I’ve been reading a lot lately about coupon queens and coupon divas. These are people who pride themselves on an ability to use coupons to save a large amount of money on everything that they purchase. They offer all sorts of tricks and tips to enhance money-saving with coupon use.

This is all smart stuff. However, I think that the average person needs to balance saving money with saving time. Clipping coupons can end up wasting a lot of time if you don’t know what to look for and how to do it efficiently.

One of the most important things to learn if you want to save money with different types of coupons is how many different types of coupons are out there and which ones are even worth your time. There are coupons for free stuff, coupons for half off, coupons for buy one get one free … You have to really know what’s what if you’re going to be able to quickly sift through coupons and really make use of them without spending too much time on them.

See my recent article describing 10 different types of coupons to learn more about this area of personal finance.

Tags: coupons, discount codes, kathryn vercillo, money, Personal Finance, saving money

I do a lot of research into saving money when shopping online. Because of this, I’m constantly looking for news about discount codes and other tools for saving money online. Recent news suggests that college-aged kids are the ones most likely to be interested in using online coupon codes.

This is an example of how technology has taken an old tradition and brought it to the younger generation. Young folks and young couples have traditionally been opposed to “coupon-clipping”. However, now that they’re able to get their coupons online, they are more interested in saving money this way.

Of course, the recession has encouraged all people to start looking at ways of saving money. It just so happens that college-aged kids are most likely to turn to the Internet to do that. As a result, the industry for discount coupons online is growing rapidly.

What’s interesting about the research is that young couples without kids are more likely to use discount codes than are young couples with kids. You would think folks with babies were the ones most interested in saving money wouldn’t you?! Maybe they’re still using the old coupon-clipping method in keeping with tradition. What do you think?

Tags: discount codes, Frugal Living, promotional codes, saving money, shopping, shopping online, trends