I know many of you print some or all of your coupons online. How much do you think you spend on ink and paper to print them? Is it cost effective when this expense is considered? How does the expense compare to the cost of a Sunday paper with coupon inserts?

We got a big box of copy paper about two years ago, for free. We are still working on that box, so thankfully the paper has been free so far.

As for ink, I can set my printer to the less fine setting, so it uses less ink.

I only print coupons I will use, so I am not wasting ink on something I won't use later.

I figure I still come out ahead. I haven't crunched the numbers to see how long the ink cartridges last when I'm printing coupons. Our printer rarely gets used for other things, so coupons are the vast majority of the printer's workload.

The next time I change my ink cartridge, I'll try to keep track of how many coupons I get from it, and how much I save from them.

For a long time, no grocery stores in my area accepted internet coupons. Since the coupons started printing out with bar codes on them, I haven't had any trouble with stores accepting them. K Mart can be a little finicky about them, but they still have accepted them.

slk2042:

For a long time, no grocery stores in my area accepted internet coupons. Since the coupons started printing out with bar codes on them

I have noticed the same thing. I was unable to use them for a long time and have had no trouble lately.

 I watch the junk mail and sometimes find paper that has half or less blank, then I use that to print coupons on. Since I don't print that many, I have no clue how much ink it takes. Most of the ink and paper I use are for other things. I wouldn't think it would cost as much as buying a newspaper, but I don't know.

Has anyone else noticed that sometimes when you print a coupon, you get a whole ad at the bottom of the page for that very item?  Like somehow you need convincing to still buy it even though you took the trouble to print out the coupon....  That irks me b/c it means more ink usage.

I have noticed that. It does bug me. I decided to use the back of that portion of the paper for a scratch pad. I suppose it is a little bit less wasteful, even though I used more ink to print it.

sunshinetreva:

Has anyone else noticed that sometimes when you print a coupon, you get a whole ad at the bottom of the page for that very item? 

Yep! It's a waste of ink.

 I use the backs of my kids school papers and only use black ink. I also can downgrade the quality of the print to save ink. The store still takes them :).

A few years ago many of the stores in my area wouldn't take printed coupons because someone had faked a bunch of printed coupons. 

cyn

goldenblaise:

I use the backs of my kids school papers and only use black ink. I also can downgrade the quality of the print to save ink. The store still takes them :).

My area stores wouldn't take printed coupons for a long time until they started printing out with the scannable bar codes. I think that's the main thing the store looks at these days.

I only print the coupons I will use. The newspaper has as many coupons that I won't use as I do use. So I think it is a wash with me. I still get the paper but look at sites to see what the coupons are for the week and if I won't use alot of them I have my paper put on hold for that sunday. I also have my paper put on hold when there isn't going to be any coupons that week. I can save myself a few extra weeks this way and the paper doesn't seem to mind.