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Jessica and Heather over at Saving Money Living Life were sweet enough to share a guest post with me and I know you all are going to love it! I have lots of questions from folks about coupon “overage” and money makers (don't they just sound fun?), and here are all the answers . . .
Hello Passionate Penny Pincher readers!  We are so delighted to have the honor to be able to guest post for Laurie.  You really are lucky to have found this blog and be reading how to save money, serve others, and enjoy some tasty recipes.  We are Jessica & Heather from Saving Money & Living Life.  We love to share our best money saving tips, share how we are learning to be domesticated as fairly newlywed wives and just have fun w/ our readers.  We'd love for you to come join us on Facebook or join our linky party on Friday called Fabulous Friday!  Fabulous Friday is a party for anyone to come share what they think is fabulous that week, whether it be a great deal, handy kitchen gadget or a pretty new outfit.  Without further ado let's dive into a little about coupon overage, shall we?
What is overage?
“Overage” is what sometimes happens when you end up saving more than you spend when buying an item with a coupon. The best way to understand this is to use an example:
Say you are buying a can of veggies that is on sale for $.75. You have a coupon for $1 off that soup. Since yoou are only paying $.75 but are using a coupon for $1, you actually make $.25 by buying that soup. This is also referred to as a “money maker”.
So do they give me the money?
This really does depend on your store. I've heard of a few people whose stores have actually given them money if they end up with a negative total, but those are very rare situations and I personally wouldn't expect it to happen! The reason that these deals are so desirable is that you are able to use that “overage” towards other items that cost more money. If I end up with $2 in overage from coupons I am using, I can buy $2 worth of fruit and not have to pay for it either! You do need to be careful though to make sure that you buy enough for your total to stay positive, otherwise your cashier will likely panic.
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Why does my store say, “No way!”?
Like most things involving couponing, it depends on the store that you shop at. Some stores will simply not allow you to get overage on items. They will either reject your coupon, or more appropriately, they will adjust your coupon price down. For the veggie sample above, they would adjust the coupon amount to $.75 to give me the item for free, instead of taking off more than the cost of the item. I usually see this more with Publix store coupons (with the LU #'s instead of the bar codes) than any other coupons, but it still rarely happens to me.
I hope this has helped you to better understand the concepts of overage and “money making” deals if you weren't already familiar with them! Also, if you are new to couponing, make sure to check out the following posts:
Getting Started: The very first post on our blog with the bare bones basics on couponing
Coupon Lingo: Abbreviations we use in our posts that you may not recognize
CVS: Learning how to use the CVS system
Q&A: Questions from our readers
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