by Judy Frank
posted June 12, 2009
) Chattanooga Cheapskate blogger Jamie Miles -- with the help of a coupon-filled baseball card organizer she keeps propped in the child safety seat of her shopping cart -- saved 75 percent off her total $140 bill. |
And they’re spreading the word through the nationwide “mommy blogosphere” on the internet that makes traditional coupon savers and other penny pinchers look downright old fashioned.
Starting this past Sunday and continuing through Saturday, Kmart is delighting customers by doubling the value of coupons worth up to $2 each. That means a shopper with a $2 coupon will get $4 off the price of the item.
The savings are impressive. One shopper at the Kmart on Highway 153 who purchased items worth more than $38 wound up paying just $11.56 cents – and $2.96 of that was tax.
It is largely thanks to the efforts of local bloggers such as Ms. Moser (www.funandfrugal.com) and Jamie Miles – one of two women who launched www.chattanoogacheapskate.com just six weeks ago – that clerks at local Kmarts and other area stores have become accustomed to shoppers clutching handfuls of coupons in their hands, working their way from one bargain to another.
“The secret weapon of the modern-day coupon operative? The internet,” Ms. Miles said to Chattanooga Cheapskate readers.
“We have harnessed the power of blogs, printables, promo codes, grocery websites, and manufacturer rebate deals to bring together every known offer for any given product... and to stack...(a) grocery store coupon on top of the manufacturer’s coupon (which if under 60 cents can be doubled in many places) on top of the sale price.”
Word of potential bargains spreads like wildfire. On June 7, for example, readers of Ms. Moser’s Fun and Frugal blog were greeted with an exuberant headline: Kmart is Doubling Coupons This Week!!
"I went to the Cleveland K-Mart after lunch today and asked the customer service desk what the rules are and was told that their computers are now fixed so that the cashiers no longer have to manually double coupons and they will only allow you to double up to four of the same coupon,” she said.
“(The clerk's) example was if you purchase five bottles of Windex and have five coupons, only four of the coupons will double...They do accept internet printable coupons; however, she said they will not double any coupon (printable or not) that says 'do not double' on it. (Click here and here for lots of internet printable coupons!) Also, if an item is on sale 2/$3 (2 for $3), you don’t have to buy two to get the sale price – you can buy one and it will ring up on sale.”
“I was rather disappointed to not find any free-after-coupon-deals in health and beauty (shampoo, shower gel, deodorant, etc.) but I did get free Oust, Lysol Neutra Air, Glade, Keebler Rainbow Chip Deluxe cookies, Kraft BBQ sauce, NYC makeup, and a few items for $.50 or less,” she concluded.
Both she and Ms. Miles of Chattanooga Cheapskate say it is unusual to find a retailer doubling coupons with face values as high as $2. Nevertheless, thanks to grocery chains such as Bilo and Publix -- which routinely double coupons up to 50 or 55 cents and offer frequent buy-one-get-one-free promotions -- bargains are available year round.
"I have four children and I used to spend about $100 every time I went to the grocery store," Ms. Miles said. "Now it's almost always 75 percent off."
"My goal is to save at least 50 percent," said Ms. Moser of Fun and Frugal. "At Publix, I have done as well as 90 percent off.
"I can't believe I used to spend $4 for a box of cereal," she said. "I would never do that now...and I will probably never pay for toothpaste again. There are always coupons for toothpaste, shampoo, deoderant, things like that."
Often, the best deals are found at drug stores, Ms. Moser said, although "they're more complicated because they have their own kinds of 'currency.'"
"You get out of it what you put into it," she said. "You have to learn the rules of the different stores...(and) you have to be willing to buy what's on sale. If you're really loyal to one particular brand, then coupons probably aren't going to help you save much."
Don't be discouraged by the complicated rules, both bloggers tell would-be couponers. Virtually everybody can learn their way to huge savings.
"How can you possibly keep track of the big sales at each store and which offers correspond to them?” Ms. Miles said recently to Chattanooga Cheapskate readers. “That’s where (other) blogs come in.
“Sites like SouthernSavers, funandfrugal, and moneysavingmom are dedicated to doing the research for us. Each week, as soon as the ads come out, they post every sale price along with every coupon available to use with it. They tell you what you can combine, what the final cost will be, and if the store has a limit on how many you can get.”
Ms. Moser's blog, Fun and Frugal, was launched in August 2008. It now has almost 900 email subscribers and drew more than 17,000 page views last month.
Chattanooga Cheapskate, in contrast, was started just six weeks ago after Ms. Miles attended a seminar on saving with coupons and was blown away by what she learned there.
"I was just amazed," she said. "It's like there is this army of hundreds and hundreds of hunter/gatherers out there, trying to do everything they can to make their families recession-proof."
Her enthusiasm showed in a blog she posted soon afterwards.
“I don’t know how it is in your town, but around here extreme couponing seminars are quick becoming the new Tupperware Party,” she wrote. “I started hearing some buzz about it in the checkout line a few months ago, from some Bi-Lo cashiers. They were raving about how great this class was supposed to be, what incredible savings were reported.
"It piqued my interest, but really? A coupon is usually worth about $0.50, which is kind of a sad reward for all the clipping and organizing and planning it takes to actually use them.”
But a month later her kids brought a flyer home from school with them that announced a coupon class with free child care was going to be held at a local church.
The free child care clinched it; she decided to attend.
Once there, she wrote, “I looked around at rows and rows of housewives who had their eyes glued to the instructors, hanging on their every word. An exciting atmosphere of subversion hung in the air – it felt as if we were being initiated into some sort of underground, anti-establishment movement...the sisterhood of frugal housewives.”
During the next few weeks, she said, she talked about her experience with her friend Lindsay Aquila, who was equally impressed, and virtually anyone else who would listen.
“Eventually our husbands got really tired of hearing it,” she said with a laugh, “so we decided to start a blog where we could talk about couponing with other people who cared.”
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