My mother has a great smile that she flashes frequently. You’d be fairly hard-pressed, however, to find something that can make her giddier than saving money at the grocery store.

Coupons. The word alone is enough to make her face light up and send her scurrying for scissors. You may be thinking, “How cute. Margie is watching her pennies by clipping coupons.”

Don’t be fooled. My mother is the master. She has clearly turned her hobby into an exact science. Her shelves are always well-stocked and she manages to give away food to friends or organizations. This belies her fixed income.

So just how does Margie do this?

“I take the Shaw’s flier from The Weekly on Thursdays and check their sales against my coupons,” she said. “Then on Saturday, I look at the Hannaford flier in the BDN. Then I make my list and shop both stores.” This is easy, she added, because in Bangor the stores are about a mile apart.

“And sometimes you see 10 items for $10 in the Shaw’s flier, which makes each item a dollar. You don’t have to buy all 10 to get that price. And you can mix and match the ‘ten for ten’ items,” she said. “This is great because if I have a coupon, which I usually do, for say, 50 cents and Shaw’s doubles it, then I can get that item for free, with a Shaw’s card.”

And her numbers are impressive. I’ve seen her take as much as 50 percent off her bill.

“You have to watch the sales and the unadvertised specials when you get to the store,” she said. “Take all your coupons with you because you will need them if something is on special. And look ahead. While you might not need an item right now, it’s good to stock up on staples. For instance, I bought a jar of spaghetti sauce that was usually $1.99 but was on sale for $1, and I had a coupon for 50 cents which Shaw’s doubled, so I actually got the sauce for free. And then there are the baked beans. They were two for a dollar and I had a coupon for a dollar off four cans. I bought four, used my coupon, which made them 25 cents each. And they will keep. That’s important with winter coming up and iffy weather.”

She is particularly proud of her toothpaste savings. “The original price was $3.69, but it was on sale for half off, and I had a coupon, which came in the box of my previous tube – you can find coupons in many places – for 55 cents, which was doubled,” she said. “The end price was 75 cents.”

It is not just the using of the coupons that she has down to an art form, but the organization of them as well.

“Being organized is key,” Margie said, displaying her tightly stuffed envelops. “I like using these. My daughter and even a friend of hers bought me coupon holders but I really prefer the envelopes. I label them such as ‘current’ for those that expire in the present month, then each envelope is labeled by food category. At the end of every month, I go through all of them, putting the ones for the next month, in the order of expiration date, into the ‘current’ envelope. Wouldn’t want to lose one.”

Her system works and is worthy of admiration, like most everything else she does.

“It’s a numbers game. You merge what is on sale against the amount of the coupon,” she said. “You will be amazed at the bargains if you do.”

Carol Higgins is director of communications at Eastern Agency on Aging. For information on EAA, call 941-2865, email info@eaaa.org or log on www.eaaa.org.