Sometimes you need to think outside the box.  This rule applies to everything, really, but especially when you’re shopping for deals.  Thinking outside the box is at the heart of extreme couponing, if you think about it–the “normal” way to use your coupons is to just get a few cents off of a purchase.  The best way, though, is to cultivate overage whereever possible.  Let the free stuff you’re getting also pay for the stuff you don’t have coupons for.  It’s a win-win situation!

Overage is confusing for some people to understand, I think, because it doesn’t really make sense that you would “get paid” to take something home.  It’s not that uncommon, though, to find coupons worth more than the actual price of the item, especially if you find something on clearance, or if you use it (legitimately!) on a smaller size than the one they probably intended. (Of course you wouldn’t do this if it specifically says not to.)  If you can find coupons like this, by all means, get as many of them as you can and use them with wild abandon!

This is at the root of the strategy when you use coupons on an item that’s already free after rebate or ECB.  Let’s use Rite Aid as an example.  This week, there’s a freebie for Alaway eye drops.  They cost $7.99, and there are regularly $4 coupons available.  (You can even print one here, if you don’t already have one.)  So, you go to Rite Aid, use the coupon, and pay $3.99 for the eye drops after coupon.  At the end of the month, they’ll send you a check in the mail for $7.99.  Ta da! You just made four dollars.  If you can create a scenario for the week that lets you add a few more items to that $7.99 in order to use a purchase-based coupon, like the $5/$25 that Rite Aid often puts out, you can also use that five dollars to pick up other things you need.

My Rite Aid Plan for this week

1 Bayer Aspirin Quick Release Crystals 10ct $3.99 -$3.99 SCR (limit 1)
1 Bausch & Lomb Alaway Eye Drops, 10mL $7.99 -$7.99 SCR (limit 1)
1 Wound Wash Saline Wound Wash Saline, 210mL $5.49 -$5.49 SCR (limit 1)
1 Dry Idea Clinical Complete Solid, Roll-on or Aerosol, or Right Guard Professional Strength $5.99 ea -$5 SCR (limit 1)
2 Suave Invisible Solid 2.6oz, or Aerosol 6oz $2 ea -$1.50 SCR (limit 2)

Total: $27.46

Then I’ll use:
-5/25 coupon
-1.50 coupon on Bayer aspirin
-4.00 coupon for Alaway
-2.00 coupon for Dry Idea
- .50 coupon for Suave Deodorant (RP 3/29)
- .50 coupon for Suave Deodorant (RP 3/29)

I’ll pay approximately $13.96 (plus tax–I’m leaving sales tax out of it just to make the math easier) out of pocket.  I’ll submit my receipts online, and get $25.47 when I get my Single Check Rebate in a few weeks. Profit of $11.51!  I now have an additional $11.51 dollars to spend on groceries or whatever I need.  Occasionally, it even justifies my need to let someone else cook me dinner.  :)

That’s a pretty basic example of working the system to get overage–very straight-forward.  Here’s where the creativity comes in.  This is a good EASY week to experiment, since so many of the coupons are printable, and Rite Aid now officially accepts internet printables. (All of mine always did anyway.)

If you’re not a serious couponer, you might not have access to all of those coupons.  However, you can print all but the Suave coupons by using the links above.  So, you can still use the above plan almost as is!  You may be noting that the Suave deodorant is not completely free.  Fifty cents is a bargain, but maybe you don’t like that kind, so you aren’t planning on spending money for it.  However, the total of your order won’t quite equal $25 without adding something else–it will only come to $23.46!  So close, and yet so far.  So, if you buy only the first four items on the list, you’ll pay $15.96 out of pocket, but you’ll get back $22.47.  That’s a profit of $6.51–not too shabby!

But if you throw in one Suave deodorant, it will actually get better.  (I am planning on buying two just because I have the coupons for it. You’ll only need to buy one for this to work, though if Suave deodorant is your favorite, by all means, buy two!)  Your total will be $25.46, and then you’ll hand over your coupons.  You can use the $5/$25 this time, so you will pay $12.96 out of pocket, and you will get back $23.97.  That’s a profit of $11.01!!  You’ll make an extra $4.50 and get a free deodorant to boot.  Why wouldn’t you throw in that extra item? (Speaking of which, that is also one example of a “filler”.)

I think that is a pretty easy explanation of what I mean by getting creative with your coupon strategies.  Here are two more examples of what I’m talking about.

I was at the store on Sunday, and I had a $2.00 A.1. steak sauce coupon and a $1.00 off beef when you buy any A.1. sauce coupon.  I didn’t know the price of A.1. but I knew it was a high-value coupon and I thought there was a decent chance that it would be free, so I checked on it.  The smallest bottle was $2.43, so I started to walk away from it. I don’t particularly need any steak sauce, even if $0.43 is a good deal.  That’s when it hit me that if I bought it anyway, I could then use the beef coupon, and that dollar would cover the remaining .43 on the sauce, as well as take off 0.57 more on my total. Free steak sauce, cheaper ground beef.  Excellent!  (Cheap makes food taste better, by the way.)  You can use both coupons, by the way, because the “when you buy X” coupon attaches to the item that is being discounted, not the item that you have to buy to get the discount.  In this case–the beef.  Therefore, you can use a coupon on the item you have to buy, too.

Another time, I used a Free Pantene Styler when you buy Pantene shampoo and condition coupon along with coupons for the shampoo and conditioner at Walgreens and paid three dollars for all three items.  The coupons made the shampoo $1.50 each.  I have so much shampoo that I wouldn’t have purchased them at that price, but I do use the styler, and I was running out.  I didn’t have any other coupons for that styler at the time, so… instead of buying just the styler at full retail price (six, seven dollars), I got all three items for the price of just the shampoo conditioner–three dollars.  Three items for half the price.

I like to think of coupons as a giant strategy card game.   As with any game, the trick is finding the best time to “play” each coupon for the maximum impact, and when you can combine it with another coupon to squeeze a little more value out of it.  This takes practice, but it gets easier if you’re open to finding those special opportunities.