JOURNAL HOSTING COUPONING EVENT
Coupon stars Jennifer Freeman and Jen Morris will head up free sessions
Coupon stars Jennifer Freeman, left, and Jen Morris will share their insights in free 90-minute workshops
Learning how to stretch a dollar became extremely important to Jennifer Freeman, who for 10 years lived in Okinawa, where her husband was stationed with the Air Force. She came to rely on manufacturers’ coupons for groceries and items that were made available to shoppers at the base commissary, where the high cost of food stunned her. As a result, she got serious about couponing and learned some tricks on how to maximize the savings. For example, “if you apply a coupon when the item is at full price, you don’t really save a lot; so use it when the items are on sale,” said Freeman, who now lives in Las Vegas, Nev., with her real estate agent husband and their 11-year-old twins. “Buy one, get one free,” she joked. “I saved 50 percent on my hospital bill.” Freeman, who has been featured on the TLC television network program “Extreme Couponing,” has taken the seemingly mundane household chore of clipping coupons and elevated it to an art. She will share her insights in a free 90-minute workshop that will be offered multiple times on Nov. 2 and 3 in the Albuquerque Journal auditorium. Freeman will be accompanied by Jen Morris of
TLC’s “Extreme Couponing All Stars” show. “The No. 1 source for coupons is the local newspaper,” particularly the Sunday edition, Freeman said. “Consistently, the people who come to our workshops tell us that they drop their grocery store budgets by 50 percent. I’d guess about 20 percent of the people who come to our seminars are serious couponers who are always looking for a deal and spend hours each week looking for coupons.” Freeman limits her time going through newspapers and other sources for coupons to three hours a week — and that includes the time she spends shopping. To invest more than that “is like another job, and nobody wants to do that,” she said. Consequently, she warns against “spending time cutting out coupons for products and services that are likely to never be used.” Freeman will also talk about how to use couponing to benefit local food banks and pantries, and to “give back to the community.” Albuquerque Journal circulation director Robert Rivera said the seminars are intended to demonstrate the added value of the newspaper. The Journal is full of coupons and sales ads “that can save families a lot of money,” he said.