Who isn't trying to save money in this economy!
Coupon-ing is saving one local mom thousands a year.
So Seven On Your Side wanted to find out, can high tech beat your scissors?
Christy Coffee homeschools her children and teaches something else: Coupon-ing, at local churches.
She's good at it!
"If you were to go back to one of your checkout moments that was like "YES!" what was your favorite moment?" I asked.
"One of my favorites was in Publix I had gotten like 80 something dollars worth of groceries and only spent a few dollars and the cashier actually jumped up and down for me! That was kind of fun," she tells me.
Those weekly moments turn into enormous yearly savings, she and her husband keep track of on a spread sheet.
How much did Christy save last year?
"Last year out of pocket we spent $3700 and we got $11,339 worth of merchandise," Christy revealed.
That's $7500 in savings last year. It started more than 2 years ago, with a free class at the local library.
Christy says, "I recently got Silk Milk for 20 cents!"
And that is when she stockpiles. When incredible deals come up. She says you can't be brand loyal.
At first she used all coupons out of the circulars in the papers but for the last six months, that's been changing.
"I have definately started using alot more internet coupons (last 6 months). Now I use at least 60 to 70 percent printable from online. It used to be 80 percent Sunday coupons," Christy says.
Christy's Favorite couponing website links
There are plenty of coupon apps, that we tested like Coupon Clipper on the Android. We spotted Christy's hair salon with a deal.
"5 dollars off a haircut that would be good," she said. That is somewhere I take my daughter for a haircut so it is good to be able to find a coupon."
Christy tells Seven On Your Side she sees apps as a supplement to what she is already doing. But some coupon apps we tried out had no local coupons at all.
I also tested out an app on a big ticket item like a plasma TV, using a bar code scanner app on the Android that lets you comparison shop. Walgreens had a TV for 349. The app showed us prices ranging from 404 to 530 dollars in area stores. And online prices were sky high showing 599 and 472.99.
When we tried bar code scanner on Christy's products at home, it was frustrating. Many of the bar codes scanned "product not found." When we used voice recognition, results popped, but they were hard to compare because quantity wasn't the same.
On snuggle Walgreens had it for $3.99 but when I asked Christy how that compared to her purchase price, she said, "It was on sale for $3.87 and I had a three dollar coupon so I
paid .87 cents."
Time after time Christy's coupon deals beat the apps.
Christy said, "I think they can be somewhat beneificial to search for a specific item to get best price but just for your weekly savings and trying to cut costs and really reduce that grocery budget I don't see it would work without being very time consuming."
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