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Richmond Times - Dispatch

By DAN SEWELL

With her household budget tightening, Michelle Fox treats couponing like getting a part-time job to help make ends meet.

In her case, it's a job that pays about $20 an hour.

"Every little bit helps. It's something I do for my family," said the Pueblo, Colo., resident, who helps offset rising costs for her five-person household by spending a few hours each week scouring the Sunday newspapers and Internet sites for opportunities to save quarters and dollars per item.

Fox has been a couponer for years, enduring the snickers or grumbles from customers waiting in line behind her as she handed over fistfuls of coupons. But that's changing, she said. Now people trying to cope with $4-a-gallon gas and higher grocery prices are asking her for tips on finding and using coupons.

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The expanding availability of printable coupons online, of paperless digital coupons that can be accessed from cell phones and store loyalty cards, and an explosion of Web sites and bloggers focused on sharing coupon information are also feeding a comeback of what had been a fading Sunday tradition in American households. But it's mainly the economy that has people of more diverse ages and incomes clipping and clicking.

"That lackluster economy brings out the couponing tendency in all of us," said Sharon Baker, executive director of Shortcuts, a digital-coupon distribution service started this year by Time Warner Inc.'s AOL.

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Amid soaring fuel costs and a housing and credit crisis, Americans last year halted a 16-year trend of declining redemptions by turning in 2.6 billion manufacturers' coupons, according to CMS Inc., a coupon processing agent and promotions logistics service based in Winston-Salem, N.C. That marked the first year since 1992, when nearly 8 billion coupons were used, that redemptions had not fallen.

Coupons Inc., which specializes in offering printable online coupons, says usage trends spiked last September.

Stephanie Nelson, an Atlanta-area woman behind the The Coupon Mom, a Web site that offers coupons, information and advice, said daily visits to her site have more than tripled this year, to about 25,000 a day.

"You can't really cut the price of gas, but you can cut the cost of food in half," said Teri Gault, founder and chief executive of TheGroceryGame.com, a site that helps users coordinate coupon use with supermarket and drug-store sales to maximize savings.

Another trend: A younger demographic is getting involved in an activity traditionally dominated by 50-plus women.

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The trends aren't lost on retailers and manufacturers, who have increased coupon offerings. Companies such as consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble Co. and grocery store chain Kroger Co. have stepped up coupon offerings and are trying new delivery methods; P&G teamed with Kroger late last year to offer paperless coupons online, and both have since expanded digital offers with other tie-ins such as with Shortcuts.

Digital coupons tend to have much higher usage rates than traditional paper coupons -- as few as 1 percent of manufacturers' coupons are usually redeemed in a given year. Advertisers also are increasingly using coupons to attract attention to new products, and online coupons are helping them efficiently reach consumers.

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Tips for saving

Here are 10 tips for novice couponers, from Stephanie Nelson started "The Coupon Mom" Web site:

1) Know how your stores' coupon policies work. Ask if they double coupons.

2) Wait to use grocery coupons when the item is on sale. You might get the item free!

3) Buy two to three copies of the Sunday newspaper to load up on coupons.

4) Print FREE coupons from coupon Web sites. Also download electronic coupons to your loyalty card from store sites such as Kroger.com.

5) Be brand-flexible. Buy the brand that's on sale with a coupon, or get the store brand if it's less expensive.

6) Sign up for your store's loyalty card and provide complete mailing information. You'll get special store coupons.

7) Know the usual prices for your regular items and stock up when they're discounted.

8) Shop once a week or less to reduce impulse shopping. Plan your week's meals around your store's sale items.

9) Be flexible about your store choices. Check ads for area stores, and shop at the one with the best deals on your items that week.

10) Use the drugstore savings programs. Combine sale prices, store coupons and automatic rebates to get free merchandise every week.

ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO

Originally published by The Associated Press.

(c) 2008 Richmond Times - Dispatch. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.