Jordon Cox, 16, scoured endless websites and magazines and gathered hundreds of coupons for dozens of products. After spending hours each day searching the internet for coupons, he managed to collect 470, which he took to his local supermarket, and filled three trolleys with food and household items. The bill came to £572.16, but once the coupons were factored in the bill was reduced to just 4p – a saving of 99.81 per cent. The teenager, of Brentwood in Essex, donated all his food to the charity Doorstep which gives food to disadvantaged families.
He 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.”
He started his Christmas shopping project on December 1 and scoured hundreds of in-store magazines and websites for money off and cash back coupons. His shop, at Tesco Brent Cross, ended with an hour stop at the checkout to unload his items which included 200 packets of biscuits and 60 packs of butter.
He 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.”
Vicky Fox, who works at Doorstep, said families who he had helped out were overwhelmed by the donation. She 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. He made such a different to people living on the breadline.”
He bought:
- 20 packs of frozen Yorkshire puddings
- 20 jam roly polys
- 80 packs of butter
- 23 packs of Quorn mince
- Four Gressingham poussin.
- 40 black puddings
- 200 packets of biscuits
- 23 blocks of hard cheese
- 20 pots of Yeo Valley organic yoghurt
- 19 bottles of fruit juice.
- 10 boxes of Paxo stuffing
- 40 bottles of Anchor whipped cream
- 15 bags of frozen Brussels sprouts
- 4 packs of After Eight mints
- 15 Covent Garden Soups.
- 10 bags of Florette Salad
- 36 packs of Cauldron tofu, vegetarian sausages and falafel
- Crumble mix
- Haribo sweets
