Most of us these days are concerned about saving money. We are taking advantage of sales, using coupons and looking for different ways to save more money. Any money you can save on the things that you buy most often is undeniably to your benefit.

We all shop for food and groceries, plus personal products like shampoo and soap and cleaning products like laundry detergent and dishwashing liquid. It is simple to find coupons for many of these items and learning how to use them best to take advantage of the savings is to your benefit.

One answer is taking the rules and breaking them. Not without agreement of course, but if you don’t raise the question you’ll never know and if you do ask the question you might end up favorably surprised while the worst that can happen is they say “no”. Here are a a small number of informative questions that you can ask the managers where you shop that may end up saving you quite a bit of money.

See if the store offers its own coupons. Many stores do. You can each time check the website online but some stores may not have a website so just make sure that you ask. If they have them they will happily give some to you and if they don’t then maybe you just gave them an proposal that can bring in more business.

Many stores will not permit you to use a coupon on sale or clearance items. Often it is spelled right out on the coupon but if it is not you can always ask. The worst they can do is say, “no” but if they say, “yes” you will be able to keep quite a bit more than typical.

Ask the manager if they will acknowledge the coupons from their competitors. Many stores offer a kind of price guarantee where they will give you the lower price if you see a competitor’s ad offering a lower price. But only some people even ask about whether or not they will accept competitor’s coupons and since it is in their best interest to say “yes” they will often acknowledge the other stores coupons if you ask.

Ask if you can use several coupons or if you can combine manufacturers coupons with the store coupons. Many times they will allow you to combine coupons and when you do you double up your savings. You can also ask if they will recognize expired coupons. They may say “no” but they may say “yes” and you never know until you ask.

When it comes to saving money for your family you need to pull out all the stops. See what kind of deals you can work out with the stores and take benefit of every trace of savings that you can.