Extreme Couponing 101

Years ago, I worked with a young man named Kirk who, on Monday mornings, would regale the office with stories of how much he had saved on groceries the previous day. He would bring in his receipts showing his 40, 50, even 60 percent savings versus the regular retail price of the items he’d bought.

I was skeptical. It seemed to me that in order to get those impressive totals, he had to buy a lot of frozen dinners, soy milk, and dog food, and I wasn’t so sure he really had a dog.

But I was also intrigued. I had clipped coupons from the Sunday newspaper for years, kept them organized, used them when they were about to expire, and faithfully used my Ralphs Club or Vons Club card once those two chains came out with their loyalty programs. But my receipts rarely reflected a savings of more than 20 percent.

I studied Kirk’s techniques. He collected coupons from multiple sources—he asked everyone he knew to bring him extras. At the time, Ralphs and Vons would double the value of three of the same coupon. (In other words, if you bought three widgets and you had three $1.00-off coupons for those widgets, you’d get $2.00 off each of the widgets.) If Kirk had more than three coupons for something, he’d divide his order in half and get more than three coupons doubled. He bought items he had coupons for when those items were on sale.

Under Kirk’s tutelage (he used to call me “Grasshopper”), I started saving 30 percent or better at the supermarket on a regular basis. I have an e-mail I sent him from September 2004 in which I bragged about saving 47.4% at Ralphs:

From $80.20 all the way down to $42.16, which got me two cans of almonds, six frozen dinners, two loaves of Sara Lee low-carb bread, twelve bars of Dove soap, and eight packages of Dentyne!

But that was still the exception, not the rule. Worse than that, who can possibly live on a diet of almonds, frozen dinners, low-carb bread and chewing gum? I was saving money but I wasn’t improving the quality of my life.

And I still wasn’t saving that much money. I look at that list of items I bought in September 2004 and realize that, today, I wouldn’t pay more than $20.00 for the lot of it.

My epiphany occurred on Sunday, January 29, 2006, when I read an article in the Riverside Press-Enterprise about an online service called The Grocery Game. Founded by a lady named Teri Gault, The Grocery Game promised to tell its subscribers when to use coupons to maximize savings—and when it was the optimum time to buy other groceries, even those for which there are no coupons, based on the service’s enormous database of historical pricing information.

Within a day I had signed up, and began my journey from Haphazard Coupon Clipper to Saving Maniac. In the last 29 months, I estimate that I have saved about $9,000.00 off the shelf price of the groceries, health and beauty aids and cleaning supplies I’ve bought at the supermarket. That’s at least $5,600.00 more than I would have saved using my old shopping strategies—and that includes the minimal amount I pay to subscribe to The Grocery Game and a couple of other resources. So far this year, I am averaging a 57.2% savings off the retail price of the groceries I buy. And:

§ I never shop at Wal-Mart, Costco or Sam’s Club.

§ I almost never buy generic or store-brand items.

§ We don’t eat a diet of hot dogs and ramen noodles—we eat ribeye steaks, boneless skinless chicken breasts, pork chops, fresh produce, quality vegetables and more.

§ We have enough brand-name shaving cream, razor blades, antiperspirant, shampoo, conditioner, dishwashing detergent, window cleaner, facial tissue, air freshener and more to last well into 2009. All of it was free or close to it.

Anyone can achieve the same kind of savings. Some people can save more—there are killer deals to be had on things we don’t use, like baby products, feminine-care items and pet supplies.

The soaring cost of diesel fuel has pushed up the price of groceries. The increasing cost of gasoline has made going to the supermarket a more expensive proposition in itself. If there ever was a time to reduce expenses, this is it.

Is it easy? Oh, heck, no. But it’s not hard. It requires:

§ An attitude adjustment.

§ Behavioral modification.

§ The right supplies and resources.

Fortunately for you, I am here—Grasshopper no longer but indeed, the Master. Welcome to Extreme Couponing.

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT

There are a lot of misconceptions about how to save money on groceries. You must purge yourself of the following unclean thoughts:

I hate to clip coupons. No, you don’t. You love it. You know you do. It’s physical therapy. It’s a craft project. It will keep you from smoking or biting your nails. Busy hands are happy hands.

There are never any coupons for the things I buy. Yes, there are. You have to know where to look. There are coupons out there for everything from organic produce to meat to booze. Believe me, I would know. And everyone uses toilet paper, Kleenex, shampoo, bar soap and deodorant. If you don’t, you really have more things to worry about than saving money at the grocery store.

And, actually, couponing is only part of the secret to saving significant money on your grocery bill. Knowing when to buy the groceries you want—whether you have a coupon for them or not—is equally important.

All of the coupons say I have to buy two items, and I only need one. Not all coupons require the purchase of multiple items, but some do, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Another key to shaving dollars from your receipt is to purchase multiple items that you can either freeze or store when they are on sale. Later on, when those items aren’t on sale, you won’t have to pay full price—you can just dip into your larder.

I’ll end up buying something I don’t want and don’t need, just because I have a coupon for it. If that’s the case, then, as H.B. Lewis once said to Reva Shayne on “The Guiding Light,” “You and temptation were made for each other.” You may end up trying something new, but that’s strictly up to you. Nobody is going to hold a gun to your head and make you buy something because there happens to be a coupon for it. Even me.

I don’t have the room to stockpile merchandise. Unless you’re living in a yurt, you do too have the room, or you can make the room.

I can save more money at Wal-Mart (or Costco, or Sam’s Club). Wal-Mart’s prices on groceries aren’t that good—especially on staples like canned goods. We’ve just been conditioned to believe they are through Wal-Mart’s advertising.

And the warehouse stores? Please. Unless you have a family the size of the Von Trapps and a freezer the size of Fort Knox, the bulk sizes they purvey will just result in a monotonous diet and monstrous waste—for which you have the privilege of paying $45.00 a year. Which would you rather have in your cupboard? A #10 can of Van Kamp’s Pork and Beans that you got for $3.99, or a regular-sized can of Bush’s Baked Beans that was free?

I only shop at Trader Joe’s (or Bristol Farms, or Whole Foods). Those stores are terrific for high-end gourmet meats and cheeses. Their prices on (and selection of) things like detergent, shampoo, and other cleaning and personal-care items are outrageous. Even if you just start buying those things at a regular supermarket or chain drug store, you’ll have more money to spend at T.J.’s for soybean-fed veal liver and Swiss cheese that’s so authentic it’s 90% holes.

Now, repeat after me:

I love to clip coupons.

I’m willing to work to find coupons for the things I buy, and use them when those things are on sale.

I won’t buy things I won’t use just because I have coupons for them.

I’ll stockpile freezables and non-perishables by buying them with coupons when they are on sale.

I shop at Wal-Mart, Costco or Sam’s not for groceries but for clothing, electronics and those occasions when I need 800 pounds of frozen shrimp.

I only shop at Trader Joe’s for the gourmet items I can’t buy anywhere else.

Very good. Let’s move on.

BEHAVIORAL MODIFICATION

My parents always did their grocery shopping on Thursday nights. To this day, my sister does her primary shopping for her family of four on Thursday nights. There is no stopping her from this schedule.

It’s nice to have a routine, and it’s nice to do things at your convenience. But if you want to save big bucks at the supermarket, you may have to change your routine, and perhaps even shop at a less than ideal time. If your time is worth money, though, it may be worth the inconvenience.

Rule #1: Shop when the sales are. In Southern California, it pays to do your grocery shopping on Sunday, Monday or Tuesday each week.

The major chain supermarkets here (Ralphs, Vons and its upscale sibling Pavilions, Albertsons and Stater Bros.) begin a new sale week every Wednesday. They announce their sales in circulars that arrive in the Tuesday morning newspaper, or in some areas by mail, or that can be obtained in the stores themselves on Wednesday mornings. But while it may be tempting to go on a spending spree every Wednesday when the new sales begin, you must resist the urge to do so, for some very important reasons.

On Saturday afternoons, the Sunday newspapers come out on the newsstand, and they usually (but not always) include coupon inserts. Most coupons have expiration dates that are weeks or months away, and don’t need to be redeemed immediately. In fact, often it’s a good idea to wait, because there is no special sale price the day a given coupon arrives in the newspaper. However, just as often there is a sale on an item the day a coupon is issued. If you’ve already shopped sometime between Wednesday and Saturday, you may have missed an incredible bargain—forcing you either to make a special trip back to the store (not advisable with today’s gasoline prices) or to forgo the bargain altogether.

Occasionally, the Sunday papers also include advertisements from the supermarkets themselves, with special offers that are only good that Sunday morning until Tuesday night, before the new Wednesday sales begin.

Today’s Los Angeles Times, for example, included a special Vons insert with a number of three-day-only sale prices. One of them was for the 36-ounce bottle of Heinz ketchup—99 cents, limit one. I happened to have a coupon for 50 cents off any bottle of Heinz ketchup. Vons doubles coupons up to $1.00 in face value, not to exceed the sale price of the item, making my 50-cents-off coupon worth 99 cents, and making a big bottle of ketchup (not generic, not store-brand, not even Hunt’s, but Heinz—the real deal, baby) completely free. All I had to do was buy it on Sunday, Monday or Tuesday of this week. I managed to find the time.

The weekly supermarket ads tout the prices of only a few of the tens of thousands of items that a typical grocery store carries. There are also unadvertised sales that are going on inside the store. There are several Internet resources—The Grocery Game, Coupon Mom and Hot Coupon World among them—that employ armies of professional shoppers and volunteers to scour the markets every week for unadvertised sales. Naturally, it takes a while to compile that information, and the results of these surveys are usually not available (for Southern California stores) until Saturday afternoons. This is yet another reason that, in Southern California, it pays to shop on Sunday, Monday or Tuesday, after you can find out about the unadvertised deals.

Rule #2: Develop a weekly budget and stick to it. Being childless males whose pets have all died, our budget is less than that of a household filled with infants, dogs, cats and menstruating females. So I can’t give you any guidelines on what your budget should be. But in developing it, you should include anything you’d normally purchase in a supermarket or drug store (excluding prescription drugs).

Rule #3: Plan your meals around what’s on sale this week. This is the most difficult change in behavior some people are likely to have to make. But it’s an absolute necessity, at least when you’re first trying to slash your grocery expenditures. Love fresh asparagus? So do I, but it’s $3.99 a pound this week, three bucks a pound more than it was a couple of weeks ago. This week, fresh green beans are on sale for 99 cents a pound, so they’ll be on our plates more often this week.

But this compromise gets better over time. It’s almost the Fourth of July, so naturally I have a hankering for spare ribs. Unfortunately, they were $2.49 a pound at Vons today. I could wait and buy them when they’re back down to $1.00 a pound, like they were a few weeks ago. But in fact, I don’t need to wait, because I have ten pounds of spare ribs left in the freezer from that sale.

Rule #4: After you’ve bought what you need for the week, use the rest of your weekly budget to stockpile sale items. Just as supermarkets run their weekly sales from Wednesday to Tuesday each week, they run seasonal sales as well. For instance, flour, sugar and other baking needs are cheapest in the fall, when folks start doing their holiday baking. Similarly, the time to get the best deals on hot dogs, mustard, barbecue sauce and the like is right now—the beginning of summer. Other products—paper goods, cleaning supplies, personal-care products—go through cycles of being on sale for a while, then going back to their regular prices.

So let’s say your budget is $100.00 a week, and you purchase $80.00 worth of food and things you’re out of. What to do with that remaining $20.00? Well, perhaps this week Dove shampoo and conditioner are on sale for a buck a bottle after coupons; Crest or Colgate toothpaste is on sale for 50 cents a tube after coupons; and Oral-B toothbrushes are free after coupon.

If you’ve collected enough coupons from enough sources, you can buy enough five bottles each of shampoo and conditioner, 16 or 17 tubes of toothpaste and as many toothbrushes as you’ve got coupons for. The remainder of your $20.00 will go to pay the tax on those items.

You may be thinking, Why would I need that much of that stuff? Well, you don’t need it now—but you will eventually. And isn’t it better to be able to reach into your cabinet and take out a tube of Crest you paid 50 cents for than to have to go to the store and buy it for $3.49?

Next week, the smoking hot deals may be on toilet paper and hamburger buns. So the remainder of your budget then will go toward those items. And so on and so forth, until you have approximately a three-month supply of all of your pantry, laundry room and bathroom staples.

The question becomes, Where do I get enough coupons to buy 50 bottles of Tabasco sauce for 17 cents each? And that will be next week’s lesson. Stay tuned!