Jill Cataldo

I appeared on ChicagoNow's "Ay Mama!" radio show on Thursday! Ay Mama! is hosted by Ana Belaval, who's well-known to Chicago audiences as the host of "Around Town" on WGN News. In addition to her job as reporter, Ana maintains a blog about motherhood, and the radio show is her weekly counterpart to the blog. Ana and I have worked together on a couple of money-saving segments for WGN TV, and we and the Ay Mama! crew discussed Super-Couponing and other ways to save!

Listen to the clip online!

Numerous readers wrote today to send me a link to this Investopedia article currently on Yahoo: 8 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Use Coupons. The only reason I hadn't responded to this earlier today is that I spent the day in Chicago filming yet another coupon-related segment, which I'll share with you later.

But now that I'm back and have digested the article thoroughly, my reactions have ranged from incredulous to irritated.

First, in the middle of the worst recession most of us have seen in our entire lifetimes, exactly what is the author's intent here? To get people out of the mindset of wanting to save more? To convince them that spending money to save time is more worthwhile than spending time to save money?

Not surprisingly, this article's heating up the coupon blogosphere like mad.

I'm featured in the new issue of Consumer Reports' ShopSmart magazine! The September 2010 issue has a big section on saving on groceries, and the magazine asked me for department-by-department tips to saving at the supermarket (many of which are things my regular readers already know and put into practice!)

ShopSmart is available at Borders, Barnes and Noble, and pretty much anywhere that has a large magazine selection, or you can read the article, "Save at the store: Aisle-by-aisle tips to use next time you shop" online (story starts on page 35!)

To celebrate the 2-year anniversary of my blog, I launched the "Steal my Stockpile" Sweepstakes! TWO lucky winners had a chance to win this prize pack, with...

A Super-Couponing DVD
A Swiffer Sweeper
A Glade Plug-In air freshener and refill
A box of Snuggle fabric softener sheets
A 2-pack of Mr. Clean Magic Erasers
A travel-sized load of Tide laundry detergent
A ConAgra Foods reusable cotton bag
A random assortment of coupons!

Since this contest celebrated TWO years of great deals, there were TWO ways to enter...

Entry #1: Coupon Haiku

Haiku is a simple Japanese poetry made up of three lines of text. The first line has five syllables, the second seven, the last, five again.

To enter, readers composed their own coupon-related Haiku and posted them in the comments section under this article. They could enter as many times as they wanted, and many were feeling extra-poetic, letting their inspiration flow!

There were so many, incredibly funny and creative entries that left me laughing out loud every single day for a week! Couponers really are a very funny, intelligent bunch of people. But when it was all said and done, one Haiku just kept sticking in my head (and making me laugh every time I'd think of it!)

Here's an article everyone should read, as it concerns not only Jewel shoppers but supermarket shopping trends in general:

Jewel thins out selection as grocery competition from Wal-Mart intensifies

Excerpts:

Chicago's largest grocer is testing a new store format in Bolingbrook that cuts out 15% to 25% of products. Jewel says it plans to take the Bolingbrook design to more stores under a mandate from parent company Supervalu Inc. to reduce clutter, cut costs and make room for more of its own brands.

But Jewel, which has long prided itself on offering a wide selection, risks alienating shoppers by removing their favorite brands. Wal-Mart and Deerfield-based Walgreen Co. pursued similar initiatives this year. Both chains have said they had to restock some items when customers went elsewhere...

Craig Herkert, a former Wal-Mart executive who took over as Minnesota-based Supervalu's CEO last year, told investors in April that scaling back inventory is a central component of a new growth strategy dubbed "Project SHE, which stands for Simplify Her Experience."

Nielsen recently released a report entitled "The Coupon Comeback," which provides in-depth statistics as to who's using coupons. Some highlights:

The “Great Recession” of 2009 changed all of that and marked a sort of renaissance for the coupon. Inmar reports that coupon redemptions grew by 27% as Americans searched for ways to cut household costs and get more for their money. NCH Marketing Services claimed 2009 coupon redemption levels “achieved the second highest year-over-year growth ever recorded.”

Coupon enthusiasts — the heaviest users — accounted for 65% of manufacturer coupon unit purchases and 18% of all unit purchases in 2009. They drove a disproportionate amount of sales and sales growth—shopping more frequently, making 1.7 more trips than non-users and buying more (a rate 1.8 times greater annually). While some might think that “crazed coupon clippers” are only interested in a good deal, these findings suggests real benefits to manufacturers and retailers deploying coupons in their marketing mix.

With the value offered by coupons, one might think that the lowest income households would be among the heaviest users. In fact, more affluent households dominate coupon usage: 38% of “super heavy” users and 41% of “enthusiasts” come from households with incomes greater than $70,000. Households with income of $100,000 and up were the primary drivers of coupon growth in 2009. The enthusiast category also attracts a disporportionate number of households with incomes between $50,000 and $69,900.

Two years ago today, I launched JillCataldo.com, and for tens of thousands of readers each week, shopping's never been the same!

On July 7, 2008, I began blogging grocery deals after a series of Chicago Sun-Times articles focused on my coupon habits. In June of 2008 the Sun-Times ran a story on my super-couponing skills. After that story ran, over the next three weeks, the Sun-Times kept publishing follow-up pieces, interviews, and questions from readers interested in my story. People then kept telling me to start a blog. I wasn't really sure if I needed one, but a few weeks later, the blog was born and I began speaking directly with people who wanted to learn to use coupons.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." - Charles Dickens

Let me tell you a little story about point-of-purchase coupons that appear in dispensers near various products at the supermarket. Couponers have long referred to these coupons as "Blinkies," because the dispenser has a small red LED on the side blinking and beckoning to the shopper.

For as long as I can remember, the Blinkie dispensers have been maintained by SmartSource. They actually call them SmartSource Coupon Machines®, and if you've ever pulled a coupon out of a dispenser in a store aisle, you've seen and used one.

In Chicagoland, SmartSource Blinkie dispensers have always been found at both Jewel and Dominick's, the two major grocers in this area. However, Jewel recently made a significant change to their point-of-purchase coupon dispensers, and they are no longer contracting with SmartSource to place coupon dispensers in their stores. In the middle of June, the SmartSource coupon dispensers quietly disappeared -- perhaps you noticed.

In their places, we have new coupon dispensers maintained by Valassis (RedPlum.) The new dispensers look somewhat similar to the old ones, but unlike the SmartSource Coupon Machine, they do not dispense a certain amount of coupons to a user. The SmartSource coupon machine actually has an electric eye and won't dispense more than two unless you move away from the machine and reapproach it as "someone else." With the Valassis dispenser, there's simply a slot in which you can stick your finger in and pull out as many coupons as you'd like. This can be good and bad. Good that you can get multiples easily if you need them -- bad in that the dispensers will clear out much more quickly. Also notable? The Valassis dispensers don't have a blinking light on them. (Will we still call them "Blinkies?")

Throughout the month of June, my blog hosted a giveaway sponsored by Cellfire.com in which the price was a $100 grocery gift card! Just after midnight, through the magic of random number generation, a winner was chosen, and that winner is... Elvisgirl!

Thank you to everyone who entered!

We're in the third and final week of our Cellfire $100 Gift Card giveaway! Contest ends June 30!

LAST CHANCE TO ENTER! You've got a chance to win a $100 gift card for the Cellfire-affiliated grocery store of your choice. (In Illinois, that would be Dominick's or Kroger/Hilander.)

All you need to do to enter is reply to this post. On July 1st, I'll choose a poster at random to win the $100 gift card! It's that easy!

It's also a great time to check out the e-coupons on Cellfire, if you haven't already -- there are always some great ones to use each week, like...

Save $1 on Starbucks VIA coffee