An Amazing Shopping Trip

What an amazing shoppin trip with Mary Kenyon of Manchester. She promised to demonstrate how clipping coupons can save big bucks. (See today's Ramblin' column in The Gazette.) But I was truly amazed when the cash register tape spit out a bill of more than $82, Mary handed the cashier a handful of coupons and received the final tab -- $4.59.

Wow. And this shopping included many name brand items from Gillette to Dove to Fruit Rollups.

Make no mistake about it. Mary is an experienced, frugal and well-organized shopper. She's been doing it for 30 years. But her method is based on one basic, simple principal -- use common sense. That includes clipping valuable coupons for items that you would buy anyway, shopping on days when the store doubles the value of those coupons, watching store advertisements for items on sale that match your needs and your coupons, and planning your shopping trip ahead of time so you don't buy unnecessary extras.

I knew beforehand that Mary is a no nonsense woman. I first met her and husband David more than 13 years ago when they opened their Once Upon a Time Family Books store in Manchester with about $2,000, of which they used $700 to buy used books. (It lasted about three years.) They also home schooled their five children at the time (they have eight children now) and Mary was soon to have her book, "Home Schooling from Scratch" published byGazelle Publications of Michigan.

Thirteen must be Mary's lucky number. It was13 years earlier that Mary opened a consignment shop, Rainbow's End, that was so successful her sister bought it a year later. And now, 13 years after I met her, Mary has had another book accepted for publication, this one titled "Coupons, Chemo, and Chuckie Cheese." She says it's about saving money, the love story that continued after she cared for David during his battle against oral cancer and the family's annual trip to the pizza restaurant for "vacation."

All I know is that if the book is as successful as Mary's shopping trips, she wouldn't have to worry about ever clipping a coupon again.