Here's the first in my series of 'Couponing' information.

How to make the most of cereal coupons

The key to using cereal coupons is to watch your local store circulars and wait for a good sale.  There is always a sale on cereal somewhere.  Lately, lots of stores have had sales on General Mills cereals, but I've seen sales on Post Cereals and Kelloggs Cereals too.  I've even seen sales on organic cereals as well.
The goal (or should I say my goal) is to get my cereal down below $1.00 or thereabouts.  Recently one of my local stores had a General Mills sale and cereal was $1.88.  I combined that sale with $1.00/1 coupon and got the cereal for $.88.  Not bad.
None of my local area stores double coupons.  But if you happen to live in an area where your store doubles coupons (most will double a coupon up to $1.00) then that cereal would have been FREE.
FREE is best.  Really!
Another thing I like to look for are store coupons.  Did you know that you can usually use a store coupon with a manufacturer coupon on the same item?  This is called 'stacking'.  It's perfectly legal and will often cut your costs down to FREE or almost FREE.
Next, look at your register receipts.  You'll often find some of your best coupons on those receipts.  One time, I had a store receipt coupon for $2.00 of 4 boxes of cereal.  I combined that store coupon with a sale for $1.50 per box of cereal, and a $1.00/1 coupon for each box of cereal, and wound up with 4 boxes of cereal FREE.  See how that works?  4 boxes of cereal at $1.50 a piece = $6.00.  Then subtract my 4 $1.00/1 coupons and that gets me to $2.00, then I use that little store coupon for $2.00/4 and viola'!!  FREE cereal.
In conclusion, never pay for food if you don't have too.  That's the MomOf5Saves way!

Well, so far I've managed to get 37 auctions up.  Not bad for a newbie. And 5 of them are actually selling so far!  I mean, who would buy stuff from someone that has 0 feedback like me?  That's what I don't get.  I mean, I'm happy they're buying from me and all, but I'm surprised nobody has emailed me asking if I'm a real person or not before placing their bid.  I for sure thought there would be some skepticism out there.  But nope, they're bidding away!

I wanted to actually scan all my coupons into my computer, but that turned out to be too entirely time consuming.  So I created a little picture using my paint program that I'm uploading with each auction.  It seems to be working so far.  If someone really wanted to see a coupon before placing a bid they could always email me.

My husband thinks I'm nuts.  He says - "who the heck gets coupons off of eBay?", well, when each of my coupon auctions is worth at minimum $20 off of someone's grocery bill, I'd say lots of people!

Anyway, I think I'm going to start a series on my blog about how to go "couponing" and get the best possible deals.  The key is to match a coupon with a sale or even a loss leader, and you've got one heck of a deal.  Groceries for pennies, and sometimes even free!

Thanks everyone for reading this blog.  Leave me comments, I really like them!

-MomOf5Saves

Anyone out there have any ideas on putting up a good picture for myself?  What do people suggest?  Should it be a headshot, or a crazy picture, or just a picture of stuff, or should I do some graphic design....

I'm not quite sure what to do.  I'm sorta thinking about putting up a crazy picture of the 5 kids.  That might make me more *real*.  But then a pic of myself would make me real too.

Problem is, I don't like ANY pics that I have of myself.  Mybe I'll have DH follow me around with the camera for a day or two...

Well it took 3 days to get the darn, "call me" from eBay worked out.  When I logged in tonight I automatically got the "call me" screen again and low and behold - it worked!  I'm actually an eBay seller all by myself.

So I went ahead and listed my first auction just for fun.  It's for *my time* clipping Purina Dog Food coupons.  I am amazed at how easy it's gotten to list things.  I'm going to be looking into listing software that will automate my listings further.  I got my scanner set just right to scan the coupons in, so I don't have to take pictures or anything.  It all works great.

Oh, and by the way, this is a totally new blog - and I'm a totally new seller (well, sorta) and I actually had comments?@#&!!  I thought it would take people forever to find me.

This is going to be so much fun.

Mayday mayday eBay!  I've been trying to set up my seller's account for over a day now and I'm soooo frustrated.  DH can't even help me because he set up his account eons ago, long before eBay had this "Call Me Now" to verify someone's identity.  Well, I tried for 24 hours to click on the "Call Me Now" button and all it did was hang.  Then I got a hold of online live support (very nice I may add) and they said they were having a problem with that button.  They said I needed to email CS so that they can call me to verify my identity.  Well, I emailed and now another day has passed.  I hope I have this sellers account set up before I retire!  I don't want to leave my kids with all this stuff I need to sell!

Note to eBay - I know who I am.  Please hurry up and figure it out soon.