Land of Double Coupons

Do you live in the Land of Doubles aka Land of Double Coupons? This is an area where stores double your coupons, usually up to $1. The Coupon Whisperer used to live in the Land of Doubles when he was in Los Angeles. Back then, most of the big supermarkets doubled the coupons up to $2. There was even one supermarket that would TRIPLE the coupons twice a year. No problem at all buying like $400 worth of groceries for only about 50 bucks. And this was before the Internet was around to offer an easy guide for strategic couponing.

Since that time it seems like the doubling of coupons has been restricted to only a maximum of $1 but there are still a lot of places that continue doubling coupons. One downside for me was that doubling coupons got me lazy. When I moved to Florida, I was quickly bummed out by the fact that this state doesn't have any stores that would double coupons. As a result, I lazed off on my couponing because I thought there was now no point to it since the doubling factor was removed. Little did I realize that there are MANY other highly effective coupon strategies out there. In fact, I prefer that Florida is the Land of True BOGO where we can buy BOTH items free during a BOGO sale when we have BOGO coupons for that item. It seems that areas within the Land of Doubles are not also Lands of True BOGO.

So check to see if your state falls within the realm of the Land of Doubles. For example, I know that most of the state of Georgia doubles coupons. Even here in Florida, K-Mart sometimes allows coupon doubling but they put so many caveats and restrictions on it that it seems like you need to consult a lawyer first before doubling your coupons.

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One final note: the next two weeks look to be INCREDIBLE for working the WAGS Register Rewards deals. Investigate the coupon forums and find out the details for yourselves.

Happy Couponing!

How to Convert 54 Cents to 10 Dollars Via Coupon Magic

What if I were to offer you $10 for every 54 cents you give me. Even better, to sweeten the deal for you, I would kick in 30 bucks worth of stuff for FREE. Sounds like a fantasy. Too good to be true, right? Well, guess again because that is EXACTLY what I did today many times over.

Had you been taking the advice of The Coupon Whisperer and been monitoring the Coupon forums, you would have known over a week ago about the big buzz surrounding the Walgreens Maalox deal. Here is how it works:

For every 30 dollars worth of Maalox you buy, you get $10 in Register Rewards. No need to shell out any where near $30 because in the January 9 SmartSource newspaper insert there was a coupon for $5.00 off any Maalox product. To make things even better the 12 oz Maalox Extra Strength bottles were discounted 25% starting today. Depending on which Walgreens you were at, that would make the price either $5.24 or $5.09. I, of course, chose chose the Walgreens stores where the $5.09 price reigned. Therefore, when I bought 6 bottles this brought the price to $30.54 which put it over that $30 needed to qualify for the $10 RRs. Then after applying the 6 five dollar coupons, the price OOP was only 54 cents thus earning me the 10 bucks plus getting 30 bucks worth of FREE stuff.

So what will I do with all that RR money I earned today? Plenty. One thing out of many is to simply apply the RRs to 4 Red Baron's pizzas since there is a WAGS coupon for 2 pizzas for $5 (limit 4). So dividing each pizza by the 54 cents it took to earn the $10 RRs, that comes to just under 14 cents per pizza. Not a bad deal.

And now I have Good News, Bad News for you. The Good News is that this deal is good until next Saturday. The Bad News is that the SMART people have already pretty much cleaned out the shelves of that Maalox today. To make things even worse, towards the end of the day, the Maalox coupons started beeping. The WAGS registers wouldn't accept them. Why? Most likely because someone in corporate HQ decided too many coupons were being used to score TONS of RRs. Actually this is pretty stupid on their part if this is what happened since those Maalox coupons are the same as money to them. Exactly what caused the beeping is still a mystery but I just gave my theory.

Anyway, it still worked out pretty well for me since I got an early AM start and had used up most of my Maalox coupons by the time the beeping set in.

So it looks like perhaps another good deal is Gone With The Wind but not to worry. I see another spectacular deal on the horizon. Better not talk about it since the WAGS HQ might nix that one as well.

So happy couponing everybody. And just remember, when one good deal is done, there is always another great deal just around the corner.

My FREE Thanksgiving Dinner

A few days ago I was in the checkout line when I recognized the cashier. She was the same young woman from whom I bought a FREE 24 pound turkey the weekend before Thanksgiving. I remembered that her eyebrows jumped up a bit when the total price of my turkey rang up at only about 40 cents or something in that neighborhood (I like to owe a few cents so I don't feel completely guilty). Anyway, I mentioned to her that I bought my turkey from her prior to Thanksgiving but she didn't remember it. No wonder. Thousands of customers buying food from her and she is going to remember me, even though I did buy my turkey virtually for FREE.

Anyway, I thought back to those shopping days leading into Thanksgiving and recalled how my theme for that holiday was FREE. I had resolved that everything I would buy would be FREE. And it worked out even better than I planned due to couponing Not only did I get FREE turkey but also FREE stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, pumpkin pie, and other trimmings. I even got a case of Key West Beer for FREE (okay, really a couple of bucks due to tax).

So how did it work out BETTER than I planned? Because on the morning of Thanksgiving Day, I went to Walgreens for a little over an hour and worked a few deals that gave me almost a hundred bucks in Register Rewards. I then used those Register Rewards to buy toys for my two nephews and niece who were coming later that day. That was something I hadn't planned on.

Exactly how did I get my complete Thanksgiving dinner for FREE? I honestly can't remember. I racked my brain but still couldn't recall exactly how I did it. At first I was irked by my lack of recall but later I was happy about it. Why? Because there are so many creative ways to use coupons that I couldn't remember which scenario I used.

However, I can tell you just one of many ways to get free stuff at the supermarket: save the coupons that knock dollars off the final price of your bill. For example, yesterday I was in Winn Dixie and noticed 3 coupons in the waste basket that gave you $5 off a total bill of $35. So how does that get you to the sacred state of FREE? Simple. That $35 is for the total sale before coupons so if you have coupons that make the items totaling $35 FREE then you get to toss in a $5 item of your choice and you get that FREE due to the $5 off $35 coupon.

Of course, that is not the only way to get free stuff. Today I picked up a large DiGiorno pizza, 2 large cans of Arizona tea, and a loaf of bread for FREE using a $10 Walgreens Register Rewards and a WAGS coupon for the Arizona tea.

Each day is a new adventure in the Land of FREE for the Coupon Whisperer. Yesterday, my adventure was getting a FREE 2 month supply of coffee.

What I am telling everybody is that there are MANY ways to attain the golden state of FREE. Oh, and did I tell you that I got my Compaq Presario laptop computer less than a year ago for FREE via coupons?

Ping Pong Couponing

Ping Pong.

I have fond memories of that sport since we had a ping pong table in our enclosed patio when I was a kid. Other kids from around the neighborhood would gather and play and the early evenings after supper were punctuated by the sound of the paddles smacking the ping pong balls. However, all was not sweetness and light. I still remember when the kid we called The Monk, who had what we would now call Anger Management problems, would often turn bright red with rage when he narrowly lost and would frequently smash open the ping pong balls with his paddle. Once he even tossed a ping pong ball into his mouth and began angrily chewing on it.

Ping Pong even featured in diplomacy since Red China first opened itself up to the USA by inviting the American Ping Pong team into that sealed nation. At the time legend had it that Senators Spong and Fong sponsored a bill to recognize this diplomatic effort by the mass ringing of church to mark the arrival of the American Ping Pong team in Hong Kong following its tour of China. Supposedly it was called the Spong-Fong Hong Kong Ping Pong Ding Dong Bell Bill.

Yes...I know, I know. By now you are angrily screaming "Enough with this Ping Pong shtick! Teach me how to save a bundle of money via Ping Pong couponing. Well here goes...

Today was a perfect example. All you needed for Ping Ponging entry to a veritable mountain of FREE riches in great Walgreens stuff was just 4 bucks. And that was the $4 you paid for 4 boxes of Sinex Nyquil (and Dayquil) on sale for $5 each. Then you apply four $4 Sinex coupons to each box and your net cost is that $4 entry fee I told you about. Okay, great. For just four bucks you get 4 Sinex Nyquil/Dayquil boxes worth 20 bucks but what has that got to do with Ping Pong Couponing? Well, notice that I mentioned that the total was worth $20. As it turns out, this month Walgreens is giving customers $10 in Register Rewards for every $20 of Vicks products purchased. Note that you don't actually need to shell out 20 bucks. That is the original value which you have just discounted down to $4 that you pay Out Of Pocket (OOP).

That $10 in Register Rewards represents the "PING" in this round. To get the amazing Pong return, just apply that $10 Register Rewards to a 20 oz bottle of Joint Juice selling, coincidentally, for $10 which means you pay NOTHING. Best of all, there is a return "PONG" serve of $10 Register Rewards generated by that bottle of Joint Juice for which you paid NOTHING OOP since you used the "PING" Register Rewards generated by the Sinex boxes.

Now we come to the truly amazing part of this particular couponing Ping Pong game. When you use the "PONG" register rewards to pay for another 4 boxes of Sinex (on which you will use 4 more Sinex coupons worth $4 each) you will have SIX dollars left over. What to do? What to do? Hey, I'll tell you what to do. You will add a Gillette Power Pro-Glide Fusion Razor. It is on sale for $9.99 and after you apply the $6 still left on your Register Rewards (be sure to add a small filler) you have gotten not only 4 boxes of Sinex Nyquil (and/or Dayquil) which will generate yet another $10 in register rewards but also that razor. But wait...THERE'S MORE.!!!

That FREE Gillette Razor which you will also be getting in that "PING" transaction generates another $5 in Register Rewards so the return ball is even more powerful since it is now worth $15 total in Register Rewards. Now all you have to do is go back and forth in this transaction. Each round of PING PONG couponing will generate $25 of Register Rewards. Twenty dollars you use to buy the Vicks boxes, Gillette razors, and Joint Juice and $5 more generated from the Gillette razor in Register Rewards to use any way you want. After just five back and forth rounds you get $200 worth of stuff almost free (just pay sales tax and for fillers) PLUS you will have $25 worth of extra Register Rewards with which to splurge on whatever you want at Walgreens.

My last round of Ping Pong Couponing today was quite fun. There were two registers I could have gone to for checkout. One register had a Darth Vader type of guy. Nix on that. The other register had an absolutely humorless cashier. Perfect! Why? Because I knew that after dealing with me she would always do her utmost to get me the hell out of there as fast as possible. Here is what happened:

I got to the cashier and began dancing in place and singing something like "I'm doing the Walgreens shuffle! One-Two! Ping-Pong!"

By then the humorless cashier was rolling her eyes and informed me that because I handed her a register rewards for the Joint Juice, I wouldn't be getting any Register Rewards which I knew to be incorrect so I continued dancing and singing:

"The Coupon Whisperer is correct 99.7% of the time. My infallibility is almost total!"

So I am sort of dance hopping in place when the Catalina machine mocked the humorless cashier by spitting out a $10 Register Rewards. The Coupon Whisperer made it worse for the cashier by dancing in place in an even more exaggerated manner and pumping his arms in victory:

"Yes! Yes! Yes! BOOM-SHAKA-LAKA...BOOM SHAKA-LAKA..BOOM! And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, the grand finale of the Walgreens two-step!"

I handed the FOUR boxes of Sinex AND the Gillette Power Pro-Glide Fusion Razor along with a small filler to the humorless cashier who by now seemed to want nothing more than to escape from whatever planet The Coupon Whisperer was on.

"Bring it on! Bring it on! Bring it on to The Coupon Whisperer!" I sang as she rang up my items along with the coupons and the $10 Register Rewards generated by the Joint Juice. I stopped dancing and squatted down to eye level while talking directly to the Catalina machine:

"Bring it home to PAPA! Bring it home to PAPA!"

Suddenly the Catalina machine began furiously spitting out the $10 generated Register Rewards by the Vicks followed by another $5 generated by the Gillette Razor.

"Yeah, baby! Oh YEAH! Oooooh that felt sooooo good! Was it good for you? It was good for me!"

The humorless cashier couldn't take it any longer. She split the scene leaving a few people waiting for another cashier. But you know what? If I ever get that humorless cashier again, there is no doubt that she will do everything in her power to get me checked out quickly. And, okay, I have to admit that it was fun to tweak her. Hey, you gotta have FUn when you're out couponing.

I hope this has been instructive in getting you on the road to Ping Pong Couponing. I also scored 2 packs of FREE Wild Lox Salmon, a couple of bags of FREE Lenders bagels (or "bah-glez" as my wife pronounces it), and salmon spread cream cheese (also FREE). However that was via another method than Ping Pong Couponing known as "MM" but that is a subject for a future lesson, boys and girls.

Free/Cheap Pizza

Ah, pizza! Who could possibly not love it? In fact, pizza is probably the most loved treat in the world. And the amazing thing is that most pizza is easily available at a price you can afford: cheap or, better yet, FREE!!!

However, as popular as pizza is today, it was a relatively recent development in the history of food. In fact, the basic recipe for pizza is entirely accidental. Although what I would call pizza precursors, flat bread covered with olive oil and seasonings, have been around for over three thousand years the basic elements of the pizza were entirely unavailable until fairly recently. The Coupon Whisperer should know since he wrote a TREATISE on the subject back in his Write4Cash (aka MakeAnEasyBuck) days. So be sure to take notes boys and girls because not only the amazing history of pizza but how to get it Free/Cheap via couponing WILL be appearing in your Blue Book exam.

The mozzarella element of pizza had to wait until after the 7th century AD when water buffaloes were imported into Italian peninsula. It still took many centuries, until the 17th century, when the mozzarella cheese from those water buffaloes was made and became popular.

Tomatoes were even more problematic. They had to wait until Columbus discovered them in the New World. And even after that it took several more centuries until Italians even began eating them because they thought tomatoes were poisonous. Were the Italians that stupid? Hey, no stupider than the Pilgrims who considered lobsters to be inedible and tossed their carcasses into the ground to be used as fertilizer.

And now we come to the accidental, yet wonderful birth of the modern pizza. Gluttons the world over must memorialize that great day in 1889 when Raffaele Esposito, a Neopolitan chef, decided to bake something special for Queen Margherita of Savoy. What chef Esposito baked for the Queen was the Italian flag. I'm not kidding. That is exactly what he intended to do. See, the colors of the Italian flag are red, white, and green. So the chef baked a flat bread covered with tomato sauce for the red, mozzarella cheese for the white, and basil for the green. Taste wasn't even a consideration. It was just supposed to LOOK good. However, some party guests couldn't resist. They desecrated that Italian "flag" by munching on it. The chef was probably quite angry when he found out but the guests raved about that tasty flag aka pizza. And now you know how pizza was born...it was really meant to be a flag. Which makes me wonder what would have happened had the Italian flag had the same colors as the Irish flag. Let's see. A pizza covered with basil, mozzarella cheese, and...orange slices. Hmmm...Somehow I don't think it would have been quite the hit as that other recipe.

By now you are drooling in hunger at the thought of pizza and are impatiently awaiting for The Coupon Whisperer to reveal how to get free/cheap pizza. Well, now you know how I felt this afternoon. I was in a Publix and a demonstrator there was giving out free slices of Red Baron microwave pizza. I prefer oven baked but I liked the price. Plus who in their right mind would turn down a free slice of any kind of pizza. So after gobbling down my sample, I asked for a Red Baron coupon which the lady demonstrator handed me. It was for a dollar off. I noticed that the Red Baron pizza is currently on sale at Publix at $5.97 BOGO so I asked Miss Demonstrator for another coupon. This time she refused stating that she was only allowed to hand out ONE coupon per customer. She also stated that since the sale was Buy One Get One FREE, I could only use one coupon anyways. WRONG Mozzarella Breath! You can use one coupon on EACH pizza...the one you pay for AND the free one. This would bring the total price down to $3.97 or just a couple of bucks each.

So how to resolve the dilemma of how to get my second Red Baron's pizza coupon? The moment I got home, I fired up my laptop and simply typed "Red Baron Pizza Coupon" into Google search and quickly found several sites where they are available. I went to one of the sites and printed out one of the coupons. Problem solved. So guess what I will picking up cheap at the supermarket tomorrow? Actually I will probably getting them for FREE using The Coupon Whisperer Secret Decoder Ring to resolve that minor problem. As you might remember, it was only a little over a week ago when I scored a half dozen FREE DiGiorno pizzas at Walgreens using my Register Rewards.

The fact is, most pizza brands have LOTS of coupons available whether online or in your Sunday coupon inserts. Because of intense competition there are so many coupons available that you can easily score free/cheap pizzas especially when they are on sale. Remember, match the coupons to the sales. And that tactic works with all other products as well.

Happy Munching!

The Importance of Fillers

Sometimes, when I am out on a coupon run, I cross paths with the Walgreens Yoda. The Walgreens Yoda is a friend who eats, breaths, lives for couponing at Walgreens. He basically knows all the deals and is usually armed with hundreds (sometimes thousands) of dollars of Register Rewards stuffed in thick envelops. So do I ask him for inside tips on the latest Walgreens deals? Nope. That question is strictly for amateurs since both Yoda and myself know exactly what the good deals are thanks to the many Walgreens blogs and forums available on the Web. The question I usually ask the Walgreens Yoda is: "What are the good fillers here?"

Huh? Fillers? What are they? Well, it would be impossible to do good couponing without fillers. They are the low priced items you often need for your couponing strategy. Ideally, it would be something you need like the tangerines above currently selling in the local supermarket for a dime each which I actually do consume. However, sometimes it is stuff I don't really need personally but is necessary to work out my coupon deals.

There are two basic reasons why fillers are important to effective couponing. The first is in places like Walgreens where you have Register Rewards or something like it. Let us say you have $10 in Register Rewards and you want to buy an item selling for $9.99. If that is all you're going to buy your Register Rewards won't work. Your total purchase must equal or exceed $10. This is where fillers comes in. If you buy a pencil for say, 16 cents, that would put you over the $10 you need to use the Register Rewards.

The second reason why fillers are very important is the coupon count. Most stores require that the total number of coupons you use do not exceed the number of items you buy. Therefore if you stack coupons (manufacturer's on top of store coupons) then you would need a filler for each item you need to meet the requirements of the coupon count. Yesterday, I was doing my "background buzz" couponing in which I was buying items in pairs. Each pair of items had one store coupon for a discount on both items plus I had manufacterer's coupons for each item. Therefore a total of 3 coupons for 2 items. If I bought nothing else the cash register would not have accepted it. The problem was resolved by buying one filler for every pair of items to make it 3 items to match every 3 coupons. In my case yesterday, I was using ten cent tangerines as my fillers.

And now you know why fillers are important. And now I'm off to munch on yet another of my tangerines.

FREE Tide!!!

I used to get some really incredible deals via couponing on a variety of laundry detergents but my wife wasn't satisfied. She wanted only one brand: Tide. It seems that people from Venezuela have developed VERY strong loyalties to various product brands. For example, she also disdained any toothpaste except for Colgate (or "Col-gah-teh" as she pronounces it) although I have finally gotten her to become a fan of Crest as well. This wasn't a problem because I have been able to score a lot of FREE tubes of both Colgate and Crest via creative couponing. However, Tide had remained a problem.

The Tide coupons seem to always be for just a dollar. The 100 oz Tide is usually $15.99 in the store although sometimes it is discounted down to as low as $9.99 which makes the cost after applying the coupon $8.99. The 50 oz size is normally about $8.99 and when they are discounted down to $5.99 it is still going to cost you 5 bucks after the coupon. So how to get FREE detergent while keeping my wife from griping all the time?

Simple. I discovered travel size products which are numerous and include Tide. Just do what I did last Saturday and go to either Target or Walmart. I went to the travel size bin of Target and, using 10 Tide one dollar coupons, picked up 10 travel size packets of Tide. Each Tide packet has enough detergent for one laundry load. They were selling for 97 cents each so my final cost for them was FREE!!!

And now my wife isn't complaining about a lack of Tide. Now she is griping about how she has to go through the "trouble" of opening a Tide packet every time she wants to wash a load of laundry. You know what? TOUGH!!!

Oh and all the info about the travel size Tide packs and the coupon you need to use is pretty much self-explanatory in the photo above. You will probably find that same coupon again in your local Sunday newspaper on January 16 in the P&G insert.

Happy Tiding!