Woman’s Day Article
June 1994
Woman’s Day Article
Michele Easter was featured in Woman’s Day magazine, in the June 7, 1994 issue. Here is that article along with the two pictures that were included in the story:
“During the late 1970's, Michele Easter was a young housewife with three small children at home. She and her husband, George, were feeling the squeeze of rising inflation and, she says, “I was desperate to cut our expenses”. Then she read an article about a shopper who was getting cartfuls of free groceries using coupons and refunds. “That really inspired me”, she says. “I became determined to make it work for me.” And Michele’s resolution has certainly paid off.
She spends only about $200 a month on groceries for her household, now consisting of two adults, one teenager, a toddler, 3 cats and a dog. She estimates that coupons save her about 25% and that refunds save her anther 25%, for a total savings of about $200 a month. “We don’t have double coupon stores here or I’d save more,” she notes. Her tips:
Shop with your coupon file. That way you can take advantage of unadvertised specials.
Plan ahead for stockpiling during sales. “If you can get paper towels for 29 cents a roll, why not buy a few dozen?” she reasons. It helps, she adds, to call the store if you plan to buy 24 boxes of cereal, for instance, and ask the manager to set aside a case for you.
Enlist your teens as substitute shoppers. “Sometimes a store limits how many sale items each shopper can buy,” she explains. “So my kids and I split up, become three separate shoppers and get three times the limit.” She wouldn’t do that, however, if a store had a “per family” maximum instead of a “per shopper” limit.
Although Michele is an avid couponer, her true passion is refunding. She considers it a hobby, one that consumes about 4 hours per week and earns her about $100 a month. That’s probably more time than most are willing to spend, she admits but “the great thing about refunding is that you can do it at any level.”
Keep your eyes open for refund forms. Manufacturers offer three kinds of refunds: cash, free merchandise and product discounts. Many of the forms can be found in Sunday newspapers or on tear pads that dot supermarket aisles. They’re also posted on refund bulletin boards in grocery stores and discount chains like Kmart. “Most people are oblivious to refund offers,” says Michele, “but once you become aware, you see them everywhere.” The average cash offer is $1.50, though many are worth $2 to $5. In general, you have three to six months to gather the proofs of purchase (POPs), which typically consist of a cash-register receipt and the UPC code. “To get a cash refund of five dollars,” she says, “you’ll often need to submit the POPs for three to five items.”
Don’t overlook noncash offers. Some can be very valuable. For example, Kool Aid recently offered a free Nintendo game in exchange for POPs from the drink mix (the number of POPs needed depended on package size). “If it’s a product you use, you might as well get the gift,” says Michele. Moreover, she estimates that 5 to 10 percent of refunds are coupons for related products. For example, Nabisco recently offered a coupon good for $1.50 off any brand of milk in exchange for POPs from 3 packages of Oreo cookies. And, after sending in four Lipton onion-soup mix UPCs, she received a coupon good for $2 off any chicken or meat. Such refund offers, Michele points out, are vitually the only way shoppers can get discounts on fresh meat, produce, milk or eggs. “Since they don’t come along often, they’re a nice bonus.”
Devise an efficient system. Michele strongly recommends creating a system that enables you to quickly organize your paperwork as soon as you get home from shopping. “Keep stamped envelopes with return address labels, and Exacto knife and a pen in the kitchen drawer,” she says. Then, when you’re unloading your groceries, you can immediately remove the UPC code from the refund product and enclose it with the refund form and cash-register tape in an envelope. Mail it right away.
If you put this task off until later, Michele cautions, you may forget about the offer and throw out the package or register receipt. “Manufacturers call that slippage”, she says, “and they count on it to get customers to buy their products without having to give up anything in return.” (To get UPC codes off without damaging the boxes, lightly score the symbol’s four sides with an Exacto knife, lift one edge up and peel it off.)
Read the refund form before you buy. It’s important to know exactly what’s required before you get to the checkout counter. “Manufacturers often want the original, dated cash-register receipt, which can be a problem if you’re buying several refund products,” Michele explains. “I’ve learned to save those items for last and then request separate receipts from the cashier.”
Aim for 5 refunds per month. Michele figures that five refunds will get you $7.50 to $15 for only about 10 minutes work. “The first five offers are easy to find,” she says. “After that, it gets harder.” That’s where her 14-year old newsletter, Refunding Makes Cents comes in handy. It lists 600 to 800 new offers a month.
Keep your refund money in a separate account. Michele’s family has come to appreciate her refunding mania because she keeps the money in a separate savings account that’s used for special family things, ranging from new school clothes to built-in bookcases. “A few years ago, we spent a year’s worth of refunds – $1,300 – to rent a beach condo in California for a week,” she says.
Michele has heard few complaints about the impressive array of products and popular brands she’s bought with the aid of coupons. Still, she laughingly admits, “I did have to stop telling my family how much I’d saved on every meal — they got a little sick of that.”
