“I never print out coupons at home. I’d spend more on paper and ink than I’d save on the coupons.” One of our friends said this to us, and we know others would nod their heads knowingly, if they overheard it.
But it’s not true. Not if you pay attention to what coupons you are printing out, and make sure you actually carry them to the store with you and use them.
We’ll help you crunch some numbers. First, let’s look at paper.
We get our paper from Target for about $3 a ream. A ream is 500 sheets. So even if you print just one coupon per page (when many print 3 to a page) and use just one side of the paper (many of our coupons get printed on pages that have driving directions, maps, or school assignments on the other side), you are paying less than a penny per sheet. The paper is a minor fraction of the cost of printing your own coupons.
Ah, but Printer ink—that’s where you lose out! Nope.
Our HP printer uses cartridges that average about $10 a tank. Our cartridges tend last about 6 months or so, since we print mostly coupons, directions, and homework with them. They are rated at a 300-page yield. It’s maybe 3 cents a page at the most.
Tip: Each page of coupons costs less than 4 cents a page to print, while producing between 50 cents and $3 (or more) of savings.
Even when you factor the $80 for the printer, over its 2 or 3 year expected life span, the savings pretty quickly out-pace the cost of home printing.
So get a printer, find some good couponing sites, and start saving money!
We look at it this way: the money we save by using the coupons we print more than pays for the printer, ink, and paper that we use for other purposes- like sending family photos to computer-phobic relatives!