THE GAZETTE

QUEEN of the PENNY PINCHERS

Springs woman renowned for sharing her frugal ways with the rest of America

February 22, 2005

By BILL REED THE GAZETTE

Jonni McCoy once lived the high-powered, fast-lane life of the sophisticated urbanite. She had a town house in San Francisco and a job with high-tech darling Apple Computer Inc. She was a typical, credit card-wielding, debt-accumulating American.
    Then she gave it up because she loved her son (and didn’t love the smell of cows — but more on that later). She learned to live a frugal lifestyle and ended up sharing what she learned with the world.
    This Colorado Springs mother of two is a nationally renowned expert on thrift, with three popular books and a Web site on the subject that has tallied more than 1 million hits.
    She’s often interviewed on radio shows. Her columns are printed on Dr. Laura’s Web site and TheDollarStretcher.com. She’s been mentioned in the Wall Street Journal and the Chicago Tribune, and she serves as a spokeswoman for NexTag.com, a comparison-shopping site.
    “I think her writing is good, her ideas are excellent and she brings a great deal of professionalism to the discussion,” says Gary Foreman, editor and owner of The Dollar Stretcher Web site and newsletter.
    “She’s also realistic,” Foreman says. “I’ve seen some money-saving ideas that might have been better suited for the Depression than now. You can apply her ideas in 2005.”
    Foreman says he receives positive feedback when he runs her articles, and that in The Dollar Stretcher’s frugal book club, “we’ve sold more of her books than any other.”
    McCoy says anyone can do what she did — if they are willing. Hers is a story of the tough decisions that face many American families, exploring the truth of a “two-income economy” and overcoming the spending traps that saddle so many with debt.
    McCoy and her husband were DINKs (a Double Income No Kids couple) living in the burgeoning Silicon Valley in the 1980s. They lived in a town house in San Francisco, where he was an engineer for Lockheed Martin and she was a pur- chaser for a series of high-tech firms — National Semiconductor Corp., Raytheon Co., Apple.
    “I was your basic yuppie,” says McCoy, 46. “I had no knowledge of how to be frugal.”
    The couple had their first baby in 1987, but McCoy needed to keep working to maintain their lifestyle. This is a two-in- come economy, right? By the time the boy, Jeremy, was 3, McCoy faced a decision.
    “It was hard because I loved my job and I really loved my income, but I also wanted to spend more time with him,” McCoy says.
MAKING ENDS MEET
    She decided to stay home to raise her son and try to make it on one income. (Here’s where the cows come in.) If McCoy couldn’t make ends meet within four months, the family would have to sell their town house and move to a cheaper property in the country amongst the cows. McCoy is a city girl. She didn’t want that.
    “I had four months to figure it out or live with the cows,” McCoy says. “The first couple months were hard because that was my social life, my work. Suddenly, I didn’t have any mental challenge, any conversation, any money to go anywhere.”
    McCoy turned her mental energy to her spending plan. She kept a detailed notebook of money-saving ideas and tips she picked up.
    “By the end of the four months, we weren’t digging into savings anymore,” she says. She fed the family on $40 a week, cut out cable TV and pursued free activities for her son.
    “Having been a professional buyer, looking for the best deals, looking for solutions to problems — I used the same thinking patterns for this,” McCoy says.
    But she hadn’t planned on parlaying her frugal ways into a second career. That started by accident. As the publisher of the newsletter for a California moms’ club, McCoy tossed in her money-saving tips to fill up space. She didn’t think much about the “Miserly Moms” column until people started asking her for back issues, saying they collected all her ideas.
    After too many trips to the copy store with the back issues, McCoy combined her newsletter articles into a self-published book. She had the minimum 1,000 copies printed.
    “And that thing took off like lightning,” McCoy says.
    The San Jose Mercury News and Better Housekeeping featured the “Miserly Moms” book. She sold 5,000 copies of the book in a year as the orders filled her post office box.
    Publishers took notice. “Miserly Moms” was picked up by Full Court Press. She expanded the ideas and sold more than 100,000 in two years.
    McCoy was embraced as an expert in the field.
    She had fingered food — eating out and grocery bills — as the largest unfixed expense in personal budgets, and she attacked those bills with vigor. On “The Gayle King Show” in 1998, a now-defunct TV talk show, McCoy squared off against “Coupon King” Paul Wilson to see who could save a family the most money on the grocery bill. “I was scared they would disprove me on national TV,” she says. Her final bill beat the Coupon King’s handily — $49 to $79.
A MOVE AND A SHIFT
    The family of four moved to the Rockrimmon area of Colorado Springs in 1997.
    “We wanted a family-friendly place and we wanted something affordable,” McCoy says. “I completely changed from being career oriented to being family oriented.”
    Although she continues to live the frugal life, she’s also put her second career on the back burner.
    “I don’t do a whole lot related to writing and speaking any more,” McCoy says. “I’m just being a mom, pretty much.”
    Her husband still works as an engineer at Lockheed Martin, and McCoy says that although her family is comfortable, her national notoriety has not made them rich.
    “Authors don’t make very much,” McCoy says. “I could work part-time at McDonald’s and make more money than I do as an author.”
    But her lessons, which live on in her books and on her Web site, have become only more relevant — Americans now carry $683 billion in revolving credit card debt, and one in 75 American households files for bankruptcy each year.
    McCoy’s style is practical and direct. She doesn’t bother with fluffy prose. She just gives the readers what they need.
    And she doesn’t ask them to become social outcasts for the sake of saving money.
    “I think the difference is, I refused to sink to the level of being cheap,” McCoy says. “You can have fun, look good, be cheerful and be frugal.”
    That doesn’t mean the lessons are always easy. When he was 8, McCoy’s son, Jeremy, declared “I’m tired of all this miserly business.” McCoy understands that sentiment.
    “I think a lot of people think it’s not possible,” McCoy says. “I have not met a lot of people who are willing to do what I did to make it work.”

 
CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0226 or reed@gazette.com 

PRICE CHAMBERS, THE GAZETTE - Jonni McCoy, a former purchaser for high-tech firms, has written three books on how a family can live on a limited budget: “Frugal Families,” “Miserly Moms” and “Miserly Meals.” “If I can do it anyone can. I was not raised frugal. I had no training.” says McCoy, who lives in Colorado Springs.