One of the comments I hear most often is “I don’t use coupons because I can’t ever find any for what I like” … or “The only coupons I ever see are for junk”. I have no doubt that this is true. Just like anything else… if you don’t know what you are looking for you most likely aren’t going to find it. Here I am to help point you in the right direction!

Sunday inserts are a great place to start looking for coupons. More and more often I’m seeing coupons for “healthy” foods as opposed to the more processed foods. In recent weeks I’ve seen coupons for OrrowWheat bread, Earth Grains Bread, Silk Soy Milk, Dole Salad, Cherry Tomatoes, Muir-Glen, Cascadia Farms….and many others. Like I said …this is a good place to start.

Busy mom that I am… I’m not into reinventing the wheel. A friend of mine, Crystal, at The Thrifty Mama, wrote a very inclusive post on where to find organic coupons online. If you invest a little bit of time into your coupon search you will almost always find what you are looking for. Can’t find something you like? Contact the companies that you DO like and use regularly…tell them how much you enjoy their product and ask for coupons! 9 times out of 10 (ok, I made that up) you will get an enthusiastic response.

So, a quick reference:

1)Check your Sunday inserts…every week…carefully. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Just because you aren’t using a coupon in this week’s shopping doesn’t mean you won’t get to use it in the coming weeks.

2)Look in the health food aisles of the stores you shop in for coupons. You can find coupons in tearpads on the shelves, on the products themselves and often you will find coupon booklets in displays. I recently found a coupon book at Dillon’s that covered a WIDE variety of products…and another one that had seven different Kashi coupons in it.

3) Visit websites of your favorite products…visit websites of all kinds of products!! Generally signing up for a company newsletter or update will get you product coupons.

4)Check online printing sites like Coupons, Inc. and Smartsource.com. Currently these items are available:

$0.75/1 DelMonte Gold Fresh Pineapple

$3/1 Huggies Pure and Natural Diapers

$2/1 Burt’s Bees

$1/1 Barbara’s Bakery Cereals

$1/1 Ronzoni Healthy Harvest Pasta (I think there are 3)

$0.40/1 Larabar (Gluten Free!)

Coupons are a big industry, most companies are looking for ways to market their products and coupons top the list of marketing techniques in today’s economic climate. Spend a little time and you can find what you are looking for…and eliminate the misconception that coupons are only for junk and heavily processed foods!

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