What is the best way to find money in the budget for Blythe? Save money in other sections! This is me assuming that you can pay for everything else in life (rent, utilities, food and other necessities) and you don’t need to sock away the saved money into savings… Although if you put all the extra money that you don’t need to spend into a savings account, you could save it for a rainy day… or a Rainy Day Parade.

Blythe isn’t cheap. It’s really not. I wish it was a cheaper hobby, but it’s not. The dolls are money, the shoes, the glasses, the clothes, the fabric and yarn is all money. Money, money, money. So what can you do to save money to have more room in the budget for Blythe (or maybe savings?).  There’s couponing, for one. And shopping for things that you would have bought anyways while it’s on sale. There’s no need to go all Extreme Couponing (because, let’s face it, no one needs 50+ bottles of mustard in their personal grocery store in their basement), even a few savings here or there can all add up!

The important thing to remember about couponing when you want to save some money is that you’re not saving anything if you wouldn’t have purchased it anyways. Say you have a coupon and you could get a $1 jar of peanut butter – it’s still a wasted dollar if you and everyone that you know hates or is allergic to peanut butter. Take that into consideration when looking for coupons to supplement your weekly grocery trip.

And, as a note before you go of and start downloading coupons – please exercise caution when giving your address online (some sites will mail the coupons to you, while others are printables only).

For my Canadian readers, I know of a few couponing websites, blogs and forums:

• BargainMoose.ca – blog – sales or coupon codes for Canadian and American based shops
• Save.ca – coupons – free coupons that are mailed to your home
• SmartCanucks.ca – forum + coupons database – lots of great resources!
• RedFlagDeals.com – forum+ coupons database – lots of great resources, I tend to avoid the forums section because people are rude, but the content is still good.
• Websaver.ca – coupons – free coupons that are mailed to your home (minimum 3 ordered coupons at one time)

For my American readers, here’s a small selection of US couponing/deal-finding sites (there are a lot, so Google away if you want to find some more!):

• CouponCabin.com – offers of grocery coupons and coupons for clothing stores as well, many of them are printables.
• CouponMom.com – many grocery coupons and state-specific coupons, there’s even a section for restaurant coupons (for those who like to eat out).
• Coupons.com – customizable by your postal code, you can find printable a lot of printable coupons for groceries, house hold items and services in your area.
• RetailMeNot.com – it’s a fantastic website that I use from time to time (for cross-border online shopping), mostly showing coupon codes for a certain amount or percentage off, or coupon codes for free shipping (always important!).

For the Australian readers, I didn’t want to leave you out of the money-saving fun! I haven’t tried most of these (seeing as how I’m not located in Australia), but they seemed to be pretty straight-forward when it come to using them, so hopefully they’ll be of use to you.

• ShopADocket.com.au – the site offers coupons for restaurants, retail shops and services, all you need to do is type in your location or postal code to get coupons for your area.
• TopBargains.com.au – a little searching is involved, but there’s a whole section dedicated towards pizza coupons, yum! There’s also a freebies & samples section, which I think is totally awesome.

For people who aren’t from Canada, the USA or Australia… I ran into a bit of a roadblock when trying to find sites that didn’t seem scammish, sorry! If you have any additional websites that you would like to share with your fellow Blythe enthuiasts, please comment below with the URL of the site and what country/countries it caters towards.

Happy saving, everyone!