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To Clip - Or Not To Clip?

When it comes to money-saving coupons, smart cookies already know the answer

by Patty McKenna

During lean economic times, there are lots of ways to trim fat from your budget. Making due with the clothes in your closet. Forgoing that summer vacation. Even — gasp! — getting rid of your cell phone. But you will always need to buy food, and groceries eat up a major chunk of most families’ monthly income. But what if you could bring home the bacon for a fraction of the cost? All while buying the same items? Serious coupon clippers do. And they save a cartload of cash.

To open your mind to the possibility of becoming a coupon user, you’ve got to let go of your coupon prejudices. If coupons persuade you to buy products you don’t use or over-priced brands, then you are not thinking like a “Strategic Shopper”  — the term Coupon Mom Stephanie Nelson prefers for the consumer who knows how to maximize her shopping savings. On her website, CouponMom.com, Nelson explains “the Strategic Shopper would most likely buy the store’s generic brand alternative if its price were lower than the name brand with a coupon. The objective is not to achieve a high savings percentage, it is to pay the lowest dollar amount overall.” Coupons are just one tool to help you do so.

You might think coupon users buy and eat mainly processed foods. It is true that manufacturers’ coupons are often for processed food items rather than fresh ones. However, fresh items do go on sale and the Strategic Shopper knows when. Plus, every household needs some non-food items such as paper products, toothpaste and soaps. Coupons are effective for these items because you can stock up without worrying about shelf life.

Coupon clippers do not spend hours with scissors in-hand only to save a few pennies. The savvy coupon-istas will spend 15 minutes to an hour each week generating a grocery list and organizing their coupons. Yet, they report saving anywhere from 15 to 80 percent of their total grocery bills — no small potatoes.

Finally, forget that stale old “I won’t waste time with coupons because I forget to use them anyway” excuse. Websites like Shortcuts.com, Upromise.com and Kroger.com allow you to easily download coupon offers electronically to your store loyalty card. In the case of old-fashioned clip-and-use coupons, you won’t forget them once you get your coupon groove on using the system below.

Experts say that the number-one way to reduce your grocery bill is to use a price book. A price book is a notebook in which you write down the 10-20 most common items you pick up at the grocery store during a typical visit. If you record the prices of each item in your notebook over the course of a few weeks or months, you will begin to learn the highest and lowest prices of your preferred grocery items and how often they typically go on sale. In-store discounts follow predictable cycles. You need to be aware of them so you can buy your preferred items at the lowest possible prices, not when you happen to run out of them.

Jennifer Clapper, a mother of three in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, uses a price book to help her track prices among different stores. “I have an Excel spreadsheet,” she says, “to see the price differences between the grocery stores and Wal-Mart just so I know where to buy certain things.” On one page of your price book, you might track the prices on your preferred items at Food Lion. On other pages, track the prices of those same items at Wal-mart, Harris Teeter, Kmart, Food-A-Rama, Burrus Red and White and so on. Gary Foreman, a former financial planner who operates the website The Dollar Stretcher (www.stretcher.com) estimates that using only a price book, shoppers can shave about 15 percent from their grocery bills.

Now, throw coupons into the mix by accessing on-line coupon databases. Enter your zip code or your state and these databases generate a list of all the items for which coupons are currently available in your area. These coupon websites are the real bread-and-butter of today’s coupon organization systems. There are also databases providing information on all non-coupon sales at your local stores. I like the Grocery Deals By State link at CouponMom.com. (If you aren’t computer savvy, ask your child or grandchild to lend a hand.)

Don’t waste time browsing these large grocery databases. Grab your price book, check off only the items you buy and generate your own personal list with the click of a button. Print your list and assemble only the coupons you will be using on this particular shopping trip. The database tells you where to get the coupons. Some can be had by clicking a link to the manufacturer’s website and printing the coupons at home. Others are available in the supplements found in your Sunday paper.

Coupon Mom suggests you subscribe to your local paper, take out the coupon supplement each week, and file it away without giving it a glance. Your personal list identifies the Sunday supplement containing the coupons you want. Locally, the Virginian-Pilot includes the SmartSource and Procter and Gamble supplements referenced in the CouponMom database. No more coupons gathering dust in the bottom of your purse or in a ragged envelope in the kitchen. You take only the coupons you will use out of your file and go right to the store and use them.

Think you’ve saved enough money? Wait! There’s more! Now find the stores with the most generous coupon redemption policies. Go to your local retailers and ask questions. Who doubles coupons? Who triples coupons? On what days of the week? What if you have multiple coupons for the same item? Would the retailer double the first coupon and then deduct only the face value of the second coupon? Knowing these policies will help you determine if it makes sense to use all of your coupons for like items in one order, or to use them on separate visits to maximize your coupon savings.

The name of the game is to apply as many coupons and special deals as you can to the same products. Some “couponers” say that items often go on sale in stores at the same time that coupons for these items are approaching expiration. If you get the timing right, you score big discounts. Apparently it is not uncommon for couponing experts to combine store offers with manufacturers’ coupons in the right store, with the right coupon-multiplying policy, at the right time so they literally get items for free. Some coupon clippers search out these deals so that they can donate the free items to local charities.

So, is coupon clipping your cup of tea? Or are you taking all of this with a grain of salt? Whatever the answer, you can’t deny that, done right, coupon clipping can be a real gravy train.

January 8, 2010