Coupon interest rises in tight economy

In her case, it's a job that pays about $20 an hour.

"Every little bit helps. It's something I do for my family," said the Pueblo, Colo., resident, who helps offset rising costs for her five-person household by spending a few hours each week scouring the Sunday newspapers and Internet sites for opportunities to save quarters and dollars per item.

Fox, whose full-time job is in a telecommunications company call center, has been a couponer for years, enduring the snickers or grumbles from customers waiting in line behind her as she handed over fistfuls of coupons. But that's changing, she said; now people trying to cope with $4-a-gallon gas and higher grocery prices are asking her for tips on finding and using coupons.

The expanding availability of printable coupons online, of paperless digital coupons that can be accessed from cellphones and store loyalty cards, and an explosion of Web sites and bloggers focused on sharing coupon information are also feeding a comeback of what had been a fading Sunday tradition in American households. But it's mainly the economy that has people of more diverse ages and income clipping and clicking.

"That lackluster economy brings out the couponing tendency in all of us," said Sharon Baker, executive director of Shortcuts, a digital coupon distribution service started this year by Time Warner Inc.'s AOL.

Amid soaring fuel costs and a housing and credit crisis, Americans last year halted a 16-year trend of declining redemptions by turning in 2.6 billion manufacturers' coupons, according to CMS Inc., a coupon processing agent and promotions logistics service based in Winston-Salem, N.C. That marked the first year since 1992, when nearly 8 billion coupons were used, that redemptions had not fallen.

CMS says historical trends show that coupon redemption rates rise when prices and unemployment are going up, so more coupon use is expected this year.

Coupons Inc., which specializes in offering printable online coupons, says usage trends spiked up last September.

"We saw a huge leap; we think consumers really started to feel the pinch then," said Steven Boal, founder and chief executive of the 10-year-old company. "We're just seeing the numbers continue to climb."