5 A Day

I love being able to stay-at-home with my little man everyday. He and I have so much fun playing, doing arts and crafts, learning, etc., and I wouldn't trade this opportunity and experience for anything in the world. The only thing I wish is that my husband could be here too; however, someone has to bring in the money to pay for this beautiful home we just purchased and all of the other bills that reveal their ugly heads once a month.

Since we are a one income family, at least right now, I try my best to make my husband's paychecks stretch as far as possible, which includes using coupons on a regular basis. I don't understand why more people don't use them...it's like throwing away free money! I'll get more into using coupons another day, but there are several ways to get coupons other than the Sunday paper, many, most people don't know about. One way I like to get coupons is by writing to the companies that produce products my family likes to use. It's that simple.

Writing to all of the companies at once takes a lot of time, time that I don't have to waste. Therefore, I came up with 5 A Day. I write to 5 companies a day, complimenting them on their products, and in return they send me coupons in the mail! It's that easy and it only takes about 5-10 minutes out of the day. I have a non-specific compliment written out, so all I have to do is fill in my information and copy and paste my generic compliment into the form.

Picking the companies to write to is a pretty easy task. Make it easy on yourself and start with your pantry or your refrigerator! Just open them up and write down the products that you see. Use this as a starting point for your list and keep adding to it when you think of more products. When you're ready to start, make sure you have your list with you (I have my list in an excel document saved on my computer so it's always there when I need it) and check off products as you go along. This way, you'll know where to begin the next day. Before you know it, you'll start receiving coupons in the mail (often times for high dollar amounts, and frees) daily.

Note: I also like to keep track of who sends out coupons and who doesn't, as well as the dates I write to them. This way, when I'm ready to start going down my list again, I'll know who sends out coupons and who doesn't. Most companies, I've heard, store your information in their database for about 3-4 months. This is where the dates come into play. If I notice that I haven't written to a company in 3-4 months, then I write to them again.