![]() Nathan Engels, founder of the Web forum, said he had 1,500 sticks of deodorant in his garage. One of the most extreme things shown on “Extreme Couponing” was the amount of products shoppers were stockpiling. “Target is the best national store to do that at, because they’ve got their printable coupons online,” Demer said. While you can use only one manufacturer’s coupon per item, you can also use one store coupon per item. Many stores publish their own coupons, on their Web sites or in their ads. Demer explained that the coupons in the Sunday paper are almost all manufacturers’ coupons, issued by the companies that make the goods. Stack store coupons with manufacturers coupons. “All it’s saying is that you can’t use two 50-cent coupons on one can of beans.” “One coupon per purchase just means one coupon per item,” Demer said. People, sometimes even cashiers, incorrectly interpret the words “one coupon per purchase” printed on most coupons to mean that you can use only one per trip to the checkout. After Demer appeared on “Extreme Couponing,” she got questions from viewers who were puzzled that she could clip the same coupon from many copies of the Sunday paper, then use them all in one transaction. Feel free to use a lot of coupons at once, even if they are identical. When you have a $1 coupon, she said, use it when the hummus is $1 don’t waste it when the hummus costs more than $5. Cataldo used a particular brand of hummus as an example: On a recent week it was selling for $5.49 at one store and $1 at another supermarket. The price of most grocery items will vary widely over a 12-week cycle. Here are some of the secrets that extreme - ahem, aggressive - couponers use to get those jaw-dropping savings: ![]() I count myself among shoppers like Cataldo and Demer who use coupons more effectively than most people do, with big benefits. “I think the ones paying full price are crazy,” she said with a laugh. On the show, she slashed a $600 register total to $2.64. She described her coupon use as “strategic” but said she doesn’t mind if people think she’s a little unbalanced - after all, her Web site is. Joanie Demer, a Northern California couponer, was shown in “Extreme Couponing” Dumpster diving for newspaper inserts with her small child. She teaches “Super-Couponing” workshops and sells a DVD course (found at ) to help beginners learn the coupon tricks necessary to slash grocery bills. “I would definitely consider myself aggressive. She used to be in deep credit-card debt, and her sympathetic boyfriend wonders if couponing “gives her an outlet to shop ’til she drops.” Another couponer, Jessica, says, “Everyone’s reaction to my stockpile is, ‘Oh my god, you’re a hoarder,’ ” but she adds, “When I see all the pretty labels facing forward … it makes me happy.” Like other TLC reality shows- Say Yes to the Dress or What Not to Wear-the appeal of Extreme Couponing lies partly in its satisfying predictability: Bride needs a dress, she finds one woman dresses terribly, she gets a makeover couponer goes shopping, she pays barely anything.Call us “extreme couponers” or “crazy coupon ladies.” Just don’t call us late for dinner, because we’ll be the ones bringing extras of everything, which we bought for pennies on the dollar.Īfter the recent TLC special “Extreme Couponing” portrayed four enthusiastic couponers as potential head cases, grocery savings expert Jill Cataldo reached for adjectives other than “extreme” to describe how she uses coupons. A 24-year-old “coupon diva” named Rebecca, who has enough potato chips in her stockpile to feed 800 people, says she goes to sleep and wakes up thinking about coupons. ![]() Each episode follows two different couponers through one grocery store shopping trip during which they try to get as many products for as little money as possible. Or you can watch the first season on Netflix in one long, pathetic binge. The show, which just finished its fifth season, is on a continuous loop on TLC. The groceries they purchase en masse at steep discount are “hauls” once those hauls are stacked neatly in the basement, they become “stockpiles” the word coupon is always pronounced “kew-pon” the children being fed from the stockpiles built with these kew-pons are “litters.” For these people, couponing is not a hobby, it’s a 60-hour-a-week commitment, even a way of life. The women (and very few men) featured on TLC’s Extreme Couponing, a reality show about bargain-obsessed shoppers, have their own vocabulary. ![]()
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