A teenage ‘extreme couponer’ used supermarket discount vouchers to buy £600 worth of shopping for just 4p – and gave all the food to needy families at Christmas.
Canny Jordon Cox, 16, scoured endless websites and magazines and gathered hundreds of coupons for dozens of products.
He spent hours each day searching the internet for vouchers offering money off items such as butter, biscuits, puddings, sauces, stuffing, pies, sweets and SPROUTS.
Jordan amassed 470 coupons, which he took to his local branch of Tesco, and filled three trolleys with food and household items.
The bill came to £572.16 and 6ft 4ins Jordon was given a massive receipt which was nearly as tall as him.
But once the checkout girl swiped his whopping pile of coupons through the till, Jordan saw the total shrink to just 4P – a saving of 99.81 per cent.
Kind Jordon immediately donated all his food to the charity Doorstep which gives food to disadvantaged families.
Jordan, of Brentwood, Essex, said: “I read an article that said a thousandth of the UK population are unable to eat this Christmas because they don’t have any money.
“I decided wanted to help as many people as I can, and to also show that it’s possible to shop very cheaply, if you know how.
“It’s not an exact science, so you can never really work out ahead of time how much the total is going to be. I was stunned when it came up as just 4p.”
Jordan set about his Christmas shopping project on December 1 and scoured hundreds of in-store magazines and websites for money off and cash back coupons.
He bought 20 packs of frozen Yorkshire puddings and 20 jam roly polys, 80 packs of butter, 23 packs of Quorn mince and even four Gressingham poussin.
He also bought 40 black puddings, 200 packets of biscuits, 23 blocks of hard cheese, 20 pots of Yeo Valley organic yoghurt and 19 bottles of fruit juice.
Jordan bought 10 boxes of Paxo stuffing, 40 bottles of Anchor whipped cream, 15 bags of frozen Brussels sprouts, 4 packs of After Eight mints and 15 Covent Garden Soups.
He also loaded his trolley with 10 bags of Florette Salad, 36 packs of Cauldron tofu, vegetarian sausages and falafel, crumble mix and Haribo sweets.
His big shop, at Tesco Brent Cross, ended with an hour stop at the checkout, with the cashier calling the manager over because she had never seen so many coupons.
Jordan said: “The lady at the checkout had worked at Tesco for 19 years, and she said she’d never seen anything like it before. I had a big crowd. I felt like a celebrity.
“My heart was pounding and the adrenaline was pumping when we got to the till. So much could have gone wrong.
“I could have left some coupons at home, or not read the terms and conditions properly. Some of them might have expired too.”
He began his obsession with coupons last year after his parents split and mum Debbie Cox, 52, struggled to cope on her NHS admin assistant salary.
Jordon, who is studying a B-tec in business and enterprise, has complete control over his mum’s weekly shop, and plans all their meals in advance.
He reckons he’s saved his mum more than £2,000 this year alone and has a huge stockpile of hundreds of items at home.
Jordan said: “Supermarkets rarely give out coupons for their own-brand items, so it can be quite difficult to get meat and vegetables for a discount.
“But sometimes you can, and the huge amount of money we save on toiletries, snacks and dry goods means mum can splash out on meat – as long as it’s on an offer.
“It’s taken a bit of learning, but now I’ve managed to get our weekly shop down from £60 to £10 on a bad week.
“Sometimes we’ve even managed to get it for free. We do have to plan our lives around what’s on offer though.
“The Christmas shop was definitely the best experience of my life. I feel so pleased that I could help so many people.”
Debbie said: “It’s pretty amazing really, I’m so proud of my boy. The families he helped were all so grateful and happy.
“He’s a real whizz when it comes to saving, and I’m glad he turned his talents to helping as many people as possible.”
Jordon donated his food to the disadvantaged families who rely on North London charity Doorstep to help them out when their money doesn’t stretch far enough to cover food.
Charity boss Vicky Fox said: “I’d call his gift a great and generous act of a young man and what he did made a real difference.
“He’s made a really difference to families who work with us to survive on extremely low incomes and do need the help.
“People are just overwhelmed. They are so happy. He made such a different to people living on the breadline.”
Jordon’s super-scrimping attracted the attention of American couponers, who invited him to a saving conference in Orlando, Florida.
But savvy Jordon’s saving bug got the better of him, and he negotiated a week-long stay in a five-star hotel for a tenth of the listed price.
He said: “Not many people my age are concerned with their parents’ money.
“But after seeing the smile it put on my mum’s face the first time I saved on the shopping, I thought it was something too good to give up.
“It’s my hobby and I love it. I only spend about 30 minutes every day looking for vouchers and coupons, but it pays dividends.
“I still get pocket money, which I’m saving up for something special.”
Jordan is planning on launching his own coupon-hunting website CouponShop.co.uk next year to help other save big on their shopping.
Can’t believe that. Extreme couponing is hard to use as many stores treat it invalid. Yet, it’s still an amazing and astonishing thing to reduce so much amount of money. I commonly use HalfDiscount, vouchercodes for my online deals, but I just ever used double stackable deals. That’s enough for me.
I use a lot of coupons for my shopping!! But it would be impossible to do a £600 shop for just 4p I will believe this if you show me the bill / receipt.