By Laura Powell
Last updated at 6:35 PM on 27th November 2011
For El Jones, it’s the challenge, the rush and, above all, the buzz that feeds her compulsion. It eats up ten hours every week but her husband Ed doesn’t mind. For there are no side effects, no support groups needed and no casualties – unless you count the 20 aubergines that fell on Ed’s head from the china cabinet, where El, 28, had stashed them.
She stows her other spoils wherever she finds space – 45 courgettes in the freezer, dozens of tins of baked beans and chopped tomatoes in the loft, 90 toilet rolls in the cloakroom and, currently, ten cans of anti-freeze and 12 tins of water chestnuts hidden in the car boot.
Quite simply, El, an author from Manchester, is an extreme couponer – and she’s fiercely proud of it, too. Like a growing number of resoundingly middle-class women, she has cottoned on to a trend that has trickled over from America, where discount vouchers and money-off coupons have been popular since the early 20th Century.
Voucher king: Simon Bird with his wife Suzanna and some of his haul of groceries
In America, this trend involves cutting out coupons from magazines, newspapers and leaflets and even swapping them at exchange boxes at supermarkets where dedicated shoppers trade unwanted vouchers for useful ones. But British couponers rely far more on the internet. After printing discount vouchers from specially dedicated websites or downloading them to mobile phones, they stock up on heavily discounted groceries that they store in basements, lofts, under beds or, in El’s case, in her car boot.
Self-confessed extreme-couponer Sachin Thanki, of Greenwich, South London, stockpiled 24 tubs of Fish hairstyling clay and L’Oreal deodorant, plus a year’s supply of shaving foam and skin lotion, when he found them on special offer in Boots.
According to Roland Bryan, managing director of the Wowcher website, customers are becoming savvier in how they spend money.
‘I shove them wherever there’s space – in my wardrobe, my dressing area, under the bathroom cabinet and on my wife’s dressing table,’ he says.
And far from blushing, when they produce stacks of vouchers at checkouts or bulk-buy during special offers, true ‘couponers’, as they call themselves, are delighted by every penny they save.
According to Roland Bryan, managing director of the Wowcher website, customers are becoming savvier in how they spend money.
Simon Bird is a savvy shopper but you have to be technologically minded to do it
The company – which is owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust, which also owns The Mail on Sunday – offers daily money-off deals on experiences such as spa days, beauty treatments and nights out.
Mr Bryan said: ‘In these tough economic times, especially at Christmas, getting a discount of 70 per cent or more on great products and services looks a very attractive way of spending your money.’
THE average Briton saved ?1,200 using money-off coupons, special deals and freebies this year, according to moneysupermarket.com – almost double the 2009 figure of ?672. And El, who charts her frugality on a blog called A Thrifty Mrs, admits: ‘I like to get everything as close to free as is humanly possible. It’s a challenge I set with myself and when I’ve found an amazing bargain, I do a little whoop.’
Some rather more dedicated women, including Debbie O’Connor and Kate Edwards, even travelled to New York last month to learn the tricks of couponing at a special workshop run by an American couponing company called Southern Savers.
The rewards are indeed bountiful. El has cut her weekly grocery bill down to ?15 from ?80. Debbie, of Staines, Middlesex, who runs a business and blog called Motivating Mum, boasts that she saved ?100 off her husband’s Christmas present and ?400 off a mattress she recently bought from deals website Groupon.
One key difference between a casual bargain-hunter and a dedicated couponer is the copious planning the latter is willing to put in.
For instance, Kate, of Wells, Somerset, dedicated a one-off, seven-hour day to restructuring her shopping habits. This involved creating two spreadsheets. In the first, she wrote a list of everything in her kitchen cupboards, then used price-comparison websites such as mysupermarket.co.uk to estimate the average price for everything. ‘I make sure I never pay more than that amount,’ she says.
For the second spreadsheet, she trawled the internet to determine her 15 favourite coupon websites.
For Debbie, meanwhile, the New York course represented a complete lifestyle change, and she admits coupon-hunting is incredibly addictive. ‘I get a huge amount of satisfaction from getting a deal,’ she says. ‘For me, it’s a continuous process.’
After deciding what ‘big purchases’ she needs to make in the coming months – such as presents or a new mobile – she meticulously dedicates between two and three hours each week to voucher-hunting, then keeps receipts of her best deals as trophies. Her proudest achievement was a grocery shop worth ?155 that cost her ?99.
Coupon lover: Debbie O'Conner attended a US conference and now plans to set up classes in the UK
Some couponers make even that sort of saving look terrifically unimpressive, such as the stars of American reality television show Extreme Couponing, where one woman reduced her ?148.07 supermarket bill to ?4.45 with a handbag of coupons.
Another man had a garage containing 10,000 groceries – including frozen chickens, cheese, deodorants and shower gel – worth a total of ?48,200. But the haul had cost him just ?643 thanks to his coupon collection.
Clips from the series appeared on video-sharing websites after it first aired last December and some have scored 390,000 hits. Since then, the number of Google searches for the term ‘voucher codes’ has risen by 30 per cent in Britain, and in the past month alone there were 20?million searches for it in Britain.
Even more excitement was whipped up by the extreme-couponing workshop in New York, attended by Debbie and Kate, and available as a video online. In it, speaker Jenny Martin advised: ‘I go [into the supermarket] with a goal of saving between 50 and 70 per cent, and then I’m excited when I check out because I met my goal.’
Debbie was so enthused she intends to host two extreme-couponing workshops in South-West London in January for 20 to 30 would-be couponers.
One key difference between a casual bargain-hunter and a dedicated couponer is the copious planning the latter is willing to put in.
‘The reality is that the UK is heading down that road of extreme couponing,’ explains Simon Bird, general manager of Savoo, a London-based voucher-code website. Simon has turned the basement of his South-West London home into an Aladdin’s cave of voucher bargains, including 20 deodorant roll-ons, 5kg of rice, 12 bottles of Coca-Cola, 30 toilet rolls and 216 Weetabix biscuits.
‘The difference is, Britons tend to prefer to download vouchers from websites, then use them to shop online or send them to their mobile phones. They also prefer other forms of deals – such as buy-one-get-one-free or two-for-the-price-of-one – to traditional American coupons.’
The reason for this is partly cultural – America has a history of using paper coupons – but, also, a sense of shame. Some women I communicated with, and a number of blog posts on these forums, admitted that arriving at checkouts armed with piles of paper vouchers was embarrassing.
Thrifty: Debbie with just some of the items that she managed to save money on by using coupons
More extreme couponers tend to disagree – especially El. ‘I get a tremendous buzz from saving money,’ she says. Her rule is, if she can’t find a voucher, she won’t buy it.
Her shopping approach is methodical. First, she types what she wants to buy into her favourite coupon websites, such as moneysavingexpert.com and vouchercodes.co.uk. ‘Once I’ve found a voucher code on one of them, I’ll search for an even cheaper coupon to get more money off,’ she says.
Each voucher has a special number or password that often needs to be activated by sharing your email address with the provider. This e-voucher can then be used when paying for items at the shop’s online website. The shopper types in the number or password at the checkout to reduce the overall bill.
‘When I’ve typed it in, I wait anxiously to see whether the shop’s website accepts my code. Sometimes the vouchers are out of date. It’s a take-a-deep-breath moment. Then when the sale goes through, there’s the glee and a little squeal of excitement.’
El also shops this way for clothes, holidays, computer games and even cinema trips.
Holly Farden, 21, of Northamptonshire, also spends about ten hours each week shopping in the same way and has cut her weekly grocery bill from ?60 to ?35. ‘I needed to do a bit of stocking up on our shopping because last winter our car couldn’t handle the snow and ice – so we were stuck indoors living on beans on toast,’ she says.
While searching for money-saving tips on a website, she stumbled across a discussion forum about vouchers and coupons and learned how to become a couponer.
‘[Now] I start off by writing a rough list of what food I need, then I go through what coupons I currently have and any others I need to print off,’ she says.
Finally, she logs into the Tesco website to find out the week’s offers, then adapts her shopping list and meal plan to suit her coupons.
Website manager Harriet Pierce, of North London, spends just 30 minutes a week searching for vouchers and free supermarket delivery codes but has reduced her household’s weekly grocery shop from ?180 to ?140.
OTHERS, meanwhile, prefer to buy cheaply and in bulk – including James Boit, of South-West London, who stockpiles huge boxes of reduced-price washing powder, dozens of chocolate bars, crates of dog food and tinned tomatoes in his downstairs shower room.
Kate Edwards recently went on an extreme couponing course in New York
Storage is one of the main factors that reins in British shoppers compared with American couponers. ‘Storage tends to be a problem in the UK because we have smaller homes so there is less space for stockpiles,’ explains finance expert Annie Shaw, editor of cashquestions.com and co-author of the book 100 Ways To Beat The Credit Crunch.
‘Using coupons is a good idea but you have to be technology-savvy to get involved. You have to know which websites to download vouchers from, and online shopping communities are also an important place to hear about the best deal through word of mouth.
‘It’s something Britons are rapidly getting used to and it will be very difficult for retailers to get shoppers to pay full price again.’
Which is no doubt music to the ears of El. ‘It’s a laugh, a challenge I set myself but, importantly, it saves us money,’ she says. ‘There’s nothing better than my friends complimenting the cakes I’ve baked and then me telling them they cost me 35p.’
As for the rewards she reaps, El is insistent – as are the other women I interview – that she isn’t totally frugal. ‘I spend some of the money we save on luxuries such as holidays, gadgets and computer games.’
Breakfasts, lunches and dinners might be pre-planned and budgeted stringently six days a week, but on the seventh night, even El and husband Ed will splash out .??.??. to an extent. ‘We go to the cinema and out for dinner, often to a pizza parlour,’ she says. ‘But, as with everything else, the golden rule still applies: only if we print out a voucher first.’
Last updated at 6:35 PM on 27th November 2011
She stows her other spoils wherever she finds space – 45 courgettes in the freezer, dozens of tins of baked beans and chopped tomatoes in the loft, 90 toilet rolls in the cloakroom and, currently, ten cans of anti-freeze and 12 tins of water chestnuts hidden in the car boot.
Quite simply, El, an author from Manchester, is an extreme couponer – and she’s fiercely proud of it, too. Like a growing number of resoundingly middle-class women, she has cottoned on to a trend that has trickled over from America, where discount vouchers and money-off coupons have been popular since the early 20th Century.
Voucher king: Simon Bird with his wife Suzanna and some of his haul of groceries
In America, this trend involves cutting out coupons from magazines, newspapers and leaflets and even swapping them at exchange boxes at supermarkets where dedicated shoppers trade unwanted vouchers for useful ones. But British couponers rely far more on the internet. After printing discount vouchers from specially dedicated websites or downloading them to mobile phones, they stock up on heavily discounted groceries that they store in basements, lofts, under beds or, in El’s case, in her car boot.
Self-confessed extreme-couponer Sachin Thanki, of Greenwich, South London, stockpiled 24 tubs of Fish hairstyling clay and L’Oreal deodorant, plus a year’s supply of shaving foam and skin lotion, when he found them on special offer in Boots.
According to Roland Bryan, managing director of the Wowcher website, customers are becoming savvier in how they spend money.
‘I shove them wherever there’s space – in my wardrobe, my dressing area, under the bathroom cabinet and on my wife’s dressing table,’ he says.
And far from blushing, when they produce stacks of vouchers at checkouts or bulk-buy during special offers, true ‘couponers’, as they call themselves, are delighted by every penny they save.
According to Roland Bryan, managing director of the Wowcher website, customers are becoming savvier in how they spend money.
Simon Bird is a savvy shopper but you have to be technologically minded to do it
The company – which is owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust, which also owns The Mail on Sunday – offers daily money-off deals on experiences such as spa days, beauty treatments and nights out.
Mr Bryan said: ‘In these tough economic times, especially at Christmas, getting a discount of 70 per cent or more on great products and services looks a very attractive way of spending your money.’
THE average Briton saved ?1,200 using money-off coupons, special deals and freebies this year, according to moneysupermarket.com – almost double the 2009 figure of ?672. And El, who charts her frugality on a blog called A Thrifty Mrs, admits: ‘I like to get everything as close to free as is humanly possible. It’s a challenge I set with myself and when I’ve found an amazing bargain, I do a little whoop.’
Some rather more dedicated women, including Debbie O’Connor and Kate Edwards, even travelled to New York last month to learn the tricks of couponing at a special workshop run by an American couponing company called Southern Savers.
The rewards are indeed bountiful. El has cut her weekly grocery bill down to ?15 from ?80. Debbie, of Staines, Middlesex, who runs a business and blog called Motivating Mum, boasts that she saved ?100 off her husband’s Christmas present and ?400 off a mattress she recently bought from deals website Groupon.
One key difference between a casual bargain-hunter and a dedicated couponer is the copious planning the latter is willing to put in.
For instance, Kate, of Wells, Somerset, dedicated a one-off, seven-hour day to restructuring her shopping habits. This involved creating two spreadsheets. In the first, she wrote a list of everything in her kitchen cupboards, then used price-comparison websites such as mysupermarket.co.uk to estimate the average price for everything. ‘I make sure I never pay more than that amount,’ she says.
For the second spreadsheet, she trawled the internet to determine her 15 favourite coupon websites.
For Debbie, meanwhile, the New York course represented a complete lifestyle change, and she admits coupon-hunting is incredibly addictive. ‘I get a huge amount of satisfaction from getting a deal,’ she says. ‘For me, it’s a continuous process.’
After deciding what ‘big purchases’ she needs to make in the coming months – such as presents or a new mobile – she meticulously dedicates between two and three hours each week to voucher-hunting, then keeps receipts of her best deals as trophies. Her proudest achievement was a grocery shop worth ?155 that cost her ?99.
Coupon lover: Debbie O'Conner attended a US conference and now plans to set up classes in the UK
Some couponers make even that sort of saving look terrifically unimpressive, such as the stars of American reality television show Extreme Couponing, where one woman reduced her ?148.07 supermarket bill to ?4.45 with a handbag of coupons.
Another man had a garage containing 10,000 groceries – including frozen chickens, cheese, deodorants and shower gel – worth a total of ?48,200. But the haul had cost him just ?643 thanks to his coupon collection.
Clips from the series appeared on video-sharing websites after it first aired last December and some have scored 390,000 hits. Since then, the number of Google searches for the term ‘voucher codes’ has risen by 30 per cent in Britain, and in the past month alone there were 20?million searches for it in Britain.
Even more excitement was whipped up by the extreme-couponing workshop in New York, attended by Debbie and Kate, and available as a video online. In it, speaker Jenny Martin advised: ‘I go [into the supermarket] with a goal of saving between 50 and 70 per cent, and then I’m excited when I check out because I met my goal.’
Debbie was so enthused she intends to host two extreme-couponing workshops in South-West London in January for 20 to 30 would-be couponers.
One key difference between a casual bargain-hunter and a dedicated couponer is the copious planning the latter is willing to put in.
‘The reality is that the UK is heading down that road of extreme couponing,’ explains Simon Bird, general manager of Savoo, a London-based voucher-code website. Simon has turned the basement of his South-West London home into an Aladdin’s cave of voucher bargains, including 20 deodorant roll-ons, 5kg of rice, 12 bottles of Coca-Cola, 30 toilet rolls and 216 Weetabix biscuits.
‘The difference is, Britons tend to prefer to download vouchers from websites, then use them to shop online or send them to their mobile phones. They also prefer other forms of deals – such as buy-one-get-one-free or two-for-the-price-of-one – to traditional American coupons.’
The reason for this is partly cultural – America has a history of using paper coupons – but, also, a sense of shame. Some women I communicated with, and a number of blog posts on these forums, admitted that arriving at checkouts armed with piles of paper vouchers was embarrassing.
Thrifty: Debbie with just some of the items that she managed to save money on by using coupons
More extreme couponers tend to disagree – especially El. ‘I get a tremendous buzz from saving money,’ she says. Her rule is, if she can’t find a voucher, she won’t buy it.
Her shopping approach is methodical. First, she types what she wants to buy into her favourite coupon websites, such as moneysavingexpert.com and vouchercodes.co.uk. ‘Once I’ve found a voucher code on one of them, I’ll search for an even cheaper coupon to get more money off,’ she says.
Each voucher has a special number or password that often needs to be activated by sharing your email address with the provider. This e-voucher can then be used when paying for items at the shop’s online website. The shopper types in the number or password at the checkout to reduce the overall bill.
El also shops this way for clothes, holidays, computer games and even cinema trips.
Holly Farden, 21, of Northamptonshire, also spends about ten hours each week shopping in the same way and has cut her weekly grocery bill from ?60 to ?35. ‘I needed to do a bit of stocking up on our shopping because last winter our car couldn’t handle the snow and ice – so we were stuck indoors living on beans on toast,’ she says.
While searching for money-saving tips on a website, she stumbled across a discussion forum about vouchers and coupons and learned how to become a couponer.
‘[Now] I start off by writing a rough list of what food I need, then I go through what coupons I currently have and any others I need to print off,’ she says.
Finally, she logs into the Tesco website to find out the week’s offers, then adapts her shopping list and meal plan to suit her coupons.
Website manager Harriet Pierce, of North London, spends just 30 minutes a week searching for vouchers and free supermarket delivery codes but has reduced her household’s weekly grocery shop from ?180 to ?140.
OTHERS, meanwhile, prefer to buy cheaply and in bulk – including James Boit, of South-West London, who stockpiles huge boxes of reduced-price washing powder, dozens of chocolate bars, crates of dog food and tinned tomatoes in his downstairs shower room.
Kate Edwards recently went on an extreme couponing course in New York
Storage is one of the main factors that reins in British shoppers compared with American couponers. ‘Storage tends to be a problem in the UK because we have smaller homes so there is less space for stockpiles,’ explains finance expert Annie Shaw, editor of cashquestions.com and co-author of the book 100 Ways To Beat The Credit Crunch.
‘Using coupons is a good idea but you have to be technology-savvy to get involved. You have to know which websites to download vouchers from, and online shopping communities are also an important place to hear about the best deal through word of mouth.
‘It’s something Britons are rapidly getting used to and it will be very difficult for retailers to get shoppers to pay full price again.’
Which is no doubt music to the ears of El. ‘It’s a laugh, a challenge I set myself but, importantly, it saves us money,’ she says. ‘There’s nothing better than my friends complimenting the cakes I’ve baked and then me telling them they cost me 35p.’
As for the rewards she reaps, El is insistent – as are the other women I interview – that she isn’t totally frugal. ‘I spend some of the money we save on luxuries such as holidays, gadgets and computer games.’
Breakfasts, lunches and dinners might be pre-planned and budgeted stringently six days a week, but on the seventh night, even El and husband Ed will splash out .??.??. to an extent. ‘We go to the cinema and out for dinner, often to a pizza parlour,’ she says. ‘But, as with everything else, the golden rule still applies: only if we print out a voucher first.’
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