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This is a guest post from my friend Lesley over at CouponsToTroops. I know that many of you are interested in donating your expired coupons to help our military families and these girls provide an awesome way to do just that!
With a new month beginning, it is time to pull the expired coupons from your organizers, but before you toss them in the trash or recycle bin, CouponsToTroops [2]
has another idea. Mail them to a US military family who is stationed overseas, where coupons can be used up to 6 months past their expiration date.
Our overseas military families can use the expired coupons at the Commissaries (like our grocery stores) and the Exchanges (like a Wal-Mart or Target) on base, but since coupons are not distributed in Sunday newspapers like they are here in the US, the families need help to get the coupons to them.
CouponsToTroops maintains a list of military families, stationed in countries around the world (including Bahrain, Cuba, Germany, Guam, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, Puerto Rico, South Korea, Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom) who are interested in receiving coupons. Anyone wishing to adopt a military family can sign up with us and we’ll put you in touch with one of our families. Then you send off your coupons as they expire. You can even include current coupons that you know you won’t be using. You can mail off once a week, once a month, once every other month, whatever works for you and your quantity of coupons and your budget for the postage.
It’s such an easy way to show your support to a military family. Sorting your coupons into categories is optional and we don’t require you to report in with a total of how many coupons or the value of the coupons you send; and if time and energy is an issue, we don’t even require you to cut the coupons out of the inserts!!! All of our military families share their extras with others on base, so even though you’d only be mailing to one family, your coupons will benefit many other families.
Since you’d be mailing to an APO/FPO military address or to Guam or Puerto Rico, domestic postal rates apply, so no need to worry about having to pay the more expensive international rates. Your postage to send overseas will be the same as if you were mailing within the continental United States. For anyone with a substantial amount of coupons, the United States Postal Service offers a wide variety of Priority- Mail Flat-Rate mailers and boxes (available at no charge) that can help you budget the postage. The postage for the “If It Fits, It Ships” mailers and boxes ranges from $5.15 to $15.45 but you can fit A LOT of coupons in them.
For more information or to adopt a Family, visit our website [2] or send an email to us at [email protected] [5].