It would be impossible to count, but the average supermarket contains about 70,000 different products and variations of the product that could make any shopper dizzy.

How do manufacturers manage to get your attention with yet another new product? COUPONS. Coupons are still one of the best forms of promotion, and as good shoppers we want to please the manufacturers by using them, and using them a lot.

Most new items are accompanied by multiple promotional techniques: taste tests, samples, media advertising, and coupons. In general these coupons are of high-value, and when accompanied by a store sale, can almost be gotten for free or at a sizeable discount.

Stacy Pita chips issued a $1 coupon accompanied by $1.99 sale. Each bag, now selling for $3.49 cost me $.99, about an 70% savings. Silk milk created Almond Silk. The milk was featured at $1.99 with a red dispenser coupon for $1. With the long expiration dates on the milk, I could stock up on at least 4 ½ gallons using a $1 coupon on each.

Most new products never make it past the first year. Depending upon its’ budget, information about the product floods the market during that time. Which mean more promotions, more coupons and more sales.

When I checked out with the 4 Almond Silk the register spit out more coupons, again a $1 savings on each ½ gallon. I’ll hold onto them for the next sale.

Many new products are variations of popular existing products, some involving another flavor, others offering reduced calories and others yet meeting special dietary needs such as gluten free, salt free or the whole wheat version.

These adaptations are more likely to make the cut, since the product is already proven. For example I always drink diet Coke; now there’s Coke zero, both are 0 calories; but Coke Zero is marketed for its better taste.

Arnold and Pepperidge Farm Bread have many varieties, one of the newer offerings is the Whole Wheat package. With Whole Wheat products being touted for better health, that’s another new intro that will probably make it.

Special diets have foods that have come a long way. My grandmother could not use any salt in her food. There were so few packaged products that she could use, everything had to be made fresh. If she was around today she’d have a ball picking and choosing from an endless selection of sodium free goods.

Enewsletters from many of the manufacturers also alert you to the new introductions and offer coupons and refunds on their web sites. That was the case with DiGorno Flat Bread sandwiches from Kraft. With a sign up, you could get a free coupon mailed to you.

Using high value new product coupons you will reduce your grocery bill and get to try lots of new items, so now it’s time to give it a shot.

I love eating out, but not as much as I love using a coupon to help pay for the meal.

Many chains offer coupons, distributed in a variety of ways. Probably the most widely used medium is the Sunday insert.

Splashed throughout the flyer are coupons for Olive Garden, Subway, Quiznos, McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell, Domino’s Pizza, Pizzeria Uno, TGI Friday’s and more. The discounts vary
from a BOGOF entrée to a free appetizer or dessert or a % off an entire meal. Just a note of caution: most of these coupons on not accepted at the highway version of these chains.

Some like IHOP offer free kids meals. Others like Panera Bread have a loyalty program for beverages. For every 8 beverages, the next is free. Some offer a senior discount too.

The internet is another source of restaurant coupons. By signing up for the various enewletters, alerts for discounts come through on a regular basis.

Virginia Ann Senyk sent email coupons for TGI Friday’s, which offers a loyalty program called ‘Stripes’. Other restaurant internet coupons boasted savings at:

• Quiznos
• Subway
• Wendy’s
• Taco Bell

Many local chains and restaurants have discounts too. Spiga, a locally owned restaurant, has a BOGOF lunch up to $11.00 from Monday to Thursday.

The Entertainment book offers many meal discounts. Some of the repeat offers can be printed off the internet once you own the book and sign up on the site. These savings vary from $5 off a meal to one free lunch or dinner entrée.

Two sites I found very helpful are www.idine.com and www.restaurant.com. These work in entirely different ways.

Idine gives a % back on your dining experience. Just sign up your credit card or cards, and you’ll start racking up the saving. The savings start at 5% and increase to 15% depending upon usage. Once again loyalty counts. The more you spend the higher your savings percentage.

Restaurant.com sells certificates. The regular cost is $10 for a $25 certificate or $20 for a $50 one. However, there are always sales of 70 to 80% off the $10 or $20 bringing the cost down to $3 or $2 for the $25 certificate or $6 or $4 for the $50. I find the best is to buy the gift certificates and use them as I want.

As an example, we celebrated Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Mark’s birthday at a restaurant in Manhattan. I found a $50 certificate off a $100 purchase, and we brought our own wine. For the 6 of us, our final cost was $53 or $8.50 per person (plus tax) for dinner. I think that was pretty darn good.
There are a few local restaurant web sites. The best is to try and google them for your local area. I find tastes better when I pay half price. I bet you will too.

Many retail outlets now offer discount coupons either online or part of a sale flyer. I love browsing through my paper to see all the savings and the variety of stores that have jumped on this money-saving bandwagon. Each week the sales change, and so do the coupons. So it pays to be patient and wait for that needed item.

A couple of months ago my printer started acting up. I decided to buy a new one, get the $50 recycle printer credit at Staples and wait for the best deal. I found the HP 6100 series on sale for $129. With my $50 recycle credit, and a $25 coupon, my final cost was $54.

Lord and Taylor is one of my favorite stores for 2 reasons. They always have sales and coupons, and I think they have the best petite department among all my stores. So with the 50% off the already reduced price I purchased 7 items: 6 tops and 1 pair of pants. For all the items combined with my 20% coupon I paid $93.

In my Sunday paper I found the following store flyers and print coupons:

• Bed Bath & Beyond
• Kohl’s
• Sports Authority
• Michaels
• Lord & Taylor
• Mavis
• Macy’s

By going online, I found an entire batch of others. Some printable and others to be used when ordering online. I was looking for Chicos and found an online discount. Same for Best Buy and Old Navy. The savings vary from free shipping to a percent off the total.

As a matter of fact, there are whole web sites dedicated to coupon codes that help save on online shopping. While some of these tasks may seem time consuming, it’s like everything else. Once you develop a few good places and become accustomed to using them, it only adds a minute or 2 onto your shopping experience. There are a some very good ones out there. A few of my favorites are:

• www.couponcabin.com
• www.retailmenot.com

But you can also google coupon codes and find a few other sites you might like as well.

Retail outlets have created another ingenious way to get you coming back to the store. It’s a sort of loyalty program

The other day at Petco I bought a new leash. At the bottom of the receipt was a short survey with a promise of a $2 coupon on your next purchase at Petco. I haven’t done the survey yet, but I will shortly and head back to Petco for another purchase.

I did reply to the survey at Old Navy. I was offered 10% off my entire purchase with a short and I do mean short, survey (maybe a minute or so). At the end of the survey is a code that gets written on the receipt for your next purchase and a 10% savings.

So check before you shop, a 10 or 20% savings can really add up.

One of the first refund offers I sent away for was Lipton Cup of Soup. I found the certificate or the write up in a local store. Today, I still find some of these on tear-off pads usually near the product itself or as a write up on the package.

These write-ups are most commonly found on cereal boxes, cookie wrappers, household cleaners and pet food. In refunders’ jargon we call them Specially Marked Packages. Kelloggs, Keebler, Hersheys and General Mills are among the most popular for these unique boxes.

A very big portion of rebates are now found on the internet. These range from rebates submitted directly online or more often where you can print out the necessary form.
I love the internet submissions because it’s easy and nothing to send off. Staples is popular for these easy-rebates as is Rite Aid.

But many other great offers are found on the company web sites under promotions or special offers. I always check that link to see what’s new. As a matter of fact, I daily postings are made to our www.couponqueen.com website so you can see all the new and current offers.

For anyone who sends me an email at: susan@refundlebundle.com I’ll send you a list of 100 plus refund offers to get you started.

As part of my union health coverage I’m entitled to eyeglasses every 2 years with a value of $100.00. Since I now wear reading glasses this was perfect.

I checked my health brochure for local participating optometrists. Quite a few were listed including Pearl Vision and Vision World. Both included the eye exam and I chose Vision World on the recommendation of my friend Eileen.

I took the exam, and found that I also needed glasses for distance, To solve the problem 2 possibilities were available. I could get bifocals that had both options (reading and distance) but there would be a visible line. If I wanted to avoid the line I could get progressives lenses.

With my $100 certificate, the progressive lenses were an additional $250.

At home I found a Pearl Vision coupon in a Sunday flyer offering Progressive lenses for $150, but they would not accept my insurance certificate as part of the payment.

I made the following decision. My distance vision is barely affected. I really just wanted the reading glasses and felt that in the future if I wanted to get a combination pair, I’d look for a special as in the case of Pearl.

I got my reading glasses, and realized how important being informed can be. Rather than being upset or disappointed because I had the $100 voucher, I felt I took the best advantage of the options available to me.

Coupons have come a long way from the years I began. My coupons were all from the newspapers, magazines, home mailers, doctor’s offices and other places. These options still all exist today but are supplemented by a whole vast new type of coupon: internet and electronic versions.

Internet coupons can be found on many sites including individual manufacturers, specific sites such as shortcut.com or coupons.com and supermarket sites. Each store has different rules regarding internet coupons, so before you print any out check with your local market.

Next are the electronic coupons that can be downloaded directly onto your store loyalty card. Individual stores use this as an alternative and sometimes in conjunction with the printable ones. My local A&P doesn’t accept printable coupons but I can chose electronic coupons from their site, and as I buy the item and checkout, the coupons are automatically deducted.

It’s a great convenience, the only problem is the limited number of both printable and electronic coupons. The selection is small and the coupons don’t often match the sale item. For a larger selection you can try our www.selectcouponprogram.com

Supermarket shopping can be such fun and present a great challenge too. Strategies either learned or self-taught aid in tackling that ever wily beast. But coming out a winner is what we all aim to do.

One strategy that’s often discussed is stocking up. How much of a discounted product should we buy?

First we have to ask ourselves if the item’s integrity is comprised by long-term storage or not. Most items today have an expiration date including boxed and canned goods. And storage should depend not only on how long we keep the product, but how much we are likely to use before its’ expiration date.

Let me give you a few examples. Cereal can last up to a year, but the product is often on sale and always heavily couponed. So now it depends on how good the sale is, we ask, is a sale always a sale?

The best price I’ve seen lately for Cereal is Kelloggs, 4 boxes for $6 or $1.50 each. With my $1 coupon that’s $.50 a box. Yes, I’ll take at least 4 and maybe 8. $4 for 8 boxes is about the price for 1.

Onto detergent. Fab was touted as Buy 1 get 2 Free (BOG2F). The question, how much is the first jug? The price was $3.99 for the Buy 1, with my $1 coupon my cost is $3.or $1 a jug. I bought 9 and I know that will last a long time in my house.

Space is one other consideration when bulk buying. Do you have room? You can be very inventive finding unused space. 3 of my 4 sons live in apartments in Manhattan, and they still manage to have extras on paper goods, detergents and bathroom essentials.

My advice, stock up when it’s practical and when the savings is substantial.

The good old barter system, is alive and well especially among couponers.

If you get a chance to view Refundle Bundle, www.refundlebundle.com there is a whole page dedicated to about 40 people who want to trade, mostly coupons and related items. Most traders use the following lingo: trade coupons 1-4-1, which translates to: trade coupons your 25 for my 25, or your 35 for my 35, one for one.

It’s fun to try a few traders. Some close by, others from other cities to see what coupons they have available.

I used to trade during my bowling league. Each of us brought our unused coupons, placed in an envelope with our name, and passed them up and down the lanes. You took out any that appealed to you.

Another great trading time is during play dates for the little ones. We’d meet at McDonald’s once a month for the kids to play and for us to trade coupons and coupon gossip. Everyone had a great time.

Even the Brooklyn Public Library had a coupon trading section. Begin one at works, in the library, at a group center. Not only will you save money, you’ll probably make some new friends too.

As you all know I live in New York. We have a number of major chains. They include A&P, Pathmark, Waldbaums, Shop Rite and Stop & Shop. Some smaller and specialty chains include Trader Joe, Whole Foods, Stu Leonards, Food Emporium, and DeCicco.

All of our major chains accept and double coupons with different limits. Some of them accept internet and competitors coupons as well. Most of these variations are highlighted on the store’s web site or weekly circulars. But I always verify this information before I shop.

For example, if the store is offering a BOGOF sale, I can only use 1 coupon since my stores consider that a single purchase. If the same item is on sale for 2/$6.00 I can use 2 coupons on this particular purchase.

After speaking with lots of good coupon shoppers here in Florida, I found the policies are different. On a BOGOF sale, shoppers here can use 2 coupons.

My point, check the options for your store carefully so you can maximize your savings fully.

Visit us at: Select Coupon Program

The store flyer is really a wealth of information, savings, and tips. I prefer the hard copy, but lately I have used the online versions as well. The flyer helps me determine my weekly purchases. So I use it before I ever enter the store.

First and most important is the organization of the flyer. It’s divided into the same categories as the supermarket so planning is made easier. Next special coupons and promotions are printed throughout.

The front page usually has all the best sales, sometimes called loss leaders. That means that items are sometimes sold at cost to attract shoppers. On the front page of the Tom Thumb flyer in Dallas, TX, a gallon of milk was selling for $1.49, baby carrots $1 for a pack, a head of lettuce $.77, and $.99 for Quaker granola bars. All fantastic deals.

The inside pages include frozen, beverage, snack, dairy, meat, deli, health and beauty aid specials among others. These are all legitimate sales. But as always some sales are better than others. Take the Quaker granola bars. The regular price is $2.99 each. Some sales are 2 for $4. At $.99 the savings is 66%. Now that’s a great sale and the time to buy.

So knowing the prices for the items you generally buy will help you decide the value of the sale and the reason to make a purchases.