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Frugal Family: Extreme Couponing

The methodology for using coupons efficiently.

Researchers at marketing firm, Inmar, report that there were 3.3 billion coupons redeemed by consumers in 2010. The Wall Street Journal estimates that the average coupon is worth $1.44, and it takes a minute to clip it. That’s $86.40 an hour, tax free. Read on if you’d like to get-in on this trend which, in its most fanatical form, has been dubbed “Extreme Couponing.”

Have you ever been behind a customer in the grocery store who is holding a fistful of coupons? Have you paid attention as the cost of her order is reduced by 30% and wondered, “How does she do that?”  Well, I am one of those women. I take grocery shopping seriously. I never pay full price for an item at CVS. I view “couponing” as a challenge to be embraced. I get results.

I am by no means unique. In fact, I am an amateur compared to women like Stephanie Nelson, Joanie Demer, Heather Wheeler, and Kathy Spencer. All are expert shoppers who promise to turn coupon-shy purchasers into coupon-savvy consumers. The title of Stephanie’s book, Coupon Mom’s Guide to Cutting Your Grocery Bill in Half, seems to guarantee 50% savings for those who carry out her instructions.  Sounds good, right?

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Joanie and Heather, the authors of Pick Another Checkout Line, Honey! Save BIG Money and Make the Grocery Aisle Your Catwalk, save between 50% and 90% on each and every shopping trip. They predict that their followers will as well. Sounds even better, doesn’t it? Not according to Kathy. She’s a stay-at-home mom who claims to feed her family of six—and four pets--on $4 a week. Kathy doesn’t pledge to help her devotees reduce their grocery bills; she promises that those who remain faithful to her strategies will walk away with hundreds of items for which they pay nothing. Not surprisingly, her How to Shop for Free: Shopping Secrets for Smart Women Who Love to Get Something for Nothing is Amazon’s third most popular book on money management for women.

I am not at all comfortable predicting that my readers can eliminate their grocery and pharmacy  budgets by becoming extreme couponing fanatics. I do believe, though, that there is enough wisdom in this movement to help all of us shop more wisely than we currently do.

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In order to realize significant savings, one needs a plan of attack.  Here are the universally recommended components of the coupon mavens’ strategies:

1)    Get weekly delivery of a Sunday paper. This is where one finds coupons. My Boston Globe Sunday-only price is currently $3.50 per week, but for new subscribers, an introductory rate of $1.75 per week for 12 weeks is available. This cost is more than recouped after clipping the week’s coupons. On Sundays when many of your favorite items are featured, buy a second or third newspaper.

2)    Save the local grocery and pharmacy fliers.  The weekly grocery circulars are out on Thursday (for newspaper customers) or Friday (by mail.)  CVS, Rite Aid, and Walgreens send theirs out with the Sunday paper. (Alternately, bookmark the local stores’ websites, which have links to the weekly specials circulars.)

3)    Make a list, either on paper or in your head, of all the products you buy on a regular basis. Include food, over-the-counter medicines, paper goods, household cleaning supplies and health and beauty aids. 

4)    Buy a coupon organizer. They’re available at Staples and other retailers. Mine has a dozen sections for sorting coupons by category. Label the sections with headings that make sense to you: Dairy, Meats, Cereals/Breads/Pasta, Frozen Foods, Condiments, etc.

5)    Cut out coupons for products that you actually buy and use.  File them in the coupon organizer.

6)    Join any stores’ loyalty programs that are necessary to guarantee eligibility for sale prices. Once the cards are in hand, stow them in your coupon organizer.

7)    Familiarize yourself with local stores’ coupon redemption policies. The three grocery stores in Acton (Roche Bros., Donelan’s and Stop and Shop) all double any coupons with face values up to 99 cents. For a limited time, Roche Bros. will double up to five $1 coupons if you shop on Tuesday.

8)    Make note of deals that offer cash savings on your next shopping trip. At CVS, these are called Extra Bucks. At Shaw’s, you may receive a coupon for money off your next purchase. Your next purchase can be thirty seconds after the qualifying one—just have the cashier ring your second order up separately. Taking advantage of one deal at a time means that each subsequent order can be free. It’s time-consuming, but it works.

After you have the tools in place, follow these steps each week:

Make a list of all the items you intend to buy during the current shopping cycle.

Include enough food for all the meals even if you intend to make multiple shopping trips.

Read through the fliers to see what’s on special.

Note that some featured items may not really be discounted. After a while, you will know if a price is good or not. Jot down any items that are on sale that you need that week or that you typically buy (if they are not perishable). I recommend using a business-sized envelope for each store. Write down the items on the outside of the envelope.

Go through your coupons and see which ones match up with sale items.

Here’s where the fun begins.  Do some quick math to determine the final prices. If an item’s final price seems like a good deal, tuck the corresponding coupon into the envelope for that store.

Head to the store(s) and do your shopping.

Here are just a few examples of “deals” that I found this week:

Honey Bunches of Oats cereal, assorted varieties, usually $3.99 per box, 2/4$ at Donelan’s. Have two $1 per box coupons for the new Raisin Medley? That means your final price per box is $1, a savings of 75%.

Intuition razor 4-pack cartridges, usually $10.99, on sale at CVS for $8.79. With a $2 coupon and $4 Extra Bucks, final price is $2.79. That’s effectively 75% off.

Yoplait Yogurt, normally 89 cents per cup, special pricing 20 for $10 at Roche Bros. Go on a Tuesday, use a $1 off 10 cups coupon and get them for 40 cents each, or 45% off.

I could go on.

You may be thinking, That’s all well and good, but where are the free products? The truth is, to get the free items, the stars all need to be in alignment. This means that things that are on sale are also coupon items and additionally offer rewards in the form of dollars off your next shopping trip. You also need multiple coupons per transaction.

Other than buying duplicate newspapers, where can these be found? Ebay!  Yes, the extreme couponers purchase 10-packs or 20-packs of specific coupons to use for large purchases.  These “lots” go for pennies; I recently got 30 coupons totaling $60 for under $5.  Since some were for $1 off 2 jars of Skippy Peanut butter (on sale for 99 cents each at Roche Bros. over the weekend) I was able to get my kids’ favorite brand for 49 cents a jar. Not bad for a product whose list price is $3.49.

The bottom line is that the authors I profiled at the beginning of this article specialize in capitalizing on opportunities when exceptional discounts are possible. They are also willing to “stockpile” inventory when the deals are particularly good. I do not profess to be as skilled as they are. However, I do take pride in the fact that my husband is in awe of the precision with which I tackle the grocery shopping. And my three kids know they’ll never go hungry. We have cases of their favorite foods in the pantry at all times.

For those of you who have read this far, I will leave you with this thought. It’s a comment that was shared on one of the couponing websites. The writer, in an attempt to refute a skeptic’s assertion that couponing is not a worthwhile endeavor, asked simply, “If you could flip through the paper and find money, would you clip it out?”

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