I'm often asked how many coupons we can use on a single item. To answer this, you need to note the difference between manufacturer coupons and store coupons.
Manufacturer coupons always have the words "manufacturer coupon" printed on them. Store coupons will have the words "store coupon," or "retailer coupon" on them, and the name of the issuing store.
Many stores allow us to "stack" coupons, using one manufacturer coupon and one store coupon on the same item.
It's a common misconception that you can stack one Internet-printed coupon with a coupon from the newspaper inserts, but this is rarely the case. Most coupons available on the Internet for printing out are manufacturer coupons.
Let me share with you one of my recent deals involving multistacking.
An area grocery store had a sale on pork ribs, which were $6.99 a slab, or $12.98 for two. When I spot a good sale, I'll always look for coupons to see if I can bring the price down even more. Since these ribs were labeled under the store's house brand, I went to the store's Web site to see if the store was offering any coupons for them. The store offered a printable store coupon for $2 off a slab of house-brand ribs. Because most Internet coupons have a print limit of two, I printed two of them. Now my two slabs of ribs were $8.98.
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I wanted to get a bag of charcoal to grill those ribs with. It was $7.99. The store's weekly flyer had a $2 store coupon for the charcoal, bringing the price down to $5.99. I browsed the Web site of the charcoal company and found a valuable manufacturer coupon there, too: $6 off pork when you buy a bag of charcoal plus a bottle of barbecue sauce. Adding the bag of charcoal to my bill brought my total to $14.97, but the coupon took another $6 off the ribs. Now my total for both was $8.97 - a penny less than it would have been had I bought ribs alone. I still needed to buy a bottle of barbecue sauce to qualify to use the charcoal site's coupon. So I did. I bought a $2 bottle of name-brand barbecue sauce, because I had a great coupon from my newspaper inserts: "FREE barbecue sauce with purchase of charcoal." Buying the sauce added $2 to my total … and the coupon took that $2 right back off.
Now, my end total for two slabs of ribs, an 18-pound bag of charcoal and a bottle of barbecue sauce was $8.97. This is a great example of multistacking. A lot of coupons were involved, but I never used more than one manufacturer coupon on the same item.
Jill Cataldo is a coupon-workshop instructor, writer and mother. Learn more about couponing at www.super-couponing.com, her Web site.