Since I started teaching others about debt-free and frugal living, I get a lot of inquires asking for free coupons.
Since I started teaching others about debt-free and frugal living, I get a lot of inquires asking for free coupons.
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I do not provide free coupons myself, but I decided to write up a blog post to explain the many ways how to get free coupons by mail.
Once you know where to look, when, and how to request them, it’s really pretty easy. Plus there are great resources for printable coupons as well!
How to Get Free Coupons by Mail
Getting free coupons can be an exhilarating rush and there are so many ways to get them.
Many people try using coupons and give up, they become discouraged that coupons are not available for the foods or products they need.
There are definitely more coupons for junk food, but there are also so many companies that will give you free coupons just for doing simple tasks.
I thought I would teach you my favorite ways – how to get free coupons by mail. But first, if you love coupons you will also love meal planning and cooking with dump recipes.
I also wrote a book teaching busy moms how to coupon, you can find that on Amazon here.
How can I get free coupons online?
1.) Sign up for Kellogg’s Family Rewards
Print off Free Kellogg’s coupons every month! Okay, so this may not technically be by mail, but you can print or use digital coupons for your favorite Kellog’s brand products to earn points and redeem them for rewards. Not only do you save money while shopping, but you can receive gift cards for stores and restaurants, enter sweepstakes, sport Kellogs apparel, and gear, or donate to charity.
2.) Sign up for Vocalpoint
They love for you to share your thoughts through surveys, try exclusive products & offers, and provide feedback about your experience.
Many times they offer FREE coupons too. This is for women only, so get your wife to sign up if you are a man reading this.
3.) Email companies directly
If you love a company, email them directly through the contact form on their website. Give them a genuine compliment and ask them if they ever give out coupons for products. This works almost every time I call – give it a shot!
4.) Get printable coupons mailed to your home
Print free coupons from coupons.com which happens to be my favorite place to print online coupons.
5.) ‘Like’ your favorite brands on Facebook
At least once a week we see a company offering a FREE Sample or a FREE product coupon. These are typically mailed to you.
6.) Sign up for Birthday Freebies
Many companies mail out FREE product coupons around your birthday. You can see a full list of which companies do this in my HUGE Birthday Freebies list.
BONUS TIP:
Sign up for newsletters from companies that you like. They send out emails with free samples (which usually include coupons) and also printable coupons. Request as many free samples as you can as well!
What is the best free coupon app?
Here are 5 of my favorite free coupon apps, they are totally free and easy to use!
How do extreme couponers get free stuff?
Extreme couponers get their coupons from a number of different sources, from coupon apps to websites, newspaper inserts, stores, and many other places. While they do get those high-value coupons, they also get regular coupons. They just know how to combine them effectively to maximize their savings.
Start here and then work your way through your cupboards and see what foods you love! I did this when I first started eating gluten-free. It helped me find the foods that I loved and the ones I didn’t.
When I updated this post, I did want to respond to a lot of the comments where my readers shared concerns about the difficulty of getting free coupons by mail. They said they didn’t have printers or were tech-challenged to work their smartphones or many companies were stopping mail coupons in favor of printable or digital coupons now. Some of my great audience did respond that surveys or coupons helped them to get an inexpensive printer within a couple of weeks, and the printer has more than paid for itself! What a great suggestion!
Another idea I thought was helpful was a coupon swap with friends. If there are things you see coupons for but don’t use, consider exchanging them with friends. I can’t eat gluten foods, so if I see coupons for things like traditional pasta, I can give those to friends in exchange for their gluten-free brand ones.
While I can’t provide you with free coupons, I would love to know in the comments your favorite ways to receive FREE coupons in your mailbox.
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If you use coupons, you know that when you reach the check out counter, you hand the cashier your coupon(s). The cashier scans them and puts them into the cash drawer. What happens next depends on the store, but here's a typical process. At the end of the day the coupons in each cash drawer are added up as if they were cash, and that amount is added to the cash sum to be sure the overall total for the drawer is accurate. Then all of the manufacturers' coupons (and any coupons issued by the grocer) are sent in plastic bags or pouches to the store's corporate headquarters, typically once a week.
In the big store chains, the value of the coupons can easily total several million dollars per week. There is a person in headquarters in charge of processing the coupons. That person boxes all of the bags of coupons (still separated by the individual stores from which they came) and ships them to a third-party clearinghouse.
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This is where the real work starts. The clearinghouse has to sort through millions of coupons, largely by hand. The first goal is to separate the coupons by manufacturer. Another goal is to separate coupons with scannable UPC codes from damaged (torn, smudged, etc.) coupons. This is so much hand work that some clearinghouses pay other clearinghouses -- in Mexico, for example -- to do part of the work. One system places scannable coupons face up on a conveyor belt, where they are moved along under a scanner that reads the UPC codes and tallies the amounts, then adds up the total value of each manufacturers' coupons. Damaged coupons that can't be scanned have to be sorted by hand and added up separately. The other system is to do the whole thing by hand. The clearinghouse then sends all the sorted coupons with an invoice to the manufacturer.
Several things can happen here. The manufacturer might reimburse the clearinghouse for the amount of the invoice, and the clearinghouse will send a check to the store for the amount of the coupons. Or the manufacturer will send a check directly to the store and the store then pays the clearinghouse. The clearinghouse is paid a certain amount per coupon by the store, plus shipping and handling. The whole cycle takes about a month. In many cases, the manufacturer will recount the coupons to avoid fraud -- a process that may send the coupons through another clearinghouse!
This is another great example of how a simple idea -- "let's give people a little scrap of paper that they can redeem for 25 cents off a can of beans" -- turns into a whole lot of work for somebody!
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