Avery Elementary to Host Couponing 101 Class

Avery Elementary School PTA would like to help many members of the community meet one of their new year’s resolutions – save more money.

The PTA will sponsor the Avery Cub Coupon Club and will host a class, Couponing 101: Saving with Style on Jan. 24 at 6:30 p.m. in the school’s cafeteria.  The event is open to the community and costs $5 for PTA Members and $8 for Non-PTA Members. 

Teaching the class is Canton’s couponing extraordinaire, Traci Rogers.   Traci has been featured on 11Alive and chosen by CouponMom as one of her best users to interview with the Atlanta Journal.  Her advice and skills have also been featured in the Cherokee Tribune and other media outlets.

Rogers started really using coupons about 12 years ago when she was still working in the corporate world. 

“I found out about the then site- www.cutouthunger.org which is now www.couponmom.com when Stephanie Nelson, founder, was just starting out,” Rogers said. “Once I saw how much I could get for free or close to it- I was hooked. Why pay more than you have to despite your income?  It became a game to my husband and I to see how much we could save and the bonus was all the extra items we had in our household.  You never run out of anything.”

Rogers turned her interest in coupon into a mission to help other two years ago when the economy took a downward turn.

“People that once made fun of the couponing were now asking for advice and apologizing!”

She decided to start teaching and developed her blog, Southern Coupon Belle, after an appearance on for 11Alive News with reporter Valerie Hoff.   She was actually approached to teach by a church in Cumming after a friend was bragging about my savings.

“I loved seeing people get excited, have their stress about money decrease and knew I had found my calling’” Rogers said.

She has since taught coupon classes at other churches and small groups--traveling as far as South Carolina for a church last year.  One workshop, in Hamilton Mill for a MOPS (Mothers of PreSchoolers) group attracted over 250 attendees.

Rogers shares her advice for anyone just beginning to use coupons to help the family budget.

“Patience and endurance- this is a slow race but you can start saving from the start.  Are you going to save 78 percent on your first coupon shop?  Maybe, but probably not.  But if you saved $20--that’s $20!  And after about six  to eight weeks you have a stockpile growing and the shops get easy and faster to complete.   Lots of people think that they don’t have the time to do this but the method is not as time consuming as many want to believe.  Twenty minutes is all it takes to get my lists ready for the week with the appropriate coupons and if you saved $30 that week- that’s like having a job that pays $90/hour!  At that rate, this is time well spent.”

Don’t get overwhelmed and give up. Some weeks are better and easier than others.   Finally, be considerate of other shoppers, the cashiers and the stores.  Don’t be a Coupon Crazy and ruin this fun game for everyone.”

If you are unable to attend Avery’s event, Traci does schedule small group classes.  She does a GNO class (Girls Night Out) where neighbors or friends can get together and go over the workshop in a very casual setting.  If you have a group interested, she would be willing to schedule classes with a pre-registration and book the library for workshops.  Traci has also been setting up the ability to conduct webinars and plan to launch that in the next couple of weeks.

Traci said during one of her most recent shopping trips, she was able to purchase 14 items at Publix that she paid $1.10 and saved 97 percent or $35.57 (see photo!). 

One of her best stories happened a few month back.

“We had a deal about six months ago at Kroger that was like $76 before coupons and we had to buy a candy bar because Kroger owed us money!  The cashier went crazy and was showing everyone in line what we had saved.”

Couponing has allowed the Rogers family to give back to food ministries and create care boxes for soldiers.

Traci and her husband Mike live in the Mill Creek area with their two daughters.  She is now a stay at home mom and active in Avery’s PTA.    You can read her blog at www.SouthernCouponBelle.blogspot.com or reach her by email at southerncouponbelle@comcast.net.