Coupon queen spends $10/week on family groceries
She buys two copies of the AJC's daily double Sunday paper, getting four papers, four sets of coupons, for $5. She also goes to her favorite coupon websites (see links).Link (via Consumerist)On the day we're with Crissy, we tell her we just want a sampling of what she does. She tells us we're going to CVS and Publix, two of her favorite stores.
I do coupons every week myself so I was very curious to see how she did it.
At the Publix, Crissy got her best deals with the buy 1, get 1 free items.
Most local grocery stores will let you buy only one item and get it 50% off. If you pair a coupon with that (most grocery stores double coupons up to 50 cents) you can sometimes get the item for free or next to nothing.
What I learned from Crissy is that you can use one coupon per item.
All this time I had misunderstood what it says on each coupon, only one coupon per purchase. I took "purchase" to mean "transaction." It's not.
For example, Crissy grabbed two boxes of cereal that were buy 1, get 1 free. The cereal was $3.79 a box. Crissy had a three dollar coupon for each box of cereal. She made over $2.00 when she pulled those boxes off the shelves. I thought I could only use one coupon, no matter how many boxes or cans or whatever I'd bought. So that's good for me to know.
She didn't buy any produce or meat when we were with her. The best deals that week were elsewhere and she told us she often gets her produce from local farmers at a nearby market where prices are very inexpensive. When we got to checkout her bill was $15.38 and she saved $36.22. Basically she saved two thirds of the bill.
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If she paid $15 for $50 of groceries that's awesome, but it's already more than $10 a week and that's before protein. I also wonder if the time she spends is worth $70 a week.
Of course, if she really enjoys it then it's a hobby. I spend a lot more than this on my hobbies!
I love this bit from the article:
"What I learned from Crissy is that you can use one coupon per item.
All this time I had misunderstood what it says on each coupon, only one coupon per purchase. I took "purchase" to mean "transaction." It's not. "
Are you effin' kidding me? Who honestly would think that you could only use one coupon per transaction at the grocery store? A bright group they have working over there at NBC Atlanta.
That's nothing. Last week, by combining double coupons, a "buy $20 of General Mills food and get $10 off" offer, buy 1 get 1 free offers, etc., I bought $65 of food at Shaws for $10. Of course I now have a year's supply of cereal and enough chips for a dozen superbowl parties, but still.
I wonder how much she spends on gas driving to seven stores.
I also wonder what exactly she's buying. It's good that she's buying produce from local farmers, but what kind of cereal, etc. is she buying?
More power to her, but I spend a big chunk of my bill on fresh produce, like berries, apples, oranges, pears, melons, spinach, carrots, zucchini, etc. That stuff is never discounted. And it costs. I shudder to think of subsisting on a diet only of what you can buy with coupons.
#4: That's exactly what I was wondering. :) I also wonder what kind of car she drives.
Yeah, where'd that $10 a week figure come from? Unless that $15.38 she spent is for like 6 weeks worth of stuff, I can't see how it averages out. Not to mention that she spends $5 just to buy the papers that the coupons come in. And yeah, gas on driving to all the different stores/farmer's markets can't be cheap either.
If you are making $2 buying cereal through a combination of coupons and sales, that is beyond clever coupon strategy and into the area of exploiting a loophole.
It's still brilliant (and I would do it too!), but the moral compass is pointing south on that one.
The one thing I wanted to know is how many hours per week (or even per day) she spends on this to save this money.
What people often overlook is that all our time is valuable. If you spend 1 hour a day to save $100 per week, that's a whole working day, and is equivalent to you just working on Saturdays for that extra cash. And in that case, I'd rather just pay the $100 and keep my day off.
Nothing new to me. I regularly buy 200$ worth of groceries for 60 or 70$. Not to long ago I walked out of CVS with 200$ worth of product for about 20$.
Most people don't fuss with coupons. That's what manufacturers hope you will do. Look at the coupon, register the brand, then forget to bring the thing to the store. We're a median income family so I view coupons as tiny little gift certificates for food. LOL.
The trick with couponing is that you have multiple coupons and when you buy something that's on a wiked good sale (like nearly free cereal or .22 cent deoderant) you buy as much as you feasibly can without it spoiling before you use it. When you average out the amount you've spent v/s the amount you WOULD have spent if you had purchased things only when you needed them (when they were at their higher regular price) you come our ahead. Sometimes you come out REALLY ahead.
I wonder how much her family's health care will cost if they are eating food from boxes. They would probably be healthier if they ate the cardboard boxes.
Supermarkets around me do not accept web coupons. They haven't for years due to past consumer fraud.
It's definitely worth it to cut coupons for products you use regularly, and actually use them only when those products go on sale. That's when you can end up stocking up on say Cherrios for a pittance per box, which is great. And I support shopping local for truly fresh produce no matter what. But claims that you can routinely save so much on coupons that you end up feeding your family for a net cost of $10 a week is hokum.
#9 I don't think the moral compass is south on that at all.
Manufacturers send out coupons.
Retailers are KEENLY AWARE of what coupons are out there. Most even know in advance what these coupons are and organize sales to coincide with these coupons, extra stock, and will go so far as to print thier own store coupons.
In most cases you can use a manufacturer and a store coupon on a product. The store knows this (of course they do, they put out the store coupon!) and have accepted thier loss on the product. The manufacturer will reimburse them for the coupon they send so there is no loss there.
If for some reasons the coupons make the item free and results in cash back the store can choose thier policy on paying out cash. Some will, some won't. They decide.
Consumers who are well educated notice when this stuff happens and take advantage of it. Everyone is working within the established rules.
Moral Compass North.
My friend's mom is a super genius at this type of stuff. One trick she discovered is that at certain stores, they will credit you for bringing expired items to the check out. I'm not sure how wide-spread that practice is, but she usually knocks a good chunk off her bill doing that and I've even seen her leave the store with a small bag and more money then she came in with. It sounds ridiculous, but it's true.
It is possible to save a lot of money with coupons, but you have to take into account other factors. The biggest factor is time.
How much time does it take to clip the coupons? How much time does it take to figure out which coupons to use where? How much time does it take to drive to multiple stores instead of just going to one store?
For all that time and effort this lady saved $36.22. One hour of my time is worth more to me than $36.22. The store can have my money if I can spend an extra hour working on geeky projects instead of clipping coupons and reading circulars.
More power to this lady. As far as finding time goes, coupons can be clipped while sitting in bed at the end of the day or while relaxing in the tub. If you want to give more of your hard-earned cash to the food corporations, that's your business. As long as I'm buying groceries anyway, I'm going to take advantage of the discount.
I think this is a great example of how the economy mitigates income inequality. Businesses try to match prices to a range of demographic targets, so that they can pull more revenue from people who aren't as price sensitive. So, many things that we spend money on are basically pro-rated, according to the amount of effort you want to put into them.
In the case of coupons, as many posters have noted here, by applying effort to your food shopping, you can basically get a "job" that pays $20/hour or more, in the form of a lower grocery bill. This is a "job" that is available to everyone. I think it's the kind of thing that is a positive result of an generally unregulated economy which frequently goes unappreciated. When rules are put in place limiting the flexibility of sellers, we lose these benefits.
Time is money - or is it?
If you're working a job with fixed hours and fixed pay, or unemployed, then really it's not. You have some amount of money and some amount of time, and no readily available means to convert one into the other.
If you're working as a consultant, and have work enough, time very much is money. An hour you spend clipping coupons is an hour you could've charged to a client instead.
The traditional words that fit these two classes of people are "proletariat" and "bourgeoisie" :-)
#10 Serotonin: I completely agree about the time being valuable issue. Sometimes it's worth it just to shell out a couple of extra dollars so you have two hours of free time.
I guess if you really like doing it, then more power to you. If you dislike doing it and spend 8 hours a week doing it to save a few bucks, maybe you should just pay the extra money.
I would hate to get stuck behind her in the check out lane
Most people don't have time to do super coupon comparison. But even a little bit of time (and the ability to cook creatively) can cut a huge amount out of your food budget without sacrificing nutritional value.
Even if you're just doing coupons cut from one local paper, when you get them, sit on them until just before they expireo. Coupons generally come out for new products or things they just got a shipment of - waiting means when you do use them, you'll be combining them with an already marked-down store price.
And cereal is cereal. Bags of chips are bags of chips. If they're still closed they keep for months or more, and brand doesn't matter. Ditto for bags of dry rice or other grain. Beyond coupons, for junk food, cereal, bulk dry spices or canned goods, check dollar stores - they buy up grocery store overstock, the same products with years of shelf life, for a fraction of the price.
And for fresh produce, when hitting up the farmer's market (or even some grocery stores), look for damaged produce. Not mold, just little things - a tomato with a bruise, a slightly cracked zuccini, etc. Still perfectly good, but won't get picked out of the bin for full price. My current grocery store wraps these up and sells them in bulk at 50 cents/lb. My old farmer's market gave them to me for free.
And protein, eat sparingly, and on sale, and make use of your freezer. I got 10lbs of chicken legs for 35 cents/lb the other week. Using it in small quantities to make large amounts of soup (with plenty of the discount vegetables), that 10lbs will last a very long time.
I foolishly spend my time working for a living, or finding ways to improve my life through education.
I guess I ought to be focused on the only value of any merit in a consumer democratic society - lowest price.
I am imagining myself standing in line behind someone like this, as they argue the finer points of coupon loopholes with the grocery clerk.
"No, you see, you should be PAYING ME to buy this cereal because it's two for one and I am buying two boxes and using two coupons..."
"Uum..I'm going to have to call my supervisor."
etc.
Still you have to admire her resourcefulness.
#23: for pity's sake, if you can afford to buy full price and don't particularly care about it, then by all means continue to do so.
But were I only buying the food I could afford at full price, I would be living off pasta and ketchup. By buying carefully, I can have a healthy diet instead. A lot of people are in the same situation. Being resourceful isn't about "merit" - it's about finding ways to improve your daily life when you can't afford to spend more money.
And like most people with very little money, I do work for a living. And I am taking classes that will hopefully lead to a better career. But I need to eat in the meantime too.
Why must it be inferred that she eats and feeds her family nutritionally bogus food, wastes her own and others' time, and is somehow cheating and practically shoplifting?
Sheesh! Good for her, I say.
I foolishly spend my time working for a living.
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Ian, that's all the more reason to use coupons. Since you're working for that money, you deserve to keep more of it for myself rather than handing it over to the food executives. That's YOUR money, brother! Stop giving it to "the man." It doesn't mean you need to start eating cheap, box food. You can save money on cleaning products and other non-food items as well. I started using coupons about a year ago and I'm saving at least $30 per week. I'm not shopping any differently and not buying different products. I'm just taking 20 minutes with my Sunday morning coffee to scan the paper for savings on products that I buy anyway. I used to think that coupon-clippers were for people on a fixed income and/or hillbillies. After giving it shot, I realized that I was a fool for paying extra money all these years. I use some of my leftover cash for fun things. I bought myself a vintage Schwinn bicycle to reward myself for being thrifty. I use that same bike to pedal to work each day...now I can stick it to the Exxon execs too!
They would probably be healthier if they ate the cardboard boxes.
I agree. I buy almost nothing except meat, fruits and vegetables. She's buying stuff. This is an example of conspicuous consumerism done on the cheap, not of someone stretching a dollar to buy necessities.
She spends $15 a month because she buys only garbage. Yippee!
When's the last time you saw a coupon for actual food? Lettuce? Strawberries? Rutabagas? Never, that's when.
@ Antinous, Fnarf:
Wow, you should be proud of your obvious superiority to this evil woman. Please re-read the article. The only products that she purchases that are referred to in the article are cereal, deodorant, toothbrushes, and Tums. Why the pat assumption that she only eats "garbage"? As far as "actual food," she patronizes farmers' markets. Oh yes, this consumerist whore also donates what she doesn't need to local shelters. For shame.
When I first got married ten years ago I started doing this to save money. I had a whole system with binders and lists etc. I was pretty proud of myself until I realized that:
1. It was taking up a LOT of my time to hunt down and print or clip coupons, organize them and then figure out the best deals.
2. It was costing me a pretty penny in gas (and this was 10 years ago!) to go to five different stores to get the best deals.
3. I was buying junk. They don't put out coupons for healthy food like lean meat, fresh produce, whole grains etc. They give you two for one coupons on Hot Pockets or 25 cents off of Lunchables. The best you can manage is maybe a discount on prebagged lettuce which is overpriced and gross.
If you want to save money on your groceries make a meal plan, shop once a week for the food you'll need for the meals that week and don't waste anything. Shop locally (farmers markets, local deli's and bakeries, coops) it's cheaper and better for you and the environment and stop buying convenience food and junk food. Then you'll be richer and thinner. That's just my 2 cents.
P.S. Anyone with food allergies might as well skip the coupons entirely especially if you have Celiacs (intolerance to grain glutens). It's a losing battle.
@DKH: it doesn't matter what products the article names. THERE ARE NO COUPONS FOR REAL FOOD. Only for processed box and jar garbage.
I do the coupon thing for 1) Breakfast cereal, and 2) Cake and brownie mixes.
The former I often donate. It's fun buying ten boxes of Cheerios for five bucks and dropping them in the Food Bank barrel. I keep the receipt for tax deduction purposes.
I bring cakes to work now and then. Great for morale.
That fact that I do this doesn't mean I eat junk food.
The problem with this is that everything that coupons apply for is mass-manufactured factory crap food. If you're accustomed to cooking with fresh vegetables as opposed to vegetables drowned in tin cans, or fresh fruit instead of corn syrup and hydrogenated soybean oil garbage, the coupons simply aren't there.
Find me a coupon for broccoli rabe and I'll eat my hat.
Coupon clipping is a topic near & dear to my heart! Coupon clipping is not for everyone due to the time it takes, but I don’t like people knocking it based on the perceived products available!
You can get coupons for produce. For example, my local grocery store issues coupons for their produce section often. But aside from food, I find coupon clipping for toiletries and other non-food items to be invaluable. (And small and/or organic companies issues coupons too!) I also often use coupons at clothing stores. So you see, it’s not just food in boxes!
She spends $15 a month because she buys only garbage. Yippee!
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Who said she only buys garbage? Many coupon savings come from non-food items such as cleaning products, paper products, shampoo, etc. You buy those, don't you? My local stores do offer coupons for milk and produce as well. The place where I shop has bananas for only 19 cents/lb every Tuesday. Other days feature other fruit and vegetable deals. The idea that coupons are only available for junk food is a myth. No need to drive to five different stores either. Find one or two places in close proximity to each other with decent prices and you're all set.
If your problem with coupons is that they are for what you view as unhealthy food, don't use coupons for food.
It's insane how much you can save on cleaning products, personal hygiene items, and other various and sundry things by using coupons in JUST the Sunday paper and 10 minutes of your time a week - then another 10 minutes a week of making a shopping list and grabbing the right coupons before you go.
#23,
One thing you may not have learned while improving yourself is a thing called the fallacy of the false dilemma, or false dichotomy.
As several posters have already pointed out, most of the coupons I see are for processed, boxed, ready-to-eat or canned foods I don't eat. Or cleaning products that I don't use. Still, the odd Hellman's mayonnaise or baking soda sale comes in handy.
I suppose the next bit should be comparing coupon/regular grocery store saving to what you can get with a membership club like Costco.
For those of you with $100 to spend, instead of the time organizing coupons to save $100, bully for you. Some of us don't have the $100 extra to spend but still need to eat, clean our homes, and clean our selves.
Because this woman is going to the effort, she's now got the money to go to the farmers market and buy fresh produce for her family to eat. That's not eating food in cardboard boxes, that's saving up the money so her family doesn't HAVE to eat food in cardboard boxes.
(By the way, you're better off eating the junk IN the box, than the box. 1) you can't digest celulose, 2) none of the chemicals in the ink were ever intended for human consumption, and the box is designed to isolate the food from the ink. Unless you feel cool about sucking on an ink cartridge or a biro, don't eat the box.)
My mother in law runs a better deal through companies like Walgreens and Menards. Walgreens is the real killer example:
What she does is mark all the monthly items that are free or near-free after rebate. The rebates are given to you in the form of a Walgreens gift card, so as long as you maximize your rebatable purchases, and use ONLY THAT MONEY to buy the next month's set of rebatable items, you can parlay the money for a number of months and get a real stream of usable products (soap, shampoo, health items, etc).
Wow! Who would have thought an article about someone who is very, very good about managing coupons, would create such a free-wheeling and riotous comment section? I do coupons when they apply to the things I actually purchase regularly, which alas, is not much of the time. I do save money by making large purchases in bulk of those things we use every day or very regularly (pet food, charcoal, non-perishables) from Smart-n-Final or Costco, and I also take full advantage of the 'weekly saver' pullouts that arrive in the mail, which alert one to that week's specials at the local stores.
You might not have actual clip-coupons for produce, but the weekly specials always have reduced prices on specific meats, dairy and produce that's as good as a coupon. I get the feeling this lady does it because she ENJOYS it, as opposed to necessarily needing to. It's a game to her, and if so, she's clearly winning. It doesn't really matter if she spends more time at it than most of us would, because this is her game, and that's part of her "rules." We play differently, which does not make her time a waste, nor us somehow being taken advantage of if we decide we'd prefer to spend more rather than devote the same time.
I wouldn't do it, but that's me. I have enough on my plate as it is (no pun intended).
Not *all* packaged food is garbage.
Spaghetti
Tomato sauce
Olives, pickles, etc.
Couscous
Rice
Beans (dry or cooked)
Peanut butter
Whole grain cereals
Bread
to name a few. I don't know, maybe somebody will slam me for some or all of those items. Sometimes it seems like I live in a world where either someone is shouting at me to stop worshiping Al Gore and his hippy conspiracy, or someone is telling me that my cereal is murdering the polar bears one green clover at a time.
The article makes it pretty clear that this family is tight on money and not bent on building up a collection of "stuff."
I remember well when I was young and the food budget was very, very tight. If someone had told my mom she was being a conspicuous consumerist, she would have burst out laughing as she piled the grocery bags into her rusting 1972 Plymouth with the perpetual hole in the muffler.
I drank Tang and orange Kool-Aid for ten years and there was nothing conspicuous about it. I still remember a few sleepovers when my friends would wrinkle their noses at it.
@BadKittyM (#43) and others who have made similar points:
Presumably this sort of story puts some people on the defensive - if it's this easy to save money, then maybe the rest of us are being extravagant, lazy, or just plain suckers not to take advantage of them. Thus we feel the need to explain away the activity as worthless, a waste of time, etc. That way we're not being irresponsible when we fail to follow in her footsteps.
How else can you explain the volume and tone of responses to this topic?
Well, it comes not too far behind the posting of Michael Pollan's google talk.. and they're not totally at odds with each other, but like people have noted, there aren't usually a lot of coupons to be found for the "edges" of the grocery store.
sirdook: point taken. It is definitely interesting, watching and reading. I know I don't feel like a sucker, and I'm damn sure not lazy. On the other side, I don't place a pricetag on my personal time. If I did, I would never ever take a vacation or be able to relax...or spend a few extra minutes visiting three grocery stores in order to take advantage of their specific specials.
*shrugs*
Oh, yes - I did forget to clarify something in one of the earliest posts. PHICANCRI - The author of the article didn't mean that people assume you can only use one coupon for an entire transaction, period. They meant that most assume you can only use one coupon per TYPE of item, which is incorrect yet widely taken as fact. Obviously, retailers are in no hurry to disabuse their customers of that.
I like cereal.
It's funny... my mother is OBSSESSED with clipping coupons and planning her purchases around the coupons on hand and what's on sale. She, however, only shops at one grocery store and takes advantage of the occassional "double" and "triple" coupon offers. I used to make fun of her... but now I realize she has a pretty good racket going. She has had $200 grocery bills come to less than $50. And I'm sure she doesn't spend more than an hour a week cutting... and I know she spends less than 2 hours shopping (at a store that's only 8 miles from her house). So I say... go for it if it works for you!!!
For some reason that conjures up an image of Dr. Evil going to the grocery store with a zillion coupons and his cat Mr. Bigglesworth, and of course Mini-Me.
(I am in no way implying that your mother is Dr. Evil.)
I like cheesy crackers.
What people often overlook is that all our time is valuable. If you spend 1 hour a day to save $100 per week, that's a whole working day, and is equivalent to you just working on Saturdays for that extra cash. And in that case, I'd rather just pay the $100 and keep my day off.
Exactly. Which is why I now buy my groceries online and have them delivered. My free time is not just valuable, it's bloody SACRED.
What a cheapskate! How chintzy are you if you clip coupons for hours and drive around to save money. She may be nice and demur but she is greedy!
The up/down side of allowing my local grocery store to track my spending via the plastic discount card - you guys have those? No one's mentioned them - is that they send me coupons for things I actually buy. I just recently received a mailing with ~12 coupons and only two of them were for an off-brand. There were also buy-x-amount fruit/meat department/veggies and get some off. They have a gas station, too, and I save 10 cents a gallon when I spend $100.
They'd have me prisoner even if they weren't the only store on my side of town. Luckily there's a farmer's market in the summer.
I work in grocery store as a cashier and I absolutely despise coupon clippers, particularly ones that don't know what they're doing, ones that do so many coupons at once that if there is an error it takes forever to find and ones that deliberately try coupon fraud [meaning: those that buy stuff to "match" coupons that shouldn't be tendered]. I've almost gotten fired over a customer abusing coupons. Seriously, I can't stand those people.
Yesterday, I stopped by Kroger while I was getting gas (for $.10 off per gallon) and picked up 4 boxes of cereal and 2 bunches of bananas for $.94. Coupon use can pay off BIGTIME if you know how to work the system.
I wrote a post about this at http://3princessesmomma.blogspot.com
SO freakin grateful for this story! You've helped so much. Thank you!!!!!
To actually make money using coupons like she did on the cereal makes me think of "Punch Drunk Love"
(Bruce Schneier is correct; clever people have that hacker mentality of exploiting the rules of a given system for their own advantage.)
We use the Utah food coop and get locally grown stuff at almost 50 percent off.
http://www.crossroads-u-c.org/cfc/
Well, I am happy to know that there are plenty of people who think it's a joke to use coupons and wouldn't take time out to clip them. If EVERYONE took advantage of this system, there wouldn't be anymore coupons, now would there?