Coupon Binder...

After spending a lot of time researching couponing and how to do it and save a lot and how to sort coupons and blah blah blah... I decided to make my own binder. I have seen sites where the bloggers offer to sell their binders for a fine tune of $40... i made my own for 20. Good for me!

It is best (I think) to get a binder with a zipper. I have had far too many things fall out of binders, and no way do I want to be searching the floors for missing coupons. So, I went and got this binder from Walmart.

In the front little zipper pocket I have sandwich baggies filled with misc. coupons. These are coupons for entertainment, eating out, and save X off X at the grocery store.

When you open the binder I put in paper. This makes it easy for me to make my list of what to buy at each store and how much I should pay for it. On my list I also include where in the binder (under which tab) my coupon is located. Once I get to the store and decide that I do need the coupon, I will be sticking them in the mesh zipper that you saw on the front of the binder. This will make it easier for me to hand them all to the cashier at once (and not make Tim shove them all in his pockets).

I bought these dividers because they are more sturdy than the paper ones. If you want to save more money though, I imagine you can use the paper ones just fine. 

I made labels on the computer and just taped them to the tabs on the divider. I used categories that made sense to me, but these can be adjusted based on personal preference.

My categories are:

baking, cereal, boxed/canned, cleaning/detergent, razor/mouth/soap/deodorant, drinks, dairy/frozen/meat, candy/snacks, pets/school, female/make-up, hair, first aid, misc, and medicine.

I combined some of the categories because of where I keep things in the house or how I associate them in my brain.

Under each tab I have the baseball card insert sheets (I believe I got 35 of them for $5, also at Walmart). I only put one specific coupon in each insert. Therefore, I can have 9 coupons per sheet. I don't like to put them front to back, but you can. I just thought it looked messy. If I have duplicates of the same coupon, obviously they go in the same insert.

On the left side of the binder, there is an accordion style folder. I am going to use these to keep coupon inserts. After I cut out the coupons of things that I will most likely use, I date the insert and keep it so that if I see a coupon match up on something I may not usually buy I can easily locate the coupon. A lot of times things can be gotten for free or under a dollar, so even if it isn't something we will use, it can be donated.

There is MY coupon binder... hopefully this will be a start to helping us add more to our "jar"...

This "jar" has been a savings method for us for years. We used it for 2 years to save up for our honeymoon. After that we used it to save for our anniversary trip, and now...

Our "jar" this year is for a fence, a bills game, and a FSU game... 

So we are couponing our way to those things and any time we add money to the "jar" there will be a post titled:

Couponing our way to a fence, bills game, and FSU... 

Deposit of _____

As of now we already saved $150 since coming back from Disney on June 7!


Edited in later post... this amount should say $100.