The reality is that the key to any coupon clipper's success is meal planning. These aren't people who stop at the grocery store on the way home and then decide what's for dinner. They plan what they are going to serve their families each week based on what's on sale, what coupons they have and what is in their pantry, fridge and freezer.

"It goes hand in hand," says Faye Prosser, who teaches couponing classes throughout the Triangle. "You can't do one effectively without the other."

To see how that system works, we asked Trudy Thornton, 37, of Durham, one of Prosser's students, to let us track how she plans and shops for a week's worth of dinners.

Thornton is a working mother who puts dinner on the table every night for her husband and two children, ages 13 and 5. She also runs the coupon club for savvydollar.org, an online forum for North Carolina bargain hunters. But to talk to Thornton today, you would hardly believe she is a recent coupon convert.

Before, Thornton says, she had her envelope of coupons that often expired before she used them. Or when she did use them, she was happy to save $5 off the up to $200 she was spending each week at the grocery and drug stores.

"It's embarassing now that I think about it," Thornton says.

In January, Thornton's mother sent her a newspaper article about Prosser. Thornton and her sister decided to take one of Prosser's classes. What Thornton learned completely changed her approach to shopping.

Now, Thornton spends at most $75 a week on food, cleaning and personal hygiene products. This year, Thornton says, she has saved almost $7,000 by not paying full price for anything. She has quite an overstock.

The Thorntons rent a small cozy house in southern Durham. Thornton has a refrigerator and a full-size freezer, both well-stocked with her food bargains. The scrapbook table in her bedroom has been overtaken by bottles of Windex, Scrubbing Bubbles bathroom cleaner, paper plates and napkins. She removed the shoes from the bottom of her husband's closet to make room for Kraft salad dressing, Hefty storage bags and Johnson & Johnson baby lotion. Hormel bacon bits and Nesquick line the top of the couple's dresser.

Thornton's goal is to stock up on nonperishable foods, hygiene and cleaning products when she has coupons to pair with store sales. That way, she gets them at deeply discounted prices. For example, Thornton says she never pays anything for pasta, rice, mustard, ketchup, mayonnaise or other condiments. She buys enough of those items during triple coupons at Harris Teeter grocery stores to last until the next triple coupon event.

(Every three months or so, Harris Teeter triples the value of coupons worth up to 99 cents.)

"The point is to get where you have enough of a stockpile so you only have to buy perishables," she says.

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Thornton sits at her kitchen table with the grocery store circulars, a binder with baseball card holders full of coupons and a crate of hanging file folders also full of coupons.

She plans to shop for eight dinners, knowing one may hold over until the next week. This is how it goes: she has Perdue chicken in the freezer and barbecue sauce that she got free in the pantry. And so one night, she will make pulled barbecue chicken sandwiches. She'll have to buy buns and cabbage for the coleslaw. But she has Duke's mayonnaise in the cupboard, which cost 25 cents during triple coupons, and a box of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese that cost 33 cents on sale.

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