Couponing for Two: Money Makers? Shake 'em like Somebody's Gonna Pay Ya

So this post will talk about "Money Makers" and what that entails.  You see that on all of the couponing blogs and wonder...."How can that be a "money maker"?  Why would they PAY me to take that home? 

A "money maker" is simply something that ends in the cost being less than the value of coupons...so you are not paying anything but the tax and sometimes have "overage" or even money in hand. 

Most stores will not actually PAY you to take an item home.  What happens is you will use the "overage" towards other items.  Another way to see it as being "paid" to take it home, is when your Extra Care Bucks or Register Rewards come to be more than what you paid out of pocket (oop). " Let’s say Walgreens has a promotion in which you earn a $5 Register Reward on your next purchase if you buy 10 Gillette shaving products. The least expensive Gillette product is shaving gel at $2 which you can buy for free by stacking a Walgreens $1/1 coupon with a Gillette manufacturer $1/1 coupon. With 10 Walgreens coupons and 10 Gillette coupons, you get 10 shaving gels for free plus a $5 Register Reward to use like cash on your next purchase! So you end up getting products for free and making $5" (from hip2save).

For example , this week at Walgreens, Estroven is on sale for 10.00 a box.  With the purchase of this you get a 10.00 Register Reward....so you see, it is even steven right there so the item is FREE....BUT there is a 3.00 coupon that you can print and hand over when you purchase a box and that just made this a "money maker".  You are still paying for the item, which was 10.00 minus the 3.00 coupons...so you are handing over 7.00 in cash (credit card, debit...whatever).  You get a 10.00 Register Reward back (that you have to use at Walgreens....but you know you are going to be buying something else at Walgreens anyway, right?).  The Register Reward is 3.00 greater than the cash you handed over...so you made money on this transaction. (I have no real need for Estroven, just yet, so this will be donated, of course.)

If you are buying something at Walmart, on the other hand, your "money makers" are seen as "overage" that you use for other items.  There is a video on youtube.com where a lady had so much overage, after coupons, that she was able to buy quiet a bit of items and did not pay anything but tax.  How this happened was she had 3.00 coupons for an item that was priced at 1.87 (or around that).  Since there was not a limit on size for the coupon, this was allowed.  The store will not be handing her the difference in cash but since she had other items to purchase this worked out because they will allow the overage to go towards other items.  So for each coupon she had 2.13 in "overage".  since she had several of these coupons and the item was something she could stockpile. the "overage" really added up.  For the average couponer, this will probably not happen too often....but even if you bought one of these items, you would have 2.13 to spend on something like produce, which rarely has a coupon. I usually only have a nickel or so in overage, so I do not get too excited about this.

I hope this helped clear the air about "money makers and "overage".

Happy Savings,

Tiffany