Secrets of superstar grocery shoppers

By Melinda Fulmer

We've all heard stories about people walking in to a grocery store and plunking down a few bucks for a cartful of groceries

It's possible, said Stephanie Nelson, the "Coupon Mom." But it's not very practical.

"I once got $100 worth of groceries for $1.95," said Nelson, who operates grocery-deals site The Coupon Mom and wrote "Greatest Secrets of the Coupon Mom." But, she said, it was mostly toothbrushes, tomato sauce and other nonessential items. She couldn't feed her family on it. "I would have had to rush out to the store the next day."

While some rabid couponers scour the Internet and even the dump to score free coupons and rebates, that's really not necessary, say Nelson and Teri Gault, operator of The Grocery Game.

The women agree that an investment of just 30 minutes a week and a Sunday newspaper will save most people hundreds of dollars each month. I gave it a try myself and cut my grocery bill by more than half in my first outing.

The strategy

The key, they say, is matching coupons to good sales at your local store. The idea is to use your coupons when an item is on sale and stock your cupboard when something hits a rock-bottom price. Pretty soon, they say, you will have a stockpile of a variety of good food.

"It's not about changing the way you eat, but changing the way you buy the food that you like," Nelson said.

Most grocery products in the center of the store, from cleaners to frozen items to soup, go on sale at least once every three months. You monitor the prices on the items you buy most (either by yourself or with the help of one of these sites) and, when your Friday night frozen pizza hits its lowest price, buy several with one of your coupons.

Don't buy, Gault said, just because the grocer's ads tell you it's a good deal. And keep your eye open for unadvertised deals and coupons in the store. By combining sales and coupons, you can often get many things on your list for pennies on the dollar or even free. In late winter, for example, shoppers can expect to get canned beans, canned tomatoes, chilis and pastas free with a coupon, she said.

Steals like these are more common, Nelson said, as manufacturers have increased the face value of coupons. The average coupon was $1.16 in 2006, according to coupon-consulting firm CMS Inc.

Ironically, the number of people taking advantage of them is shrinking. Coupon redemption fell 13%, to 2.6 billion, in 2006, CMS said.

So, you hate clipping coupons?

As intriguing as the savings were, I knew I might have a problem following the system. I'm not a big planner when it comes to cooking. In fact, I like to cook and bake on a whim. So the idea of clipping coupons and delayed gratification didn't seem that attractive to me.

Frankly, neither did some of the items in that week's coupons, like fish sticks.

But the way Nelson puts it, I would be a fool not to take advantage of the deals in my area, Los Angeles. It's the most competitive grocery region in the country and has the most coupons with the highest face value. (Good thing, because the house payments here are a killer.) So I decided to put their system to the test, purchasing my groceries that week with coupons from Sunday's paper and a list from Teri's Web site of the best deals at my local Ralphs store.

Both Nelson and Gault publish lists of the best deals on groceries at most of the larger chains in each of the major markets. These lists track the deals, tell shoppers when to use coupons and the date the coupons ran. The final price and savings are listed as well.

However, the similarities end there. Couponmom.com is free, supported by advertising. Grocerygame.com charges subscribers $5 each month after an initial trial, with a guarantee that it catches all the unadvertised deals and that its database puts items on the list only when they have reached a "rock bottom" price.

Continued: Cleaning up on Aisle 5

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