“Your savings will astound and inspire you and others,” declared Laurie Jaghlit who
conducted the seminar. Using the example of a sister who was able to pay off her car early with the money she saved using coupons, Laurie highlighted some other benefits of couponing.
“I have been able to triple what I normally would be able to donate to food shelves using coupons,” stated Jaghlit. Her exuberance over her savings seemed to catch on with many of the ladies who asked questions about the strategies used to maximize savings.
The Blessings in Bargains Workshop was developed for two main reasons: To help sisters learn how to save money, and show the community how to use some of their savings to help others by donating to local food banks.
The workshop detailed how to start the couponing process and effectively continue it to where it would become second nature to the shopper. Coupons are found in newspapers, mailers, online, on packages and at the grocery store. If the Sunday paper has more than one manufacture coupon insert, you might even want to buy multiple papers.
Once you have collected all the coupons, the trick is to find a way to organize them in a way that works for you. Laurie showed how she stacks all the same coupons, staples them together, cuts them, and uses several accordion files to store them. Amina Rubin, another active coupon clipper, showed how she files, inserts, dates and then only cuts her coupons when she has matched them to a particular store or sale. Amina also explained how to shop at CVS and collect “extra care bucks” and shop with rebates at Rite Aid. She proudly held up her CVS receipt showing that through the course of last year she only spent $60 on over $1500 in purchases.
Once the coupons have been collected and organized, the next step is not just shop -- but to shop wisely.
“Coupons work best if you can tie them to another deal, such as sale items or when the grocery store is doubling or tripling the value of coupons,” explained Laurie.
She then pointed to the tables displaying food and toiletries. “Everything we have here was either purchased for just pennies or was free.” The over 350 items on the tables were collected by four couponing sisters during the last two weeks. Workshop attendees were asked to bring food donations that were added to the SISTERS’ tables, all of which were then donated to Dar al-Hijrah’s food bank. The food bank has seen an approximate 50% increase in applicants of over the past year and the workshop made it clear that using coupons is an affordable and easy way to help stock local food shelves.
SISTERS has also set up a blog at http://blessingsinbargains.blogspot.com to inform shoppers as to where the hot deals are in metro area. Anyone interested in receiving email alerts can sign up on the blog.
The enthusiasm of the sisters continued after the seminar when they decided to form a coupon club to swap coupons and advice. “Savings will be my motivation,” promises Sister Khudija Ilyas a workshop participant. “I feel like I’m paying too much these days for the same products, so I’ll give it a try.” She says her first step will be to buy the Sunday paper. The newly formed coupon club will meet once a month at Dar al Hijrah and focus on saving money, and also serve as a continuing donation source for the food bank, insha’Allah.
If your community is interested in hosting the Blessings in Bargains Workshop or you would like to join SISTERS and the coupon club, please contact SISTERS at sistersinformation@gmail.com.
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