April Hennion can actually make money by shopping.

She’s not a paid secret shopper. She’s a stay-at-home mom from Brownsville who has developed the fine art of couponing.

“Have you ever watched ‘Extreme Couponing’?” she asked, referring to a television show on the cable network TLC. “Well, that’s not reality. What I do is nothing like that.”

Hennion spends 30 or 40 minutes a week poring over advertisements and looking at coupon sites for opportunities to double her coupons, get store rewards and seek rebates, all on the same product. To save time, she doesn’t actually clip the coupons until she needs them. Instead, each week’s coupons from the newspaper are filed neatly in photo book pages and marked with their date of publication. Sometimes store advertisements refer customers to coupon publication dates for further savings.

“I started doing this for fun about 10 years ago,” she said. “But when I became a stay-at-home mom five years ago, I did it out of need and because I had more time.

“It’s addictive.”

Hennion said her husband likes the savings she achieves, but “he thinks I’m crazy.”

Last Wednesday, she went shopping at Rite Aid in Bowling Green before going to a dentist appointment.

“I had a really good list of things that I was going to get for free, but they were out of many items,” she said.

In most cases, she said, Sunday afternoon or another day early in the week is the best time to shop for those super sale items.

She went for John Freida hair products because there was an in-store offer to buy four products for $20 and get $10 in store rewards, plus she had a $2 off coupon for each of the bottles she purchased. She also bought Old Spice Body Wash, bug spray and some Easter candy. Hennion put some other shampoo back on the shelf because her coupons didn’t work.

When the cash register rang up the total, she had more than $30 in products at the sale price, for which she was charged 42 cents. After taxes, her bill was $2.29.

She will receive $15 in Rite Aid rewards that she can spend on a future shopping trip and a $2.99 rebate in the mail from the bug spray, so she actually made $15.70 on the shopping trip.

Hennion said she doesn’t hoard the free or cheap items she brings home.

“I give them to my mom or dad or other family members who need them,” she said. “You look under my sink or in my pantry, I have a few items. I don’t have a whole garage full of things.”

Some of the women on the “Extreme Couponing” show stockpile items, Hennion said.

Hennion makes her purchases based strictly on the coupons she has.

“We have no brand loyalty,” she said.

The exception is her husband’s Crest toothpaste. Other family members favor Colgate, so when she can get Colgate for free, she passes it on to her family.

“I rarely pay for things like shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste or toothbrushes,” she said.

Personal products are where the biggest savings can be had.

“You usually can’t save as much on groceries,” Hennion said.

Up until a few weeks ago, a customer could load a Kroger card with e-coupons and use a paper coupon at the same time.

“But a few weeks ago, they stopped doing that,” she said.

Hennion speculated that the store was seeing too many people take advantage of the double savings as a result of rising fuel prices.

“Two weeks ago, I got 12 boxes of pasta for free,” she said.

Even with the change in policy, Kroger still doubles coupons, Hennion said.

Hennion estimates that between groceries and other items she purchases, her savings average 50 to 55 percent.

While Hennion was shopping at Rite Aid, another woman, Robin Coley of Morgantown, was carefully scanning the aisles, coupons in hand.

“My brother taught me everything that I needed to know about couponing,” Coley said.

Coley also purchased the Freida products for the savings and because each of her daughters like the products.

As Hennion left the store, another woman marched in – list and coupons in hand.

“It’s a big thing,” Hennion said of couponing.

It’s so big that she blogs about it on a website, The Frugal Friends – http://thefrugalfriendsky.blogspot.com – and teaches a class in couponing. Earlier in the week, she had a class through Community Education and will conduct classes for others in the community.

“I’ve done them for teachers at their school,” she said, or she will come into someone’s home.

Hennion charges for the classes basically to cover her cost, based on how far away from her home she has to travel. She wants to keep the cost low.

“I don’t really want people to have to pay (a lot) to learn how to save money,” she said.

— To reach Hennion, email thefrugalfriends@yahoo.com. She also is on Facebook.