The Hotcouponworld Story

[hotcouponmama]

Hotcouponworld has a goal to help our members save money. By providing a content-based community where people can learn from each other, we provide our members an outlet for sharing deals. We encourage our members to save money on everything they buy, and we also hope to empower members to reinvest their savings into themselves and their families.

We recognize that our members are at different stages of the savings process, but that everyone still has something to learn. By offering tools and strategies to keep people motivated, we hope our members will find ways to increase personal wealth and live a better life.

We welcome new members no matter what their skill level. We will always work to help new community members find answers and learn our favorite hobby. Lastly, we strive to achieve an active, lively community filled with trading, friendships, and fun.


Thank you for being a part of Hotcouponworld. We are thrilled to be able to help you on your savings journey!

[hotcouponmama]

Sometimes in life, you'll get the opportunity to be a part of something amazing. It could be the traditional things we normally think of when we think of special times in our lives - births, weddings, personal accomplishments.

But then there are chances to be involved in other things that are bigger than your own personal circle, and have a positive impact on others. For both myself and Heidi, Hotcouponworld has been one of those times where being involved with others in creating this site has been a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and we've no regrets about how we came to be......


Six year ago, Heidi (who was Busybeemomof3 back in the day) and I met at Fatwallet, a deals site that, at the time, had a grocery coupon section. I can remember when she was as new to couponing as some of you might be now. But she asked a lot of questions, and like many others here, quickly learned how to get in the coupon game. I had personally been a couponer for nearly 10 years, although not nearly to the extent that I had become since having an online community in which to participate.

About a year or so into our time at Fatwallet, the site owner there opted to get rid of the grocery coupon section. The people we'd come to know and trade with were scattered between different sites when the grocery section closed in winter 2004. Two members from Fatwallet offered to create a new home for us, and Deal-a-gogo (DAGG) was born.

Heidi and I, with a handful of other Fatwallet refugees were brought on as moderators. In fact, several are here today in that capacity. The board existed for about a year and a half in which time, we saw a mix of members come and go, but held a pretty good core group. In May, 2006, the board owners opted to sell DAGG to a larger web-publishing company. Most of the mods and members were willing to hang in there, but I didn't have any interest in doing so.

One night, I called Heidi. We'd never spoken personally on the phone in all the time we'd been online. It was like talking to someone who you grew up with...a sister, or a friend...someone who you'd known forever. We recalled the same stories and laughed about funny things we'd seen happen over the past few years on the grocery sites where we'd been members.

It was in that conversation we thought we might have a shot of building our own site. We kicked around several ideas, but also talked about challenges and what issues might arise. One thing was clear....if we were going to own and operate a site, it would be "By couponers, For couponers" and that we would be active members who do exactly what our members do - chase deals and try to save as much as we can for our families.

We resolved to open Hotcouponworld. Heidi relayed a story about a time when her family had been struck by hard times. Her husband had been injured at work, she was pregnant with the twins, and she'd broken her foot. Things couldn't look much worse. And then she shared that it was a post I'd made in a thread at Fatwallet about stockpiling that made couponing click for her. Someone had asked about storing stockpile items and I had posted pictures there for folks to see how our shelves had been built...the first "stockpile pictures" that I think any of us had seen before online. The combination of the information and the visual helped her understand coupons and was a start of turning her into the super-saver she is today.

Her story cinched it...we would start the site, that it would be run professionally as a real business, and that we had a purpose in helping others. Mark (my husband and our technical support for the site) and I were committed to funding the site indefinitely.

The relationships we'd built with others over the past few years were too important for us to get scattered to the edges of the web. And the timing was perfect. I'd just quit a job I loved with a boss I hated, and hadn't decided what to do with myself. Hotcouponworld was a great outlet for my energy in the early creation stages.

We moved pretty quickly into action. We spent several long nights working on design, terms of service, and content arrangement. When we felt we were ready, we contacted the moderators we trusted most and invited them to see the new site. We asked if they would be a part of Hotcouponworld. All but two of the original DAGG mods came over to be with us here. They hopped in and quickly helped with design, content, and brought forth great ideas that we hadn't thought of previously.

In 10 days, we'd put together what was the beginning of the site you see now. Through the work of our admin team, and our wonderful, original super-mod team (Mama22Qts, MrsPinecone, NrPeace17, Pappys, and SBP) and a few helpful members who had backstage passes to check us out and give feedback, we were ready to open.

July 10th, 2006, we opened with 176 new members to the site - core members with whom we had been traders, info-swappers, and friends. For some, this was the third site we'd been on together. We made a promise it would be the last.

Three years later, Hotcouponworld is a thriving community that welcomes new members no differently than if they had been with us six years ago when Heidi and I met at FW. The sheer volume of information, combined with our members and mods extraordinary talent to search out deals has made Hotcouponworld the best site online for deals discussion. Comments from our Anniversary Forums reaffirmed our decision to continue to build and grow Hotcouponworld into a site that is one-stop-shopping for information, coupons, and friendship.

When we read your stories that you share with each other, we are impressed by your shopping adventures, amazed by how you handle your struggles and accomplishments, and humbled that you choose to spend a part of your day with us. That we've created a site that helps bring people together, empowers our members, and encourages people to support one another....well, I can't speak for Heidi, but for me, it's been one of my proudest personal accomplishments.

And now you are apart of our story. Your participation, knowledge, and willingness to share with our community is what sets Hotcouponworld apart from every other deals discussion or couponing site on the web. We know you have a choice where you search for deals - that you've chosen Hotcouponworld speaks to our wonderful members and our amazing moderators and the caring atmosphere everyone has worked so hard to create.

Heidi and I thank you for being here and sharing your stories. We continue to learn from our members, and your insights help us personally save money as well.

Everything happens for a reason - and Hotcouponworld is the reason my path crossed with Heidi's six years ago.

[hotcouponmama]

The Scoop about Hotcouponmama


Name: Julie

Age: 34 (three months older than Heidi )

Home State: Oregon

Occupation: Spent my career in food service management, but taking a break to work on Hotcouponworld - just wrapped my MBA and now need to figure out what to do with it.

Marital Status: Married to Mark, who supports our tech issues on the board.

Kids: 3 boys ages 8,6, & 4

Pets: One dog, 10-year old mixed terrier, one Beta fish

Little Known Factoid: Wrote lyrics for a band in college

Favorite Money Saving Tip: I love rainchecks. In fact, I think the word "Rainchecking" should be added to the dictionary to describe the sport of collecting rainchecks the last night of a sale so you can eat tomorrow at today's prices. Be sure to grab a raincheck for anything and everything you might use, particularly at stores who have long or no expiration date.

Budget: I try to keep it under $150 a month for everything household and grocery we buy.

Stores I shop: Albertsons & Safeway (mainly), and Fred Meyer, Thriftway. Rite Aid and Walgreens if the sales are hot enough and I have enough time.

Coupon Organization Method: I keep all my coupons in envelopes by store aisle categories in a tackle box. (Actually all over the floor of our downstairs bedroom -- edited by Mark)

Best Advice to Newbies: Don't be afraid to ask questions. It's likely been answered before, but our site members are friendly enough that they'll answer it like it was the first time they've ever heard it asked!

Julie's Story:


I first started using coupons in college. My best friend and I would clip a few here and there on things we'd know we'd buy. Living in the dorms, there was one community kitchen, so the things we'd buy had to store well and fit in our little square dorm-size fridges.

When I left college to get married, I continued to play at couponing. I have been married to my DH for 11 years, although we've been together 13 years. When we were first together, the goal was that I could keep any money I saved at the store. It was my jewelry slush fund money. As we've had kids, that's kind of mellowed out a bit and our coupon savings goes towards things like funding retirement accounts and kids sports, hobbies and activities. Three school-aged kids aren't cheap, so couponing keeps me ahead of the financial curve when it comes to kids.

Mark's been pretty accepting of this crazy coupon habit. I tend not to be very organized about paper, so we finally agreed I can move all the paper downstairs and keep it in the spare room. Mark is the silent partner on the site. You'll see him post very rarely, but he's on here every day making sure we run smoothly from a technical perspective. He's a Lt. Colonel in the Army. He's been in for 18 years, but was PT for 2 years, so he officially has just under 4 years to go for retirement. When he retires, I've told him his FT job will be to keep upgrading HCW from a tech perspective - there's lots of features we'd like to add, so he can stay home, coach the kids sports, and write database code for us all day. It's pretty funny cause his "Honey-Do" list isn't just from me, there's 10,000+ women who are waiting for him to crank out new features. But he's a good sport about it.

We have three great, but wild kids. All boys. They are a total handful. The oldest is in 2nd grade, the middle on is in an all-day kindergarten program, and my youngest spends his time between preschool and daycare. They play a sport every season, so we're constantly running with them. Mark coaches a few of their sports, so that adds one more layer to being busy.

I started out in school hoping to be a journalist and a first amendment lawyer. I wound up in food service management, although I still got a communications degree. I am currently working on an MBA, and don't tell Mark, but I think when I finish that next year, I may just consider going back for my law degree. I feel a lot better about school these days as an adult learner - I get better grades than I ever did as an undergrad. I really do like being in school - it's always been a place for me to snag my best ideas. HCW isn't my first business, and it isn't likely to be my last. I'm always at my best when something is new and exciting and I love start-up businesses.

This fall, I decided to take a break from working and focus on building out Hotcouponworld. So you'll see new features in the works that I hope our members will find enjoyable.

Now I've been with Mark 13 years. We actively save about $10K or more a year on average over retail. The extra money has done a lot for us in our world. From vacations to being able to start businesses to paying for college, the money we've saved with being frugal on things like groceries, clothes, and cars has really helped us significantly. We're hoping when Mark retires in a few years, we'll really be able to keep him home FT to do stuff with the kids. Couponing will help keep us on track that way.

As to hobbies and such, outside HCW and coupons and school, I love to read (when I can), and Mark and I are gamblers by nature, so we do enjoy taking some of our savings and playing at the local casinos. But we're also gamers, so we do play lots of card and board games. Mark golfs (I just cry by the time I get to about the 5th hole cause I am terrible golfer) and this year, all the boys will be up on skis - we both ski, and the oldest two kids have, but this will be the first time the whole family will be on skis.

Aside from that, I stay pretty busy with the site and all things deal related. I have some new projects I'm working on, which have me in full-on research mode.

I will say that I am really glad to be a part of such a great community. HCW has meant a lot to me, and I'm thrilled you have found us and make visiting here a part of your day!

[queenofthehivemomof5]

A little about me....

Name: Heidi

Age: 32 (Almost 33 on 9/18)

Home State: Well I live in Wyoming (but am from CA)

Occupation: First and foremost I am a stay at home mom to my 5 children. Have been a SAHM for 16 years. And in my free time I run HCW.

Marital Status: Married to Russell (Russ or Rusty), who loves m dispite my crazy coupon hobby. You can find him online under the username kingofthehive.

Kids: 3 Girls and 2 Boys - Ages 16 to 2

Pets: 3 Dogs (Chicky Fuzzy, And Shay) and 3 Cats (Isabella, Pepsi, and Shaggy)

Little Known Factoid: I read really fast. I can read the average length novel in about 3-4 hours if uninterupted.

Favorite Money Saving Tip: Stockpile. Really for me the stockpile mentality is what saves me the most money. Not only stockpiling groceries, but clothes for the kids, school supplies, household items, etc. When I find a great price I buy enough to last.

Budget: Our grocery budget is $400 a month. That number has not changed since I started couponing. In fact it was the amount I budgetted before I found out how to coupon. But since learning how to use coupons I get 4 to 5 times more product for my money, I have added 2 more children (and few new pets) to my family, and most months I come under that and can put my actual real savings towards debt or in my savings account.

Stores I shop: Albertsons, Smith's Food & Drug, Walmart, Kmart, Walgreens, and a local store occasionaly Don's Supermarket.

Coupon Organization Method: I have tried them all at one point or another. But seem to keep comming back to the binder method. I guess it just works best for me. I have 3 binders. 1 small binder for my winetags, frees, rainchecks, and my hot coupons, and then I have 2 large CD binders. One is for food coupons, and the other is non food coupons. I mark my pages A-Z cause that is how my brain works. I use a combination of baseball card pages (most coupons), photo pages (tearpads), and buisness card pages (perfect for peelies).

Best Advice to Newbies: Couponing is a great way to save lots of money. It isn't instant, and it takes some work. But you get out of it what you put into it. So read the stickies on Couponing 101, and maybe 102, find your store forum and see what deals you can get in on. Even if you save $5.00 in your shopping trip, $5.00 times 52 weeks is $260.
As you learn your savings will increase, and over time that money can really add up!

[hotcouponmama]

[skimo]

Very nicely said!

[lyttlemiss]

From me to you for such a wonderful job that is being done for all of us here !!! You all do a wonderful job !!!!

:encourage91::thumbsup7:



:thanks100::THANKS4:


:party76::encourage4:

[mrssbell]

Heidi,

I want to thank you so much for allowing the ACS auction. I am crying as I write this to you. I am so touched by the love from the HCW members that it is breathtaking! This is really an awesome group of people! I am so proud to be a part of this group. I think you should feel good that you had the final say in all of this happening or not, thank you so much. I did not want your act of kindness to go without being thanked. You made this possible.

God Bless you,

sharon

[mommytimes4]

Heidi...I really think that you are great...You have given me some really good ideas the other day about how to organize...Thanks for making all this possible..I have meant some awesome people on here...And I have meant my new best friend on here..Kalvardo..she is the bestest ....she is getting me into CVS..thanks for allowing us to make friends....God bless ya...

[hookedoncoupons]

Heidi,

This site is awesome. I have saved so much money couponing and look forward to reading about all the good deals out there.

Trading coupons has also been enjoyable and fun. You and I have traded, too!

In addition, I've made some really nice friendships thanks to this board. I am amazed at the the helpfulness and generosity of so many members.
I participated in the recent American Cancer Society Auction. I can't thank you enough for approving this special auction. Not only was it fun and exciting, it helped raise awareness as well as money for a very worthwhile cause. I want to express my gratitude and encouragement for future auctions of this type.

Valentines Day is only a few days away. I would like to say "thanks from the bottom of my heart" for all that you do!:val7: