both put out by the manufacturer or both put out by the store, they will layer together as double the savings. So another stack that we're adding to our already pretty big stack is going to be store coupons, manufacturer's coupons, stacking them together to get double the savings.
Now, the third thing that we talked about were store rewards. Now, these are going to be kind of tricky, and again, I will go into this more in detail when I talk about the stores individually. But this is a great spot to talk about a concept called "rolling." And if you've never heard anybody explain this to you, it's a concept that basically says you want to take rewards that you already have and use them in your next transaction to lower your out-of-pocket cost while still getting store rewards back. So we'll keep on the "spend $50, get a $15 gift card" Target example. So let's say you were going to do the "spend $50, get a $15 gift card" deal, and you had a $15 gift card already. You use your $15 gift card to lower your out-of-pocket cost, and then the register prompts you to get a $15 gift card right back. You are rolling that reward from one deal to the next to constantly be lowering your out-of-pocket and getting rewards back. This is a really popular concept at CVS where they have ExtraBucks rewards, where you can take and use all of your ExtraBucks to get your items for pretty much nothing and still earn your ExtraBucks right back. Now, I just want to caution you, there are some stores where this concept of rolling is really tricky, and one of those stores is Walgreens, and they have two different forms of rewards, and you can sometimes use your rewards and sometimes not. So just be mindful when you're going into different stores to roll your rewards. Always ask the cashier. Don't be afraid to say, "Hey, if I use this, will I get this back?" They nine times out of 10 are more than happy to help you figure it out. The concept of rolling is basically to get your lowest out-of-pocket cost humanly possible and still be recycling your rewards from one transaction to the next. The store rewards will differentiate, the deals will differentiate, the amounts will differentiate, but that concept of rolling is something universal to all stores that we shop at.
The last thing that we want to talk about in our stack are rebates. Now, there are so many rebate apps, and they are constantly coming up and going away. So this will constantly fluctuate, but I want to talk about the ones that have been around for a while, that are the most reputable, that you will see most frequently. The first one's going to be Ibotta. Ibotta has been around for years. It is one of the most trustworthy rebate apps and the easiest rebate app to use. Basically, what Ibotta does is you go through, you look at the stores, you look at the rebates that they're offering, you add the rebate into your rebate app section, submit a picture of your receipt, and then you are given credit back into your account. Once you hit $20 on Ibotta, you are able to cash out in the form of a gift card or directly back into your bank account. So it is one of the few rebate apps that allows you to cash back out into direct cash, which is another really big benefit because there are some rebate apps that do not give you cash back. They just give you gift cards or rewards. So Ibotta, probably the number one app that I can recommend if you are looking for a rebate app to start with.
The second rebate app that you're going to see most frequently is going to be Fetch Rewards. Fetch Rewards is really popular because of this: you do not have to go through and add each individual deal into your account in order to be rewarded. All you have to do with Fetch Rewards is go to the bottom, hit the plus button, take a picture of your receipt, and they will automatically search for all of the deals that are available and give you credit. The downside of Fetch Rewards is Fetch Rewards is one of the apps that does not give you direct cash back for using their rewards and rebates platform. You are going to be getting rewards points back, and then you can transfer those rewards points and turn them into gift cards. They do not offer any kind of like Visa or PayPal option. It is just going to be a straight transfer into gift card. Now, they do have some really great stores that they offer gift cards for, like Chipotle, Walmart, Target, Amazon. So you can turn them into really great rewards back, but again, it's not direct cash, which is one of the downsides of Fetch Rewards.
The third rebate that you're going to hear a lot about isn't an app, it is just a website, and that is going to be the pgoodeveryday.com website, where they have a rebate. Nine times out of 10, they will have this rebate. It's going to be on P&G products. It's basically when you spend $20 on P&G, you're going to get a $5 Visa gift card, or if you spend $50 on select P&G items, you're going to get a $15 Visa gift card. And these rebates are constantly popping up, and you're able to do them either once or twice per rebate. It'll go away, and then usually within a week or two, you'll have a new rebate that pops up. The reason that this one is so popular is because P&G items are constantly part of other gift card deals and store rewards promotions and have high-value coupons that are available digitally as well as rebates on Ibotta, Fetch, stuff like that. So it is a really popular rebate that we are constantly cycling through and stacking into all of our deals and promotions on P&G items like Tide, Pampers, Dawn, Downy, stuff like that.
The question that I get probably the most out of all other questions is, where the heck do I find coupons? So because there are so many different kinds of coupons, where you find them is going to kind of vary, but I want to go over kind of the easiest way to find them and where you are more than likely going to see them. So again, the first place that most people traditionally think of is in the newspaper. Now, I will say, I live in an area where the newspaper coupons are few and far between, and by that, I mean almost non-existent. So I don't have an area where you can get coupons in the newspaper as easily. You might have an area where you can. That's just a place to kind of look and see if you can find them, but again, that's not the place that I usually traditionally use coupons because they aren't available to me, but it is an option if you want to go back to the more traditional paper couponing route.
The other spot that people find them is going to be in the mailbox. So a lot of times, probably once or twice a month, you'll get an insert of some kind of like SmartSource or Red Plum. I don't know if that's still around anymore. That might be really old. What I don't know. I've been couponing for a really long time. You'll get some kind of insert in your mailbox. It's free, the mailman just puts it in there, and it will have kind of coupons in there for you to flip through. This I still do get in my area. So sometimes you'll see it, and you'll have like BOGO coupons or will have coupons on like medicine stuff like that, but it will just be a little booklet, kind of one or two coupons for you to flip through. It'll have an expiration date in the top corner, and it'll just be some coupons for you to cut out and use at the register.
The last place to find coupons is store apps, and that is my favorite spot of all to find coupons because it is so easy to grab them, put them on your account, use them at the register. There's no clipping involved. I don't have to think about, "Will it attach or not attach?" because nine times out of 10, you can see on the app itself that it's attaching into the item. It just has taken so much guesswork out of the concept of couponing and made it so easy for everyone to use. Now, where to find them on the app varies greatly. So I kind of just want to go over a few of the apps that you're going to see and where you can find them most easily. In those three apps that we're going to look at, I'm literally pulling up my phone so I can walk you through this here, and then I will go ahead and put it up on the screen so you can see it too.
So we're going to start with Target. If you're looking, kind of like at the main screen of Target, what you're going to do is where it says "Hi" and then your name, you'll click on that, and it will pull up an area where it says "Circle deals," and it'll kind of show you some new deals or deals that you can have on your own. You're going to go ahead and scroll down, keep scrolling down until you come to a page that looks a little bit like this, and it says "Shop Circle by category," and it'll be a bunch of different categories. You can click "Show All," and it'll show you all the categories where they have like baby, beauty, health, home, household supplies, stuff like that, and you can shop by category, which is my favorite way to do it. Or you can click "Show Deals," and it will show you literally every single coupon that Target has available. Again, this is a really great spot to just kind of bring your attention to the fact that there are Target Circle manufacturer's coupons and Target Circle Circle coupons. So you'll see different ones that say "Manufacturer Coupon" underneath, and then you'll see other ones that say "Auto-applied Target Circle Offer." The auto-applied Target Circle offers are, you guessed it, Target Circle store coupons, and the manufacturer's coupons are manufacturer's coupons. Again, you can stack both of those at Target and still be able to get both of them to apply on one item.
Moving on to the second most common store is going to be CVS. Now, this one's a little bit more complicated. Their app, I've got feelings about it. It is definitely not as user-friendly as some of the other apps, but again, we're kind of going through, I'm going to teach you so we can do it together. Basically, what you're going to do is you're going to be at the front. There's no mention of any coupons whatsoever. You're going to go down to the bottom right-hand corner where it says "Menu." You're going to click that, and then it will pop up another page. You'll see where it says "Savings and Memberships," and then under that, it says "Deals and Rewards." You'll click on that, and then it will go ahead and pop up all of the CVS. It's not really showing all of the CVS coupons that are available for you in their app. Again, it's a little clunky. There's really not a great way to sort this. You can either like search through it just by scrolling, or you can go up to the top, and there's a little like search bar area at the top where you can click if you're looking for a specific item. The other thing that you can do with CVS is search with a little barcode. If you'll see at the top, there's like a little barcode scanner here. You click that, and then, oh look, I can scan myself. Basically, you can scan stuff in store to see if there's a coupon that applies to it. It's the easiest way to search for things I found in CVS because the interface is just really hard to use otherwise.
The last place we're going to look at is Dollar General. This is another place that is really easy to find their coupons. They've made it really user-friendly. There is one problem about Dollar General that we will talk about, but we'll get there when we get there. Okay, so you're going to be on Dollar General. You'll see that there's two spots that you can go to get coupons because Dollar General really wants us to save money. So you'll look in the upper left-hand corner where it says "Coupons and Cash Back." You'll click on that, and then literally every single coupon pops up. You can sort. You can sort by category. You can sort by coupons or cash back deals. You can sort by food, baby, price, all of it. It is very user-friendly. The other place that you can go to if you don't want to go that way is going to be at the very bottom where it says "My DG Wallet," and then that will pop up all of the coupons that you have saved on your account. So you can see which coupons you have clipped, which ones you have added, the cash back offers that you have added. It's really easy to kind of go through and sort and see what do I have on my card already, what do I need to add. The one problem with Dollar General, be ye warned, once you have clipped a coupon, you cannot unclip a coupon. Once it's added to your account, it's there. And the problem with that is is Dollar General does not give you the benefit of the doubt with your coupons. If you have, say, a 50-cent coupon clipped and a $3 coupon clipped, you know which one Dollar General is going to take off first, right? The 50-cent coupon. The $3 coupon is not going to go off. The 50-cent one is. So be careful when you are clipping your coupons in Dollar General because once you clip them, they aren't unclipping until you use it or you lose it.
So that's the basics. I know it sounds like a lot for me to be like, "Oh, that's the basics." That's kind of the basics. As long as you can think of the concept of stacking, I want to take a sale, I want to take a coupon, and I want to take a store reward, and I want to put them all together and get the cheapest possible price that I can for my family. I want to leave you with this. My mom told me the thing that I remember all the time growing up that she told me was, "Life by the inch is a cinch. Life by the yard is hard." And I want to encourage you, if you are going into 2025 and you're wanting to save your family money and you're looking to figure out how you're going to do that, start with couponing and start small. Start with just clipping a coupon on the things that you need. Go to your favorite store, find the app, download it, and just scan the items that you're already going to grab in your cart and see what you can save. Next week, add in a rebate app. Look on Ibotta and see if there's anything there that you can use. The week after that, maybe you're going to get a free toothpaste deal at CVS, and you're going to try to get your toothpaste for free. Go slow. Take little bites because "life by the inch is a cinch. Life by the yard is hard." Do little deals at a time, and I promise you will eventually get it. This is an act of patience. It is an act of perseverance. This didn't happen overnight. I have this huge stockpile. I've been couponing for 17, 18 years, I think. So it takes time. But once you figure out the basics, and once you figure out how to do this for your family, you will never, ever, ever go back.
So that's it for now. That was Couponing 101, the basics of couponing in 2025. Like I said, things are changing constantly. It is constantly evolving. This was a different kind of couponing than I was doing five years ago. So I'm sure things will change throughout the year. But if you're going into 2025 and you want to know how, this is kind of the basics. Don't forget to like and subscribe. I will be teaching you how to coupon a bunch of different places like CVS, Target, Walgreens, Dollar General, all of it. I'm going to take you around, show you how to coupon, show you how to shop the deals. Let me show you what I got in 2025. You will not be disappointed.