People have been reading and hearing about the gloomy U.S. economy for months. Folks are losing jobs, consumers are holding onto coins, everyone is worried about the future. Welcome to hard times.

As a bachelor, my single income covers monthly mortgage, electricity, heating oil, gasoline and insurance expenses. Can’t do much about them — the bills come in, the checks go out.

But I can do something about grocery expenses. When The Sunday Gazette arrives every week, I always page through the manufacturer coupon inserts. Yes, it’s another great thing about newspapers — coupons allow clever shoppers to save a few dollars every week with selective clips.

This past Sunday, I spotted deals for Hershey bagged chocolates, Barber stuffed chicken chests, Garlick chocolate milk and Formula 409 spray cleaner. Scissors in hand, I liberated the coupons from all four advertisements and tossed them into an envelope. I will soon sacrifice them to a supermarket clerk.

I know some guys never take this approach. My friend Bill Buell compares using coupons to using federal benefits for the down and out. Or Grandma shopping for provisions, pulling out a wad of coupons and a few coins from her purse.

Yet, this big spender is always asking me for a dollar here, a quarter there, for his frequent trips to the row of company vending machines in the lunch room.

My brother Tim has also looked down at coupons in the past, but I am slowly getting through to him. He is finally learning my code for coupon conduct.

It’s an easy one — free money. I only cut coupons for $1 or more. I’m not going to bother with 15 cents for Comet or 40 cents for Dannon yogurt. Paper coupons must equal paper money. To me, a $1 coupon is like cutting out a genuine dollar bill — so instead of paying $2.50 for Perdue “Short Cuts” chicken, I pay only $1.50. If St. Joseph’s aspirin is $2.99 for a 32-pill bottle, it costs me $1.99 after the paper dollar comes out.

Also — I only use coupons for products I keep in cupboard and cold storage. If Colgate wants to give me a dollar for investing in their “Luminous” line of toothpaste, I am happy to accept. The same policy is in place for the Glade candle people — I use candles as often as I do toothpaste or ketchup, so $1 discounts are always welcome.

I won’t bite for these $1-off-two deals. To me, that’s a 50-cent coupon. And I always notice the $2.50 and $3 coupons. But sometimes, I can’t find the products. Does “Infusium” shampoo even exist?

Non-believers will say, “Ah, most of those coupons are for lousy, processed foods!” Maybe .. but I like those Barber chicken chests and Green Giant vegetables. And again, these are hard times.

The savings — all tax-free, I might add — can be substantial. In December 2002, I wrote a story about Rotterdam’s Marie D’Errico, who used coupons for years and kept track of the money she saved. When she had $14,000 in coupon savings during the late 1980s, she invested the dough. The account grew, and Marie eventually bought a 2003 Cadillac DeVille with savings assisted by Betty Crocker, Duncan Hines and the Gorton fisherman.

My friend Beverly Matern — Bev used to work at the old Gazette before finding even greater happiness as a family woman in Horseheads, near Elmira — clips everything. She is always asking me for extra coupon inserts I find lying in newspaper trash bins. I’ve also been able to scrounge coupons for my sister, Joanne Fisher of Rochester and Phyllis Sharp of Greenwich.

Phyllis occasionally returns the favor by shipping me a bowl of her famous potato salad.

My sister gives me nothing.

Beverly once convinced me to break one of my coupon rules. “They never check the expiration dates!” she assured me.
Emboldened by a true coupon connoisseur, I took some coupons for Perdue chicken — pre-cooked chicken in airtight bags, the perfect bachelor food — to my local supermarket. These slips of paper were as dead as fried chicken; they had expired weeks before.

Four packages, four coupons, four inspections, four refusals — the clerk called my bluff.

“Sir, I cannot accept these coupons,” she said, with authority.

Of course, I felt like a dope in the checkout line, and used either the lame, “Oh, I didn’t notice!” or the even more lame, “Sorry — my wife gives me these coupons!” Nothing like putting the blame on a person who doesn’t exist. And sort of telling the clerk “Hell, these things aren’t MY idea” while secretly lamenting the loss of $4.

Beverly later explained the mistake: “Never go to the older, more experienced check-out clerks! Always go to the teenagers!” she told me.

Yeah, sure. The girl who busted me was a high school kid.

Since then, I’ve stuck to the basics. Real, living coupons, just those $1 models. I especially appreciate double coupon weeks at Price Chopper. Remember, these are hard times. And Dole bagged salads taste even better when I’m paying $1.59 for the privilege and less savvy consumers like Bill Buell are paying $3.59.

Still, there is a stigma.

There was once a scene in HBO’s gangster smash “The Sopranos” showing the notoriously cheap — and notoriously violent — mob guy Paulie Walnuts sitting at his kitchen table, clipping coupons. The scene was supposed to supply a chuckle, and I guess it did.

Are guys cutting coupons supposed to be kind of a joke? Ten dollars saved will buy me a half a tank of gasoline or a decent bottle of booze (if you want to call Irish cream liqueur booze). Or part of a tip in a nice restaurant. Maybe, like Marie D’Errico, I’ll start saving my coupon bonuses for a week in Schroon Lake this summer.

In a way, it’s more like a game — how much can you knock off your grocery bill. I’ll bet I could make $500,000 a year, and I’d still be using my scissors on Sunday mornings.

But maybe just for those $2.50 and $3 coupons.

And realistically, the butler would probably be doing the clipping.