Only a decade ago, couponing – a catch-all verb used to describe the practice of saving money using stackable discounts – was so idiosyncratic that anyone doing it properly and publicly was christened with a catchy moniker, like the “Coupon Queen” or the “Coupon Kid”. Now, record-high rates of inflation and a spiralling cost of living crisis have made the once niche art of scouring the internet for frugal hacks a sort of extreme sport – soon to make coupon queens, kings and kids of us all.
“God, really?” is a sentence I find myself muttering more and more as I browse the supermarket aisles. I’m not alone. Retail analysts have coined the term “shelf shock” to describe that very specific, dumbfounded feeling you get at seeing a box of Weetabix priced at £8. The reality is food prices in the UK are increasing at their fastest rate in 45 years. New words like “shelf shock”, “shrinkflation” and “hyper-pretflation” are being invented just to keep up.
