Spending time to save money

Some lined up four hours early. All were eager to learn ways to feed their families for as little as possible.

About 2,500 people packed the North Charleston Performing Arts Center on Saturday to hear Jill Cataldo, the super-couponing queen, teach them money-saving tips.

The audience of nearly all women was seven times larger than any Cataldo had previously spoken before, she said.

The audience at "Super-Couponing with Jill Cataldo: A Savings Extravaganza" was engaged by her rapid-fire delivery, aided by a slide presentation filled with money-saving ideas.

The energy-filled event was jointly sponsored by The Post and Courier and Piggly Wiggly.

"When the paper lands in my driveway, it's like somebody threw tax-free money in my driveway," said Cataldo, who gets 80 percent of her coupons from newspaper inserts and 20 percent via the Internet.

Cataldo, whose syndicated column appears in the Post and Courier on Wednesdays, has a Lowcountry following. As she walked on stage, the audience gave her star treatment, applauding enthusiastically and cheering loudly.

While the bottom line for those attending was saving money, their reasons were individual as well.

"You need all the help you can get," said Sandi Blatchley of North Charleston.

"I just want to be one of those people who can buy $100 worth of groceries and only spend $20, or less," said Kim Morrison, a Summerville hairstylist.

"Retirement is coming," said 29 year-old Shayla Walthall of Goose Creek.

"I want to become a major couponer," said Sandra Brooks of Johns Island, who said she reads Cataldo's column religiously.

Cataldo's own inspiration for learning to use coupons creatively came early in 2008 when her second child was in training pants and she was four months pregnant with her third. The expanding family caused her to think about ways to save more money.

When using coupons at a clearance sale enabled her to buy 66 packs of training pants and diapers for $7.92, she was hooked.

Back then, Cataldo, a former journalist and web designer, was spending $120 to $150 a week on groceries for her family of four. A few months later, she had cut that amount in half, and after a year, she had saved $5,400.

That summer, one newspaper wrote seven articles about her in six weeks. A few weeks after that, she started giving tips on grocery deals on a radio program. The next month she taught her first workshop at a local library. And two months later, she signed her first contract to write a syndicated column.

"I always think of my coupons as cash," Cataldo said prior to the workshop. "Saving $100 a week is like being paid $100. I can't afford not to use coupons. Many people don't use coupons because they think they don't have the time it takes. You can spend the time to save money, or you can spend the money to save time."

Cataldo advised against clipping coupons and tossing the circulars, using coupons without waiting for sales and automatically buying larger or bulk sizes. She said most people do those things, but those practices are not the ways to shave the maximum number of dollars off grocery bills.