Mary Potter Kenyon - Extreme Couponing

The Making of a Coupon Commando

One. Two. Three. Four, Elizabeth counted out loud as she tossed the deodorants into the shopping cart. They landed with a satisfying thunk in the bottom. How many more coupons do we have?

A nearby customer couldnt help but smile at the unbridled enthusiasm of my teenage daughter. For an hour, Elizabeth and I had roamed the aisles of the Venture discount store, matching up coupons with our purchases and leaving the store with 150 dollars worth of merchandise for less than 25 dollars. The store was our battlefront, and we were prepared to fight inflation. Wed entered the store armed with a carefully organized coupon box and the motto cheap is good, but free is better. I often used our shopping sprees as real-life math lessons in our homeschooling, but Elizabeth seemed to enjoy the hunt for good deals nearly as much as I did.

That was in the late 1990s, when coupons regularly saved me 30 to 50 percent off my grocery bill and manufacturer refunds easily netted me 100 dollars a month and the majority of my familys Christmas gifts. Shopping was like a big game, with me hunting to fill our cupboards with cheap or free soap and cereal and opening the mailbox every day to find it stuffed with rebate checks, free product coupons, and refund premiums. The Sunday newspaper, with the thick, glossy coupon inserts, was our key to savings. Wed been informed by a friendly worker at the recycling center that, because of their shiny texture, this section was often separated from the rest and discarded. He encouraged us to take as many coupon inserts as we wanted whenever we brought our own recycling to their bins.

We didnt need to be told twice. In those days, our family visited the recycling center several times a week, filling the back end of our old station wagon with coupon inserts along with the medicine boxes and empty laundry detergent jugs I needed for refunding. Wed pour hot water in the jugs and soak them in the bathtub until the labels slid right off, then return them to the recycling center on our next trip, when wed pick up more. The labels were dried on paper towels on my kitchen counter, attached to index cards, and then filed in a large cabinet, along with pain reliever, antacid, make-up, and toothpaste boxes. I saved everything. Plastic sandwich bags held Kool-Aid points, battery UPCs, and candy bar wrappers. Long white envelopes filled with cereal box tops and bottoms were rubber-banded together. Trash meant cash back then, and the savvy refunder saved all of it in anticipation for future offers. I had an entire room devoted to my hobby, with a huge shelf and two filing cabinets. For serious couponers of this era, couponing was synonymous with refunding. It was about way more than just saving money at the grocery store; it was also about making money with manufacturers refunds and providing unique premium gifts for family and friends. Double coupon opportunities allowed me to stock our shelves and cupboards with many free products. Thanks to stores like Venture and Food-4-Less, both now defunct in Iowa, I never paid more than a few pennies for basics like shampoo, toothpaste, or bandages. On Christmas morning, our cash-strapped family enjoyed a bounty of gifts that included T-shirts emblazoned with the Energizer Bunny, Jolly Green Giant, or the Hershey candy bar logo; stuffed animals; radios; hats; and one Christmas, a Little Tykes dollhouse that was totally free thanks to Luvs diaper proofs of purchase. Stockings were filled with Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, crayons, Flintstone and Ducktails character figurines, and foot-long pencils inscribed with the recipients name. One year, a cigarette company offered televisions, radios, a video camera, and even a pool table, throwing avid refunders into a smoking and trading frenzy.

Back then, refund and rebate offers were plentiful, ranging from Crest-sponsored AT&T gift certificates that paid my phone bills for several months, to a free coffeemaker from Folgers and strings of M&M Christmas lights. The majority of offers were unlimited and didnt require cash register receipts, accounting for the aforementioned files that bulged with empty bags and boxes. When an offer came out, all I had to do was go to my files and pull out the proofs of purchase needed to fulfill them. I didnt stop there. I was not above filching empty candy bar wrappers from trash bins at the park or picking up the back cards of batteries from store parking lots. My children all sported Hershey shirts but ate very few of the required candy bars themselves to get them. Trips to the pool were the most rewarding, where candy was sold at the concession stand and the trash receptacles were overflowing with wrappers. On neighborhood trash day, the children and I walked up and down the alleys, where we confiscated extra Pampers points to send in for savings bonds and toys. Even the tennis shoes my children wore on these jaunts were obtained free from the Huggies diaper company.

In 1991 I thought Id died and gone to heaven when a former neighbor called and asked me if I wanted her deceased husbands stash of proofs of purchase and qualifiers that filled an entire basement. Whatever I didnt want, she would be throwing out. I passed over complete cereal boxes from the 70s in favor of the more recent qualifiers. Much later I would regret that move when I got online and saw collectors of cereal boxes paid top dollar for those same boxes, flattened or not.

In the 80s and 90s, magazines devoted to refunding and couponing were prolific, offering support and trading opportunities for people like me, the avid coupon users and refunders. At one point, I was trading with fourteen other women through the mail, each of us filling an envelope for the other from their wish list of coupons and refund forms. We all loved saving money through our hobby. We were, and are, a different breed of shopper, one dubbed cherry-pickers by marketers and crazy by some of our own friends and family.

I reached the point of no return when I discovered there was a whole world of refunding and couponing beyond the Sunday inserts. Like the addict searching for their next fix, I centered my life on the next big deal. I looked for pads of forms everywhere I went, from those posted on the store shelf to on-package coupons and rebates. I loved the free things, the boxes delivered to my front door, the full mailbox and bathroom shelves bowing with the weight of the bottles of shampoo, tubes of toothpaste, cleaners, and health and beauty items that only cost me pennies. As my family grew and I made the decision to stay home with my children, I liked being able to stretch our budget in such a creative way, and got a real sense of satisfaction from shopping the sales with my coupons.

It didnt take long to realize just how different I was than the average shopper, however. As I got more deeply involved in couponing and refunding, my extreme enthusiasm for the hobby was dampened only by the reaction I got from others when I attempted to share the sagas of my good deals. Initially, I was deluded into thinking that the only thing that kept them from doing what I did was their lack of knowledge. So I frequently, and at great lengths, detailed my shopping sprees.

Guess what I saved with Ventures double coupons today? I would gush on the phone to a friend, only to be greeted with a dead silence on the other end. Then she might lamely ask what I could possibly do with all the merchandise Id obtained. What would we do with it? We had six children then. Wed use it eventually, share it, barter with it, or even sell it. After all, free is free.