And boy oh boy was that expensive! Until I hit the diaper mega-load and came across enough free diapers to keep their bottom's dry for life, with several hundred extra to spare.



How? It's all about using coupons to your advantage. Forget clipping a 25 cent coupons for a brand of shampoo you don't even like, I'm talking about walking out of a store with two shopping carts full of goods they paid you to take.

I've gotten tens of thousands of dollars worth of free product over the last several years, but my all time favorite haul was the Huggies Pull Ups. I ended up with thousands of diapers, and stores actually paid me to take them.

Here's how it happened. A few years ago, when both my kids were still in diapers, Huggies came out with a trial package of their new design of Huggies Pull Ups. There were three diapers in each of these packages, and they cost $1.97 at Walmart, Walgreens and Toys-R-Us.

In addition to the three diapers, Huggies also had a coupon in the package. The coupon was for $2.50 ANY package of Huggies Pull-Up Diapers. Each time I bought a pack of diapers, I'd get another coupon.

Now, this is significant. Most Huggies coupons would specify right on the coupon that the savings was only off Jumbo size or larger packages, but these coupons were different. They specifically said "ANY" package of Huggies, meaning the coupons were good for the trial sized packages.

Calculate this: You have a coupon for $2.50 for a product that costs $1.97. That means for every package of diapers I bought, not only would Huggies reimburse the store for my $1.97 purchase, they would give them an extra $0.53 cents.

What does that mean? That means I needed to spend another $0.53 in the store for each package of diapers I bought. Effectively paying me to take the diapers.

I spent months combing all the Walmarts, Walgreens and Toys-R-Us stores all over the state, looking for the trial packages of Huggies. When I found them, I would explain how to do the deal to other customers and store employees, even offering to give them some of my coupons. But no one wanted them.

So I would take most of the available diapers, leaving a few in case someone else wanted some. I spent the extra money on all kinds of things: food at Walmart, more baby products at Walgreens, toys for gifts at Toys-R-Us.

Since I bought 15-20 packages of diapers at a time, each time I had $8-10 to spend. In the end, it amounted to a few hundred dollars.

It was very time consuming, but very fun. I saved so much money, and was able to diaper both children through potty training for free. All by clipping a few coupons.