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May 1, 5:50 PMPhoenix Your Money ExaminerSusan Vycital

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Money is on everyone’s mind these days. Will I be the next to be laid off? Will they cut my pay? When will this recession end? How will I make ends meet? With everything being uncertain and even the big economists saying they have never seen an economy like this, families are trying to save anyway they can.

One of the places they are looking to save is on food and household goods by switching from the national brand to the store ones. This is fine for some items like vitamins and over the counter medicine. If you look at the labels, they have almost exactly the same ingredients in the same amounts. But if you are talking about macaroni and cheese, well let’s just say that the store brand isn’t quite as ….. Cheesy. But you grin and bare it because you are saving 30-40 cents a box and every penny counts. Maybe there is a way that you can have your national brand at the cheap store brand price.

That’s right I’m talking about coupons. I know, I know it is a hassle to remember to buy the Sunday paper and then usually they have coupons for items you don’t use. Then you have to find what your child did with the scissors and find a place to save them. The online coupons are not much better. You have to sign up with each site and once again they have coupons for products they are promoting not the ones you use. Then your spam site seems to triple and by the time you get done printing each one, you have probably spent more money on the paper than the coupon is worth.

There is another way. Make a letter on your Word or Mac office. Start by telling the company that you have used their product (macaroni, detergent, yogurt, etc) and really enjoy it because it (tastes better, gets clothes cleaner, has less fat, etc) than any other that you have ever used. However, due to recent changes in the household budget, you have had to buy the store brand for the same product. You were wondering if they might have coupons for loyal customers as you have used their product for (5, 10, 20 etc) years and miss being able to buy it. Thank them for their time. Now go to their website and locate the customer feedback or contact us link and upload your letter. Now just sit and wait. You will be surprised at the number of coupons you will receive in the mail and some even send you a sample size of the product.

Don’t forget to personalize the letter for the product but you can use it over and over for all the items you want. Don’t be shy about sending it out as these companies are struggling also and they want to keep you as their customer. Since you are going to be on the internet anyway, you might as well make it pay for you.

It is a small thing to do but I think in this economy all of us are finding that it is the small things in life that count.