My new record: 43 Free Papers & what I do with them

I now make 2 trips to my local gas stations. I found out two of them throw out their unsold Sunday papers during the overnight shift and I was told I have to get there by 4am if I want the papers before they throw them out. So, now I make a trip to two of the gas stations at 1am in the morning (yeah I know, when I should be sleeping!) and then I get up at 5:45am to hit the others at 6am when they open before they throw theirs away. This morning I scored a total of 43 free papers! That is a new record for me. Lately I've been getting about 20 papers every Sunday but today I got 43! And there are 2 coupon inserts in every paper this week so that's 86 coupon inserts I'll be cutting within the next few days. Woot!

For those of you wondering what do I do with all these coupons?? Let me recap:

I do use some of the coupons for myself for products I use. However, I only use about 10% of the coupons I get for myself. If I have coupons and get items for free or nearly free, I'll buy them and give them away to friends & family if they can use them. Some of the items I will buy and stockpile as gifts throughout the year (like the $10 AirWick Fresh Matics I got for 85¢ last week) I also buy a lot of items and send them in care packages to the troops.

The troops is what REALLY motivates me to use coupons. In fact, I've started a blog just for that! It's called Coupons For The Troops. Last week I made about 6 trips to Walgreens to stock up on their free or almost-free stuff and it's all for the troops. I got shampoos, deodorants, toothpastes, mouthwashes, etc. It's all going to the troops. In many cases I was even able to combine coupons with their "Free" offers!

And at the end of the day I'm still left with stacks upon stacks of coupons that I did not use. So what do I do with them? The other day I started a new site where I'm selling those coupons and the proceeds go towards the postage to send these packages to the troops. It costs $11.95 to ship a care package to the troops so every coupon sale helps! The site where I'm selling these unused coupons is Coupons For the Troops. For every $11.95 I make in coupon sales, I'll be sending another care package to a soldier through anysoldier.com. Oh, and to make it clear I'm not actually selling the COUPONS themselves. I'm selling my time it takes to collect, clip, sort, package and ship the coupons to the buyers. I have to add that disclaimer in there for legal reasons.

Last week I even received an email from a soldier thanking me for the care package I sent him! It was a very touching email and he explained his living conditions and let me tell you - getting an email from a soldier telling me how much they loved the care package just made me want to send even more. I wish I could afford to send out care packages daily because I would! If that doesn't motivate you to send them care packages from home, I don't know what will!