5 Ways to Avoid Paying Full Price at Target, According to a TikTok Couponer

One of our favorite reasons to shop at Target? There are always sales and promotions going on — you just have to know where to find them and how to make the most of them. Enter: Roxanna Gonzalez. She’s a coupon expert and creator of the popular TikTok account @mamicouponz. 

She’s also a self-proclaimed Target-lover, who lives within walking distance to the retailer. (It’s 0.2 miles away from her!) “I would say there are definitely items that I get every single week at Target that are on my grocery list.” She rarely pays full price and, sometimes, she doesn’t even pay a full dollar for her hauls.

Today, however, she’s paying that savviness forward with five of her best tips for spending less while shopping at Target for groceries — and more. Let’s take a look.

The Target Circle app is a favorite among the coupon community, and Roxanna is no exception. It’s also your entryway to every deal and discount within the walls of Target. New coupons come out on Sunday, explains Roxanna, and you can even sort by discount. As apps go, this one is easy to get acquainted with. If you haven’t downloaded the app yet, take a minute to do it now, and then read on for more tips.

Okay, so you downloaded the app, but don’t know where to begin. “You don’t have to go on your Target app and search for [deals] yourself,” says Roxanna. “There are many people, like myself, in the coupon community that do the work for you.” Even if you’re familiar with the app, it’s worth following these hashtags. In fact, that’s exactly how Roxanna got started. A newbie to couponing, she’d seek out (and follow) different hashtags on Instagram, like #targetcouponing and #targetdeals, to see what deal experienced couponers were already posting and then copy them. 

Like many retailers, Target will discount meats approaching their Best By date. These markdowns can range anywhere from $1 to $5 off, explains Roxanna. And, when combined with in-app deals, she’s been able to get free chicken and ground beef for less than $1 per package! Her local Target used to “religiously mark down on Sundays and Wednesdays,” she says, but at the time we spoke it had been a few months since she’d seen items marked down on those specific days, but says “about three days before [the Best By date] is when you’ll normally start seeing the discount stickers.” (It’s worth doing a little legwork at your local Target to see if there’s a pattern.) 

Roxanna has a Target account for herself, of course. She also has an account for her husband and her siblings (she has three brothers and one sister). Why? So she can stack coupons and savings. Sometimes she’ll find multiple coupons — a Target Circle coupon and a manufacturer’s coupon — for the same item (say, almond milk). While the Target coupon can be used up to four times, the manufacturer’s coupon is only valid once per account, according to Roxanna. So, in order to use both coupons on two (or four) almond milk cartons, she’ll spread her purchase across more than one account.

Yes, everything. While she’s shopping Roxanna scans each product using her Target Circle app before she adds it to her cart to find those extra savings hidden in plain sight. “It takes me like one minute,” says Roxanna, and “I actually found some of the items in my cart already had a coupon or a sale that needed to be clipped in the app.” And this tip extends beyond groceries: She saved over $10 on her nephew’s birthday present! After scanning the item, she learned the online price was cheaper than in-store and asked a clerk for a price match. Not a bad gift for her wallet, either.

Do you have a tip on how to save at Target? Tell us in the comments below.