Coupon Clippin': Blogger offers tips on how families can save money on food and other goods

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Jodi Furman has an obsession. Luckily, it's legal.

She clips coupons. A lot of them.

But don't you dare call her a cheapskate.

"I'm a deal hunter," said Furman, 35, a resident of suburban Lake Worth, Fla. "I'm just a normal mom who's very focused on trying to stretch my family's money."

Furman, a married mom of three children (ages 6, 4 and 16 months), is also trying to help other families.

Eight months ago, Furman started the blog neverpayretailagain.net. The blog offers bargain-hunting visitors handy tips on how they can save money on food, clothing, toiletries and household goods.

"It's a stream-of-consciousness blog," she said. "I post anything that comes along my way I think is applicable to other people, like how to use coupons and how to organize them."

Furman, a pharmaceuticals territory manager, definitely knows of what she blogs. She estimates that she saves $6,000 to $8,000 a year by using coupons. She plans her dinner menu based on what's on sale in any given week.

"When I get my Palm Beach Post Wednesday morning, there's a flier for Winn-Dixie, Albertsons and Publix and I'll see what's on sale," she said. "I don't say, ‘I want steak or salmon this week.' I look at the fliers, and if chicken's on sale, I'm gonna make chicken that night."

Although Furman always has been a savvy shopper (she says she has never paid full retail price for an item of clothing and has always bought used cars), she only recently began using coupons religiously for food shopping. "I could kick myself when I think of how much money I've wasted in my adult life on groceries," she said. "I would love to have that money back and tucked away somewhere."

For years, Furman has shopped wisely when buying clothes. Her strategy is to wait for the price to drop for a blouse, skirt or suit she wants.

"It's not going to kill me not to have something the second it comes out," said Furman, who shops regularly at Macy's, Old Navy, JC Penney, TJ Maxx and Loehmann's. "Everything -- everything -- goes on sale. I like fashion, and I'm not some old-fashioned frugal person who walks around with their hair in curlers. I like to dress in nice clothing. I just buy it for less."

All the coupon-clipping and penny-pinching makes Lorne, Furman's husband of nine years, chuckle.

"He used to laugh at me. He still does," said Furman, whose husband runs a home-theater business from the couple's house. "I'd come home all puffed up and proud saying, ‘Look at my grocery bill. I saved 70 percent!' He'd be, like, ‘OK.'

"He knows I'm crazy. But we met when we were 15, so he knew what he was getting into."

Furman got the idea for the blog while she was constantly e-mailing friends about steal-of-the-week deals.

"It was easier to do the blog," Furman said.

"It's me sending out one message that's posted instead of sending out multiple messages."

As a mother with a demanding full-time job, Furman doesn't have much time to devote to the site. She says she spends about two hours a day working on it.

"I do it on my laptop that has the broken hinge," she said, laughing. "The technology makes it really easy. Pretty much anybody can have a blog. Probably my 6-year-old could do it."

Thanks to some free publicity, (Furman was recently featured in an Associated Press story and was scheduled to appear on CNN), traffic on her site is growing fast. In its first eight months, neverpayretailagain.net had 95,000 hits. That number skyrocketed to more than 204,000 immediately after the AP story was published.

"A lot of people out there are talking about being frugal," Furman said. "I didn't invent it. I haven't even perfected it. It's just the right time. If I started this two years ago, no one would probably be talking to me right now."

You might think that Furman's coupon obsession grew out of watching her parents' financial struggles. Not so. Furman was actually raised in an upper-middle-class community.

"My parents were responsible with money," she said. "We never struggled."

Furman did learn a few belt-tightening lessons from her grandmother, a Holocaust survivor.

"She's always been very frugal," she said. "My grandmother could take one chicken and make 18 meals out of it -- each one more delicious than the next."

Still, despite the sagging economy, Furman admits that most people don't shop like she does, but she firmly believes that more of them should.

"It doesn't matter where you are on the economic spectrum," she said. "Nobody's safe in this economy."

Five tips for saving money

1. Don't buy anything you don't need. Make sure it's a need, not a want. Don't spend on unnecessary things just because they're on sale. "It's not a bargain if you don't need it," said Jodi Furman, a coupon user in West Palm Beach, Fla.

2. Plan a weekly menu from the fliers. Have a bunch of different recipes at your disposal that you can easily make. "If chicken is on sale, you're eating chicken that week," Furman said.

3. Don't shop without a plan. Prepare your shopping list ahead of time and stick to it. Also, match up store coupons with coupons that come in your Sunday paper for greater savings. "Online sites will do this for you," Furman said. "Coupons are like cash. Treat them as such."

4. Keep track of prices. Know what you're paying for everything you regularly buy. Write it down and carry it in a "price book."

5. Remember, little things add up. "It's the daily coffee, the extra channels you don't watch on cable, the gym membership you don't use, that add up over time," Furman said. "Keep track of where all your money is going so you can find the places where you can easily trim and tuck away that money for a rainy day."

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