Everyone knows coupons can save you money at the store. But some people are taking it to the extreme, buying hundreds of dollars worth of groceries for just a few bucks.
When Tiffany Ivanosky goes grocery shopping, there's always a clean up on aisle three and five, well all of them. She cleans up using coupons. "I'm gonna get, really, almost anything here free or nearly free. This pays me about $75 to $100 an hour to coupon because I save that much money for my family," she said.
She even teaches classes on extreme couponing and here's a brief tutorial. Ivanovsky buys a schick quattro razor which costs $6.97. Her coupon takes $5 off, so she only pays $1.97. She buys two cans of soup, which normally costs $2.74. But they are on sale for 84 cents each, knocking the total down to $1.68. Ivanovsky has a coupon that takes a dollar off, so she only pays 68 cents for the two cans.
Here's a trickier lesson, on something called overages. Let's say you buy an item that costs $3 but you coupon is worth $5. Some stores will give you a $2 credit, an overage that will help pay for things that rarely have coupons like meat and produce."At Walmart, they have a great overage policy. I can walk in there, if I only spent two dollars, but the coupon is for eight dollars, they will actually give me six dollars cash back, in my hand, hand me the cash," she said.
Stores are glad extreme couponers are in the minority. "Retailer margins are not that big to begin with. If every single one of their customers was an extreme coupon clipper, the retailer would make no money," said Jacqueline Kacen with the University of Houston Bauer College of Business.
Now even if you don't have the savvy to buy a cart full of groceries for little or know money, there's still some significant things you can do to lower your grocery bill. Look for meal deals and stock up whenever you see meat on sale.
When Ivanovsky checks out, her total is $71.34 before coupons. But when all the scanning is done, her total is $27.72.
