(Note: I received no compensation for promoting this service; I just think it’s a great idea!)

Recently my wife attended a couponing conference put on at our church by a local “savy shopper” expert.  She was introduced to lots of great grocery-buying, money-saving ideas and decided to expand her coupon skills with some online research.  Lucky for me (and the paper-free community) she came across shortcuts.com, a paper-free coupon service offered by AOL.

Here’s how it works, as per shortcut’s terms of service:

Shortcuts.com provides an interactive online service in which you can link up coupons and other offers from Participating Vendors electronically with the reward cards or other loyalty cards that you use with Participating Merchants.

In short:

1. Go to shortcuts.com
2. Create a free account
3. Select the grocers you shop with (So far, there are 14 grocery chains participating in the shortcuts service.)
4. Enter your frequent shopper card ID
5. Select coupons to add to your shopper card
6. Go shopping!

This is a paper-free solution that I love. Never clip a coupon again—talk about streamlining life!  I know a few coupon fanatics who keep all of their cut-out coupons in baseball card binders.  They are very well organized, but at the expense of  devoting a few hours every week to organizing their coupons by date and store.  Imagine having all those coupons stored on your frequent shopper card instead!

Every Sunday, newspaper subscribers are swamped by a deluge of coupon inserts.  Shortcuts.com may prove to be the death of these wasteful newspaper inserts.  Be sure to check their website to see if your local grocery is included!