http://www.aolnews.com/weird-news/article/pro-cheapskate-jeffrey-strain-attempts-thanksgiving-dinner-for-6-for-less-than-1/19708608

Quote :

"Nov. 15) -- A professional "frugalista" is attempting what may be his biggest challenge yet: purchasing a complete Thanksgiving dinner for six people for less than $1 -- total. Jeffrey Strain writes about ways to save cash at Grocery Coupon Guide, and he was inspired to do his cheapskate challenge after attempting a similar effort he calls "the penny experiment." "Last year, I found a penny and picked it up and some teenagers nearby laughed at me for doing it," Strain told AOL News. "I started thinking about whether it was possible to turn this penny into $1 million for food banks. Jeffrey Strain Jeffrey Strain is trying to cook a complete Thanksgiving dinner for six people while only spending $1. Earlier this year, he bought $1,400 worth of groceries for just $76. "In the process of doing that, I learned how to 'super coupon' and, at one point, bragged to my sister that I could eat on less than a dollar a day." Strain's sister, who is two years younger, dared him to do it -- and he took her up on it. In fact, starting in May, he survived for 100 days on a dollar a day or less. "Using coupons, I actually bought $1,400 worth of food for $76," he said. Much of the food was donated to food banks, but Strain said he was able to eat quite well for that measly sum. "I ate very well: fruits, veggies and whole-grain bread," he said. Strain was justifiably proud of his penny-pinching penny experiment, but when he bragged that he could probably use what he had learned to purchase a complete Thanksgiving dinner for six for $6, his little sister couldn't help but issue another dare. "She challenged me to do it, but told me I had to do it for a dollar or less," he said. "We dare each other all the time. I got her to do a marathon one time. However, she's married and has kids these days so I end up doing most of the dares." Including this one, it seems. So now Strain is obligated to get all the goodies needed for a complete Thanksgiving dinner, including rolls, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, vegetables, pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce and, of course, the turkey. Oh, and all the butter, salt, pepper, onions and celery needed to season, spice and flavor the dishes. He's off to a good start. About 10 days ago, he managed to get free stuffing and gravy after he found a coupon at Safeway offering $5 off his next purchase. Still, he wasn't quite as happy as he would have ordinarily been. Because the coupon was about to expire, he spent $2 a box on the stuffing and was unable to buy it at Target, where it was only 25 cents a box. Also, using coupons, Strain was not only able to get the Pillsbury rolls he needed for his dinner, but he managed to get 120 of them for free -- a value of around $238. Now, he's set his sights on nabbing a free turkey and hopes to take advantage of a promotion that offers a free turkey in exchange for buying $100 worth of food. Jeffrey Strain Strain isn't just trying to save money for himself. He is on a mission to raise $1 million worth of food for food banks. "I hope to use coupons to get the $100 worth of groceries for free and the turkey on top of it," he said. "Of course, some places offer free turkeys if you, say, take a test drive in one of their cars, so that's an option too." It might sound like Strain is a big coupon buff, but he actually hates it. "I'm not one of those people who spends hours organizing," he said. "I just grab as many coupon inserts as I can from leftover newspapers at the coffee shops in my neighborhood. Also, Tuesday is recycling night so I can find them near Dumpsters as well. Plus, don't forget, stores have coupons as well." Whether or not Strain makes his goal, he hopes that merely attempting the challenge makes his point. "The penny experiment started to see if I could get $1 million for food banks," he said. "I want people to know that even if you don't have money, you can still give away food and save money to boot.""

11/15/2010 3:37:55 PM

i thought this would be a Fhqwhgads thread

11/15/2010 3:38:49 PM

^

11/15/2010 3:40:31 PM

Quote :

""I hope to use coupons to get the $100 worth of groceries for free and the turkey on top of it," he said. "Of course, some places offer free turkeys if you, say, take a test drive in one of their cars, so that's an option too.""

If he has to spent $100 on groceries to get the free turkey, then he just spent $100 on the Thanksgiving dinner.

Also, I'd rather spend a little more money and eat good homemade stuffing rather than shitty boxed stuffing, etc.

11/15/2010 3:44:15 PM

^ If he uses coupons that account for the $100, then no he didn't actually spend $100 on the turkey.

11/15/2010 3:48:51 PM

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"frugalista"

my new favorite word. I'm gonna make some shirts with Frugalista on it

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" Earlier this year, he bought $1,400 worth of groceries for just $76."

I'm in love with this guy. <3

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" just grab as many coupon inserts as I can from leftover newspapers at the coffee shops in my neighborhood. Also, Tuesday is recycling night so I can find them near Dumpsters as well. Plus, don't forget, stores have coupons as well.""

Coffee shops are a great place to grab inserts. Most people when they are done reading the paper leave it for the next person...I swoop by and grab the coupon inserts out of them. Caribou @ Brier Creek is awesome for coupon swooping.

[Edited on November 15, 2010 at 3:53 PM. Reason : f]

11/15/2010 3:51:37 PM

I'm all about taking advantage of grocery store specials and getting $40-50 off an original purchase of $80-100 but I can't imagine how much time this guy spends doing this.

All too often people forget that time is money.

11/15/2010 4:00:22 PM

Quote :

"If he uses coupons that account for the $100, then no he didn't actually spend $100 on the turkey."

Depends on the rules of the giveaway. Like with the Food Lion one you had to spend $45 cash bucks to qualify for the credits last time I bothered to do that promotion.

^ Too true. And if you're going to the trouble of going to multiple supermarkets that aren't right next to each other, how much gas and time are you burning up in that sense as well.

[Edited on November 15, 2010 at 4:01 PM. Reason : a]

11/15/2010 4:00:59 PM

I'd rather pay the $1400 than clip coupons.

11/15/2010 4:02:00 PM

^ different strokes. The wife and I usually just pop on some netflix or music and clip together once a week. Knock that stuff out in no time and save some $. Good stuff. Maybe 30 mins and it saves quite a bit of money for sure.

[Edited on November 15, 2010 at 4:05 PM. Reason : .]

11/15/2010 4:05:05 PM

^ Right, but that's casual coupon clipping, not extreme stuff like this guy does. I'd like to see an honest breakdown of the amount of time he spent to get that $1400 worth of groceries for $76 because something tells me it took a lot more time than 30 minutes.

11/15/2010 4:09:38 PM

oh yea I agree there is a lot of wiggle room in between

I just see a lot of people say they'd never clip coupons and I basically see it in a similar light you do I think. It isn't worth spending hours and hours just to see how much you can save. But if my wife and I can spend 30 minutes a week and probably save over $1000 in groceries every year it seems worth it. I'm not really sure why it has some sort of stigma attached to it /shrug

11/15/2010 4:13:03 PM

A couple that clips together stays together.

11/15/2010 4:13:19 PM

Quote :

"A couple that clips together stays together."

11/15/2010 4:14:05 PM

The thing I hate is that most of the stuff they make coupons for is crap I wouldn't be buying in the first place. Out of a newpaper's worth of coupons I maybe find 5 coupons I would use. Which is still better than nothing but I wish there were more for the products I use

11/15/2010 4:15:48 PM

My husband doesn't help me clip coupons but he understands how much money we are saving by using coupons

He makes fun of my giant 4 inch binder that I put my coupons in but he never grips about it b/c he knows that thing is worth $$$$$$

11/15/2010 4:15:55 PM

I just spent $15 on lunch.

11/15/2010 4:18:15 PM

meh, i don't clip coupons because they don't really do them here. Plus, most coupons are for premade and convenience foods and frozen meals. I definitely stay out of those sections of the grocery store. I do read the flyer of each store each week though, because i spend most of my grocery money on produce and meat, and the price of these things vary a lot from week to week. I can save 50% by shopping 2-3 stores. its not too bad when they are close and you stick to the list.

11/15/2010 4:20:03 PM

I spend maybe 30 minutes to 1 hour each week clipping/sorting coupons and thats usually done while watching tv

I don't do much in terms of looking at sales fliers, matching up sales and coupons, etc.

I let the stay-at-home moms do that for me. My personal fave couponing website is http://www.southernsavers.com. She posts the sales ads for grocery stores/drug stores and matches the sales with coupons. You can also make a printable shopping list which is so easy/convenient to use in the store

11/15/2010 4:21:33 PM

if you've got an android phone there's a cool app called ourgroceries. you make the list and click it off as you shop and it updates realtime on your shopping partner's phone so you can shop together and don't miss anything

11/15/2010 4:24:14 PM

time is money.

if you factor in how much time it takes for you to go through the effort to collect all these dollar savings then you've lost time/money.

[Edited on November 15, 2010 at 4:28 PM. Reason : ]

11/15/2010 4:27:35 PM

To me, couponing is fun. I don't think of it as "wasting time" or anything like that. Its an addiction to me.

11/15/2010 4:28:54 PM

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"Plus, most coupons are for premade and convenience foods and frozen meals. "

This is the problem I have as well. Sometimes there will be coupons for say pasta noodles or frozen vegetables, but mostly it's coupons for junk. Probably the coupons I use the most are the ones for toiletries.

11/15/2010 4:39:38 PM

It can become kind of a game. I don't really coupon much though. I just flip through the insert that comes in the mid-week mailer thing and see if there's anything we'd actually use. Normally there isn't a ton because of the convenience foods thing.

But I thought the same thing about counting calories for a while, thinking it was boring and would take too much time and that I'd never want to do it. Then I started (because I wanted to make sure my nutrients were straight) and wound up having a lot of fun manipulating my meals until things fit just right. Sure I was taking time to do it, but it started being fun for me. I see the coupon thing as being pretty similar. I actually did it for a bit but wound up with kind of an addiction to it and filled up my pantry and was basically driving around with a backseat full of canned goods because I didn't have room for them at home, so I realized I should probably stop.

11/15/2010 4:45:04 PM

Haha. I still find food in random places I didn't know I had.

11/15/2010 4:50:13 PM

I mean everyone needs 600 cans of crab. Duh.

11/15/2010 4:52:13 PM

It's still good!!!

11/15/2010 5:10:17 PM

Frugalista is my hipster name.

11/15/2010 5:26:13 PM

Whenever the topic of coupons comes up, all of a sudden nobody eats "convenience" foods.

With coupons, I get free or extremely cheap (<$0.40): pasta, rice, spices/seasonings of all kinds, popcorn, nuts, cheese, eggs, soy milk, sandwich meat/sausage/bacon, bread, condiments/sauces of all kinds, butter, cereal/cereal bars/oatmeal, ice cream/fruit bars, canned vegetables/fruit, frozen vegetables, canned soups, yogurt, frozen fish, etc...

You can stock your kitchen with these things for almost nothing and spend your savings/OYNO coupons on all the fresh food you could want.

11/15/2010 6:15:07 PM

The time to savings ratio is not high enough for me to undertake couponing seriously. I have damned precious little free time as it is (50-70 hour work weeks) and I don't see the value of saving even $100 a month on my groceries as being worth the time. Besides that, I really don't eat much in the way of processed foods outside of frozen vegetables and frozen chicken. I'm pretty much exclusively fresh vegetables, fruits, and some meat, dairy, and grains. I do buy bulk frozen chicken breasts and bulk frozen broccoli, but I almost never buy things like chef boyardee, poptarts, or really anything sold down the aisles of the grocery store.

Hell, some campbells chunky soup last week was the first canned food other than tuna that I'd eaten in I don't even know how long.

11/15/2010 6:23:13 PM

You guys know you don't actually have to clip the coupons to get extreme savings, right?

If there's something you eat often or really like, just go to a coupon clipping website and look for coupons for it. If they have them, order a batch to use whenever you buy that item. If you ever see that item on BOGO or something, bust out your coupons and buy a bunch of it.

Also, go glance at that website that Fhqwhgads posted every once in a while. When an event is coming up (like triples or super doubles) they actually lay out the deals and post links to the internet coupons. Scan the list, see if there's anything you want, and if you do see something, print the coupons. It takes minutes.

Also, I don't eat Pop Tarts, Chef Boyardee, or Campbell's Chunky soups. I have started eating canned/pouched tuna though...

11/15/2010 6:40:05 PM

The other thing is, I'm a single guy. Buying in bulk, outside of frozen items makes very little sense. I do it with things like hygiene items (I'm not going to stop brushing my teeth or wiping my ass any time soon), but it just isn't necessary for me to stock up on pasta when I go through a box every 3 months.

I guess if I was cooking dinner every night and feeding 4 people it would be a good decision to start couponing, but I only grocery shop like once a month. The rest of the time I pick stuff up one meal at a time.

11/15/2010 7:24:44 PM

Quote :

"Whenever the topic of coupons comes up, all of a sudden nobody eats "convenience" foods. With coupons, I get free or extremely cheap (<$0.40): pasta, rice, spices/seasonings of all kinds, popcorn, nuts, cheese, eggs, soy milk, sandwich meat/sausage/bacon, bread, condiments/sauces of all kinds, butter, cereal/cereal bars/oatmeal, ice cream/fruit bars, canned vegetables/fruit, frozen vegetables, canned soups, yogurt, frozen fish, etc..."

1) Most of the things you listed there aren't the types of foods we're talking about, so I'm not sure what your point is.
2) If you look at my pantry, all you'll find is a bunch of grains and canned vegetables. And a giant ass thing of cider vinegar

11/16/2010 2:14:21 PM

^ Yeah. I will buy rice when there's a coupon, but I only want plain rice, not Rice-A-Roni or other packaged seasoned stuff that tastes like shit. I want whole wheat pasta, which rarely seems to have coupons (though I will admit I haven't searched online). If I buy lunch meat or bacon I want deli fresh, not the packaged nitrate-laden kind. Coupons for canned veggies do come out sometimes, but usually veggie coupons are for the frozen steamer bag things or whatever that I don't buy, or the ones with cheese/butter sauce or something. The things I use coupons for now are primarily toothpaste and detergent and the like.

11/16/2010 2:19:26 PM

me too, i've got like one or two cans of beans and i usually buy crackers (meh, too fussy to make) and sometimes popcorn. verrrry occasionally i will buy jarred pasta sauce or canned fruit/pumpkin. hubby gets nutrigrain bars for his lunch. Ice cream, sometimes but its usually about 7 bucks for a half gallon (or a pint of ben and jerrys or haagen daaz) so thats pretty occasional. otherwise i'm only buying produce, nuts, meat, cheese, milk, eggs, yogurt and stuff to bake with. I've already got a years worth of rice- due to a grocery store mistake i got 50 lbs of rice for 8 bucks!

11/16/2010 2:27:38 PM

Quote :

"due to a grocery store mistake i got 50 lbs of rice for 8 bucks!"

Damn that's a good price

11/16/2010 2:28:53 PM

yeah, it was 10 pound bags of basmati that were supposed to be 11.99 each, but the sign was printed as 1.99. There's a local law that says the store has to sell at the price on the shelf and give you one free in the case of a misprint. Apparently until a few years ago the stores were routinely having items ring higher than the price on the shelf and people got sick of it. Pretty nice because they can make a lot of money that way unless you read your receipt afterwards. I remember when I worked at Harris Teeter one summer that the manager was always ditching the company policy that was supposedly along the same lines...

[Edited on November 16, 2010 at 3:17 PM. Reason : ]

11/16/2010 3:16:02 PM

They have a similar law on the books in New Jersey. Fell under bait and switch regulations if I remember correctly.

11/17/2010 9:54:44 AM

Quote :

"wolfpackgrrr: 1) Most of the things you listed there aren't the types of foods we're talking about, so I'm not sure what your point is. 2) If you look at my pantry, all you'll find is a bunch of grains and canned vegetables. And a giant ass thing of cider vinegar"

My point is that there are tons of things you can use coupons on that most people eat all the time.

It's not all convenience food.

So to be like, "Oh, I don't use coupons because I don't eat convenience foods" is ridiculous. It's fine to not coupon, but don't act like those of who do are living on frozen pizzas and instant potatoes.

Quote :

"Skwinkle: ^ Yeah. I will buy rice when there's a coupon, but I only want plain rice, not Rice-A-Roni or other packaged seasoned stuff that tastes like shit. I want whole wheat pasta, which rarely seems to have coupons (though I will admit I haven't searched online). If I buy lunch meat or bacon I want deli fresh, not the packaged nitrate-laden kind. Coupons for canned veggies do come out sometimes, but usually veggie coupons are for the frozen steamer bag things or whatever that I don't buy, or the ones with cheese/butter sauce or something"

Dude! I love my free Mahatma saffron rice! Also, anybody who went to HT a couple weeks ago is sitting on a bazillion free boxes of Barilla multi-grain Plus pasta. And I picked up ten cans of Del Monte vegetables for .30/piece the other day.

11/17/2010 10:15:50 AM

somebody is a bit jewish

11/17/2010 10:21:19 AM

Awww, snaps! First time anyone has called me that! WOOT WOOT!

(To be clear, what you said is offensive, immature, lame, and unfunny. You should consider editing your post and editing whatever line of thinking led you to believe that was even remotely okay or funny.)

11/17/2010 10:29:22 AM

Quote :

""I'm not one of those people who spends hours organizing," he said. "I just grab as many coupon inserts as I can from leftover newspapers at the coffee shops in my neighborhood. Also, Tuesday is recycling night so I can find them near Dumpsters as well."

my wife and i went through the neighborhood on our recycling night and grabbed a bunch of Brueggers bagel inserts for a free cream cheese bagel that came in the sunday paper about 3 weeks ago.

we've been eating free bagels ever since

11/17/2010 10:29:45 AM