Editorial
Front Page - Friday, January 14, 2011
‘Couponing’ provides a solution for financial struggles
Erica Tuggle
Kelly Thompson and Kasey Trenum are the women behind the Time2Save workshops and Web site. This site provides coupons, freebies and sales that can reduce a weekly grocery bill from $150 to $30 and help families that struggle with this large portion of their budget. The site also provides information on how to give back the hope and savings shoppers receive in a way that is feasible for everyone.
- Photo provided
Everyone can relate to the good feeling you get when you find a deal on things you buy. Yet, what if you could have that good feeling all the time on almost everything you buy? Kelly Thompson and Kasey Trenum are two Cleveland locals in-the-know on deals and coupon price slashing, and they have taken their knowledge of “couponing” and shared it with others to help their swelling finances subside and give back to those in need.
They have held their couponing workshops for over 6,000 people in just four years, have appeared on National Public Radio, and are on the cover of an upcoming issue of Parade Magazine for the skills they have turned into a science of savings.
The pair grew up in Georgia and met in a Sunday school class about 10 years ago. Couponing only came into play about four years ago when both their husbands were involved in construction and the recession crunch hit the housing market in Bradley County.
Both families had houses to sell, but because of the recession were forced to hold onto them for years. In the midst of this, these stay-at-home moms were trying to build their families while making multiple house payments. As their savings accounts started shrinking, they began looking for ways to cut back.
Thompson says, “We pulled our kids out of gymnastics, I started cutting my sons’ hair and we stopped going on vacation to try to save money.”
Thompson had grown up in a very frugally minded family, and so she went back to using coupons to try to cut the weekly grocery bill. Trenum laughed at this idea initially because saving 25 cents on an item didn’t seem enough to make a difference.
As Thompson and Trenum began to nonchalantly look for online coupons, they began finding women across the county posting pictures of their groceries, which the pair agrees they at first found absurd. Yet, when they saw how much these women were paying for the items, they were floored by the results and wanted to figure out how to do it themselves.
They spent six months learning how by researching and their own shopping experience until the time came when their weekly $150 grocery bill shrank to $30 with more items purchased than before and all name brand products.
Thompson says as they continued shopping in this way, complete strangers would stop them in the store, follow them to their cars and politely stalk them to find out their secrets of savings.
The turning point came when they were begged to teach a class on couponing to a church group of what they thought would be about 20 women. They agreed, mostly to get people to stop stopping them in the stores, Thompson says. When they arrived to teach this first class, over 200 women had shown up, all with similar stories of hard times.
“Walking away from that, we thought more people really do need to know this. People are really interested and desperate to feed their families with so many in the same boat as we were in wanting to save money,” Thomspon says.
Now the pair have the blog www.time2saveworkshops.com, where they post coupons, deals, freebies and advice. The struggle for them has been to keep up with the “every five minute a new deal” lifestyle and the constant race to be the first site to post the deal. Thompson and Trenum agree that you don’t even want to know the time it takes each day to compile all this information. Even more amazing is the fact that these women do all this work while raising and home schooling their children, ages 7, 6, 4, 4 and 3 between them.
The first step toward effective couponing is changing the structure of the traditional grocery list, they say. Most people make a list of things they have run out of, but when you change this to a list of things you will use during the next 12 weeks, then you can have items you will need and not be at the mercy of whether or not these items are on sale that week, Thompson says.
“Whatever is on sale that week and we can do coupons with it we look at it and see if we used it, and that way you stock your kitchen with a supply of goods you use,” she says.
Once this concept is mastered, the possibilities are wide open. The only problem is the dark side of “extreme couponing” that many couponers find is easy to fall into. Some take the ability to save to obsessive levels with mass purchases just because of the thrill of the deal.
Trenum says couponing can be fun, but boundaries have to be brought in or it will consume your life.
“I really don’t even like the coupons, but they are a tool that I have to make fit into my life,” she says. “It’s a tool to reduce your family’s finances, and from that, to give to people like you’ve never given before.”
As these women buy items for their families at reduced rates, they can also then afford to buy extra items for those in need. They keep boxes in their homes in visible areas to put extra items they buy in and then donate them to people they meet on the street, shelters and anyone who expresses a need.
“When I can get laundry detergent for free or for a dollar, there is no reason why I shouldn’t buy extra. You go from having a single mother who needs help, to within two or three weeks she is able to give to someone else.”
Thompson and Trenum says this part of couponing is great because their children can be taught the value of giving and it can bring families together as they keep an eye out for who needs the extra groceries they have bought this week.
Thompson says, “That’s the goal of the workshop for us. Yes, we want to teach you to save and bring hope to your life, but to us, the blooming part is where you become a giver. That’s the reward we walk away with.”
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