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Although the use of coupons has been around for many years, in recent years the number of coupons redeemed has declined by a significant amount.  Coupon use topped out in the early 1990’s with nearly 8 billion coupons being redeemed each year, but in 2006, that number had dropped to little more than 2 billion.  Now, mainly due to the economic recession, more people are discovering how much they can save on a wide variety of items by using coupons.  There are several different places where a person can find coupons that can be used at a number of different retailers for various items.

Newspaper Inserts
Many companies choose to distribute coupons for their products through local newspapers, typically the Sunday edition.  In these newspaper inserts, coupons can be found for items as varied as baby furniture, toothpaste, and restaurants as well as everything in between.  These newspaper inserts also contain the sales flyers of various retailers showing which items are discounted in the store for a specific time period.  By using the information and coupons available in these news inserts, a person can save hundreds of dollars each year off of the cost of the items that they usually buy.

Direct Mail Coupons
Some retailers choose to mail their coupons directly to customers instead of relying on newspapers to distribute their coupons throughout the city.  These retailers may target a specific area of the city, close to where their store is located, or choose to only mail coupons to previous customers that have provided them with their mailing address.  These coupons may come as a flyer from a single retailer or bundled with other retailer’s coupons in an envelope.  Sometimes, these direct mail coupons include coupons for vehicle maintenance, pizza, local restaurants, and home improvement items.

Coupons From Websites
Because of the popularity of the internet, many retailers are beginning to offer coupons for their items on online websites.  Some websites contain many different types of coupons from various retailers and will allow the coupons to be printed from the website with a home printer so that the coupons can be taken to the physical store.  Other websites program the coupons onto the person’s store loyalty card so when the card is scanned at the store, the discounts are automatically taken off of the total.  Some store websites will have coupon codes listed on the website that can be used at the store’s website or a physical retail location.