'Coupon Mom' simplifies frugality

Emily J. Minor

writes for the Palm Beach Post

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - This is how Stephanie Nelson, a.k.a. Coupon Mom, does her weekly shopping. She goes to CVS, where she walks out with many important family items - maybe shampoo, maybe Diet Coke, maybe granola bars - but spends nothing. You heard right. Nothing.

And then she goes to the discount grocer, and she's very firm about her shopping list here: bananas, romaine lettuce, apples, oranges and broccoli. She spends about $15. And then, detailed plan in hand, Nelson drives to her regular grocery store - usually on a Saturday morning after she's cleaned out the fridge - where she spends anywhere from $45 to $60, for the week, for her family of four.

And then, sometime later that day, she makes a nice supper. Maybe something like grilled chicken, brown rice, broccoli, and a green salad.

Nelson, 44, of suburban Atlanta, has an important quality that so many of us would like to embrace, especially these days.

She's frugal.

"Frugality runs in my family," said Nelson, who started the Web site called couponmom.com about seven years ago and these days is all over the national media.

At 11, she was babysitting.

At 13, she was running a house-cleaning business.

By 15, she was waitressing.

In college, she ran a typing service.

So, years later, it wasn't that much of a stretch to quit her corporate marketing job to stay home with the two children and really cut back.

Not everyone embraced her thinking. "Honestly, at first, my friends thought I was wacky," she said.

The starter seed for what has become her booming business began one morning in church, when Nelson read in the Sunday bulletin that the local food pantry needed donations. Nelson had a double "aha" moment.

She hadn't realized the food bank was in such dire straits. And all the things they needed were super-double coupons in that week's grocery-store flier.

She could do good, and not spend a dime.

And so what started as Stephanie Nelson's outreach mission has evolved through the years - with the downturn of the economy and an attempt at everyday frugality by even the least disciplined of us - into www.couponmom.com, a place where she and her staff will do the research and allow us, the clueless consumers, to reap the benefits of their hard work.

And she's more popular than ever at dinner parties.

"It really is amazing how many people are actively seeking information about this now," said Nelson. "This is not news to people in the coupon world, but it's news to everybody else."

The news being this: Why spend $2.69 for Pert shampoo when you have a store coupon and a CVS extra-buck coupon and a newspaper coupon and you combine all this brilliance and get your Pert for free? No shoplifting involved. And you have clean, beautiful hair.

"Strategic shopping is what I call it," she says.

The Web site, which is so successful with ads and hits that Nelson now employs 10 workers, works like this: They go through all the grocery fliers for all the states and figure out what's on sale. Usually, specials run Thursday to Thursday.

Then her staff lists everything that's on sale and they tell you whether there's another coupon available that will bring the cost down even more. "We match it up," she said. "It's all based on the Coupon Mom system. My assumption is that people hate to use coupons. They take too long to cut out and organize."

But there are caveats, of course. You can't just log in and, voilà, save money.

You have to plan. Nelson says she plans her family's meals around what's on sale.

"Make your list," she said. "Make it as comprehensible as possible. Then I use my Web site and find the deals and the coupons."

When she recently tallied up what she spent in May and June - and they're not eating Ramen noodles - it was $82 a week for her family of four.

"I have a routine, which I keep up, and we're not running out of stuff and running to the store," she said.

But the dairy aisle can be so refreshing on a hot day . . .

Nelson's Web site is not for the weak of heart. And if you're like me - wasteful, clueless, slow to learn - you'll want to give yourself some time the first time around.

I love the state-by-state list of grocery store sales. If you're on vacation in Ohio and want to shop at Kroger, so be it. And it makes the grocery list easier, because it's spelled out, with helpful hints about additional coupons.

As I was Googling Nelson and learning how she once bought a cool, $300 KitchenAid mixer for $169 online, using coupons and pure grit, I got a very important e-mail from the Dairy Queen.

Dear Emily, it read.

Thank you for joining the Blizzard Fan Club! You will be receiving your Blizzard coupon in roughly one week. In the meantime, stay posted for more Blizzard treats sent your way and enjoy the satisfaction of belonging to something tastier than yourself!

I'm not sure this is the kind of savings a fledgling frugal wannabe like myself is supposed to be seeking.

But it is a sweet deal.