This probably qualifies as my family’s 15 minutes of fame. The coupon clipping interview that we did finally ran in our local paper this past Sunday. Here’s a link. Full text of the article is printed below, in case there’s a membership requirement at the Holland Sentinel site.
Five kids eat a lot of food, even when they’re all under the age of 10.
Those kids eat enough food, in fact, that Chad and Lindy Boss of Overisel Township have adopted a take-no-prisoners policy for grocery shopping: Paying less than 50 percent of an item’s retail price.
“We like to kind of start off at 50 percent,” Boss said. “If we can start off at 50 percent off, and then get a coupon off, we’re doing pretty good.”
The Bosses, like many other families, are looking to save money by clipping coupons and using new ways to do it, but Hope College economics professor Victor Claar said coupon usage has dropped in recent years.
“That’s a downward trend that’s been going on lately,” Claar said. “People just don’t clip and organize and use them like they used to.”
Chad said that necessities including milk and orange juice aren’t often on sale, and take away from savings in other categories. Overall, he estimates he saves about 40 percent to 45 percent off of retail price, as much as $66 in a single visit to the store.
In order to find deals, the Bosses use a Web site, SavingsAngel.com, to match manufacturer’s coupons with in-store sales at local grocery stores.
Manufacturer’s coupons are often released without any cooperation with stores, said Claar.
“The strategy behind the coupon is, it’s a way to do a promotion without having to work through the retailer, like Meijer,” Claar said. “A manufacturer can just drop the coupons on the public, and the public can just show up and use them.
“People take the coupons to Meijer, and then Meijer mails in the coupons,” he said.
Mike Wiersma, owner of Wiersma’s Central Park Foods, said his store receives only about $10 to $20 a week in coupons, which he saves and returns to the manufacturers once or twice a year. The total value of coupons he receives in a year adds up to about $1,000, he said.
“I haven’t had too many problems, but it is a hassle to keep them,” Wiersma said.
The Bosses recently built a pantry so they can stockpile essentials when they are on sale.
“Then we’re never running out of the essentials, like toilet paper,” Lindy said.
“You want to avoid paying the full price,” Chad explained.
The couple’s five children — Emma, Ben, Grace, Anna and Jack, range in age from 4 months to 9 years old.
Holland resident Barb Dornbos keeps a folder full of coupons she might use.
“I have a regular file,” Dornbos said. “I cut them out and put them in. And then when I make out my grocery list, I go through the file.”
Dornbos said she saves about $5 to $6 a week by clipping coupons.
Ruth Otten, also of Holland, scans the Sunday newspaper for good deals.
“I don’t clip a coupon unless it’s 50 cents or more,” she said. “My daughter usually does it, too. She usually cleans up after me and takes whatever I don’t take.”
Unlike the Boss family, Otten doesn’t stockpile household goods when they are on sale, but she will buy a couple of extra food items if a store has a two-for-one sale.
“I plan my meals around what they have on special,” Otten said. “If they have chicken breasts on special, then maybe we’ll eat that.”
ONLINE
Finding prices at all area stores, and matching them with the coupons you have at home can be a lot of work. That’s why Park Township resident Josh Elledge started SavingsAngel.com.
“I’ll be honest. I’m not a coupon-clipping kind of guy,” Elledge said. “But I am a geek — I don’t mind admitting that.”
Elledge started SavingsAngel.com a year ago. The Web service tracks prices at local grocery stores and matches store sales to manufacturer coupons and has 1,300 active users. Users pay a fee to access the Web site.
– Stephen Kloosterman
