MY LIFE AS A COUPON QUEEN
As a survey shows that shoppers save £10bn a year by using discount vouchers, money-saving expert Holly Smith explains how she saves thousands of pounds annually
MOTHER-of-two Holly Smith was channelsurfing while recovering from a serious operation when she came across a US TV programme called Extreme Couponing.
It showed how people could save thousands of dollars a year by taking advantage of discount vouchers and it proved to be something of an epiphany.
In the years that followed she turned herself into a moneysaving expert and today boasts two million Facebook followers and her YouTube channel HollyVlogs has clocked up almost four million views.
She even gained the record for the UK’s biggest supermarket shop using coupons in December 2015 by purchasing £1,164.39 of goods from a branch of Tesco in Lowestoft at no cost to herself.
While Holly, 33, may take bargain-hunting to extremes, it has become a growing trend in the nation as a whole to the point where we are now saving a total of £9.8billion a year – an average of £180 per customer, according to research published this week.
The survey of 2,000 shoppers by the website VoucherCodes revealed that consumers redeem special offers on everything from their weekly shop to luxuries such as spa days and massages.
“Just put the words ‘supermarket coupons’ into Google and that will pull up a load of websites,” says Holly, who lives in Great Yarmouth. “There’s a couple that update coupons every single month, one called victoria.co.uk and another called supersavvyme.co.uk.
“Every month they’ll put about 30 coupons on and there’s a lot of freebies about as well so just keep checking the sites. Not only are the coupons printable you can use them for online shopping. So if you order your groceries to be delivered there’ll be a code you can use. You can get your food bill down by about £30 a week easily.”
HOLLY suffers from Asperger’s – a form of autism – and insists that this condition is one of the keys to her success.
“My mind’s constantly running so I can’t relax,” she says. “I get to bed around 5am. Autism makes me the best I am in the industry. If I’ve got something on my mind that I think will help people save money, I’ll work nine until four in the morning. I don’t stop.”
What began as an attempt to save enough cash to enable her to afford items such as holidays and luxury items has expanded to the point that she has eclipsed her husband Callum as the family’s main breadwinner.
Indeed he has gone part-time in his job as a sports massage therapist so he can act as cameraman for her YouTube videos.
Examples of Holly’s best-ever buys include the Disney Princess Dolls she bought for 2p each at Tesco in December 2013 and the 150 Ristorante pizzas she got for nothing – 100 of which she donated to the Salvation Army.
“I have a large chest freezer and my entire garage is now a stockpile where I put the stuff that I get for free,” she says. As well as hunting down coupons online she also regularly posts birthday, Christmas and New Year greetings cards to brands she likes.
“Most brands print a freepost address on their packaging and you can get five cards for £1 in the Poundshop,” she says. In response many companies will send back a coupon. Holly reckons she has a success rate of almost 70 per cent, with some brands rewarding her loyalty and goodwill with as many as 20 coupons.
When she sent one well-known sausage manufacturer a card with a drawing of a farm her children had made, it sent her a hamper with £200 worth of sausages inside – most of which she gave away to charity.
Other brands have given her three years’ supply of washing tablets and four years’ supply of toilet rolls.
She reckons she has saved about £12,000 on her food bill in the past couple of years.
And as she says: “I’ve discovered food definitely tastes better when it’s free.”