Angie Hoag became an expert on saving money the unpleasant way, through crushing credit card debt.

A mix of things — legal fees from an earlier divorce, school loans, medical bills — left the Whitewater resident and her second husband, Steve, with $52,000 on their credit cards seven years ago.

The family of four embraced radical change and began the slow slog toward solvency. Now, random shoppers stop her for advice at the grocery store and friends call her “The Frugal Mommy.”

There may be no better time to wear the label. Thrift is in, largely due to necessity.

“Once you start trying to save money, you realize there’s this community of thousands of people trying to do the same thing,” said Mercedes Levy of Plymouth, near Sheboygan, who blogs about inexpensive living at www.commonsensewithmoney.com.

A stay-at-home mom with two young children, Levy is part of an emerging subculture of super savers for whom “coupon” is a verb. She and her husband saved more than $6,000 last year just by clipping coupons, she said.

Levy shares the best deals on her Web site, which logged 160,000 unique visits in March, up from 24,000 hits eight months earlier.

There’s little doubt the recession of the last nine months has forced a significant percentage of the population to reassess its finances, said Debra Neubauer, administrator of the Financial Education Center in Madison, a program of UW-Extension that counseled more than 1,300 people last year. She encourages people to play the “what if I get laid off tomorrow” game — a bummer of an exercise, but helpful, she said.

“The people who are most successful at changing their spending habits are taking action while they’re still employed,” Neubauer said.

The Hoags, who live about 45 miles southeast of Madison, know all about unemployment. Steve Hoag, 45, has been laid off twice in seven years, most recently in January from a foundry that supplied parts to the Harley-Davidson Motor Company. Despite the job losses, the couple has paid off $49,000 of their credit card debt. Angie Hoag, 35, is a school sign language interpreter.

On a recent shopping trip with the Hoags, the cashier at the Janesville Logli’s grocery store rang up $126.01 in items. Angie Hoag handed over 60 coupons, dropping the total to $65.48. Then she produced a $50 gift card she’d earned from a car dealership for taking a test drive. She ended up paying $15.48.

At a Janesville Walgreen’s, Hoag stocked up on $22.10 worth of name-brand items such as Oscar Mayer wieners and Planters Nuts, then used coupons and points from the Walgreen’s register rewards programs to get it all free. “Nothing out of pocket,” she announced proudly.

Saving such extreme amounts of money takes organization and commitment, Hoag said. To save time and gas, she shops just once every four or five weeks and plans 84 meals in advance — three meals a day for 28 days. The meal planning takes only about one hour total because Hoag said she has memorized the contents of her pantry and builds in repeat meals and meals with leftovers.

The most common question she gets asked: What about fresh produce? The family buys whatever fruits and vegetables are on sale, then eats them in order of how fast they’ll spoil.

“So the first week, we may eat only bananas, the second week oranges, the third week apples,” Hoag said. “The last two weeks, we eat all canned fruits and vegetables, mostly from our garden.”

The first year, Hoag carried a notebook with her and meticulously recorded sale prices. Now she instantly knows a good deal and has personal thresholds for what she will and won’t pay. (Never more than 50 cents for a box of name-brand breakfast cereals.)

Tuesday is coupon night for the Hoags. After the kids go to bed, the parents talk and clip. Angie Hoag takes two binders with hundreds of coupons to stores with her, propping them up in her cart along with a calculator. (At a Janesville Target store, a woman stared in disbelief, then said, “I think I’m just going to follow you.”)

Hoag’s binders include copies of the coupon policies of all stores she visits in case she must enlighten an untrained cashier.

The art of stockpiling

Levy, the Plymouth mom, said the trick is to build a stockpile of goods — essentially your own mini-grocery store. This will be labor intensive, and you won’t save a lot of money initially as you buy in bulk. But after a few months, you’ll be able to focus almost entirely on buying only the best deals because you won’t be desperate for anything, she said.

Occasionally, the overzealous must take a complete shopping break and draw down their supply, Levy said. That’s called “eating the pantry” in coupon lingo.

Novices should be aware of one frowned-upon practice, Levy said — cleaning out a store of a product because the deal is so good. “People get carried away and forget there are others who need to save money,” she said. “So remember the next shopper.”

That’s called “coupon karma.”

Kari Zelinka of Madison, a medical librarian and mother of a 1-year-old, said it’s easy to get swept up in saving money. A co-worker introduced her to couponing a year ago with intoxicating results. Zelinka somewhat sheepishly shared photos she’s taken of her proudest conquests, including her best-ever shopping trip to a Copps grocery store in which she spent just $45 for an overflowing tabletop of items.

“I honestly don’t usually photograph my food,” she said.

Zelinka’s pantry contains three years’ worth of women’s razors and five years’ worth of deodorant for her husband, Sam. Like many of the super thrifty, Zelinka has found a perfectly legal way to game the system by combining manufacturers’ coupons with store coupons to get items for free.

“I don’t think I’ll ever pay for toothpaste again,” she said. (She donates excess items to the American Red Cross.)

Jason Raddenbach, a Janesville father of three, said he’s always been savings-minded and now, with a recession, finds his advice increasingly sought after.

“I tend to be kind of the ‘Consumer Reports’ go-to guy for my friends,” he said.

A manufacturer’s representative, Raddenbach works from home. His wife, Shelly, home schools their children. The family always buys used cars, walks almost everywhere and vacations locally. Part of the family’s approach is low-tech — whenever they can, they put a little money in envelopes marked “Family Night” and “Date Night.” If the envelopes are empty, they don’t go out.

Biting one’s tongue

If there’s a downside for super savers, it’s witnessing — and trying not to judge — the extravagant ways of others. At a Janesville Kwik Trip, Angie Hoag nearly hyperventilated as the man in front of her paid $6.09 for a bottle of water and two PowerBars. Hoag paid only slightly more for three gallons of milk, three pounds of bananas and two dozen eggs.

All of this money saving takes prep work, Hoag said. Initially, she estimates she spent four to six hours a week on the effort. Years later, that’s dropped to about two hours a week due to repetition and expertise.

Couponing is just one aspect of the Hoag’s frugal living. They gave up cable television and cell phones. They rarely dine out. They barter, rummage, “freecycle” and Dumpster dive. (Steve Hoag once collected five microwave ovens from curbs during UW-Whitewater move-out week, then cleaned them up and sold them for $10 each at a garage sale.)

The family’s lifestyle could elicit pity from some, but Angie Hoag says they don’t suffer and actually feel enriched.

“We’re not anti-spending money,” Hoag said. “We just choose how we spend it.”

ANGIE’S TOP  5 TIPS

1. You can freeze almost anything — oatmeal, sour cream, bread. Hoag buys milk only in bags because it’s cheaper and can be frozen. (Kwik Trip sells it for 89 cents a half-gallon sometimes.) Even eggs can be frozen. Just crack them open, mix them well and put them in containers. They’ll explode if you freeze them in the shell.
2. Don’t shop the main aisles at big-box stores such as Target and Wal-Mart. Start from the inside aisles — that’s where stores put clearance items. Also, dispense with brand loyalty.
3. Go to a building’s lost-and-found department and ask what they have that is 30 days old. See if they will let you go through it and take what you want.
4. Check the fine print on coupons to see if they exclude trial or travel sizes. If not, you can really go to town — a $1 off coupon for Band-Aids will get you a free 99-cent trial size, for instance.
5. Look for manufacturers’ coupons on the front doors and refrigerator doors at convenience stores. Often these coupons are meant to entice you to buy beverages and snacks on the spot, where prices are usually higher. Take the coupons and buy the products at a cheaper location, preferably a grocery store that will double the coupon.

Angie Hoag blogs about her frugal lifestyle at http://frugalmommie.blogspot.com.