Frugal Tip: Printing Coupons Should be Cost Effective

If you are a big-time couponer that prints multiple coupons per day, you may want to think about your printing costs and whether or not it is really worth it with your current printer.  If maintaining your printer is costing you more than it should, you could be in need of an upgrade.

Expensive printers are not necessary.  Color printing is also not necessary unless you have a store that requires it.  Look for a basic model if simply printing coupons is what you need your machine to do.

When finding your printing costs for coupons, you should consider these items:

1. Cost of the printer
2. Cost of the printer ink
3. Cost of paper
4. Average number of pages ink cartridge covers

Yahoo Finance recently listed these printers as cost-effective and budget friendly.  All are priced $130 or under.  The cost per page takes ink alone into account.

• The Canon Pixma iP4820  - 4.7 cents per page
• Epson Stylus NX625 All-in-One Printer - 3 cents per page
• Epson WorkForce 520 All-in-One-Printer - 2.8 cents per page
• 
  The HP Officejet 6000 Wireless - 4.8 cents per page
• HP Officejet 6500A Plus e-All-in-One - 2.7 cents per page

Those printers might be great in an office setting, but you know as well as I do that cost per page should be much lower for coupons and can be with some frugality!  After much research, I have come up with a printer I believe to be the "ultimate coupon machine"! 

My "Ultimate Coupon Machine" is the Brother HL-2240 Mono Lazer Printer.  It is currently priced at $79.99 at Staples.  This is a basic black and white laser printer with no bells or whistles.  A high yield ink cartridge prints an average of 2600 pages per ink cartridge.  Staples sells the toner for an outlandish price of $78.  Brother Black High Yield Toner Cartridge (TN450) can be found at Amazon for $44.79, however I've been able to locate it through various online deals several times for no higher than $15.90.

The average print cost......$.006 per page.  That's around half a cent.  Now that's frugal coupon printing!  Even at the Amazon price, your printing cost would be $.017, which is far better than ANY of the printers listed by Yahoo Finance.

Have you considered your printing costs?