Lisa Williams has never liked sorting through coupons, and she no longer has to at Kroger Co. grocery stores.
Every few weeks, coupons arrive in Williams’ Elizabethtown, Ky., mailbox for items she usually loads into her cart. While Kroger is building loyalty – with 95 percent of a recent mailing tailored to specific households – Williams is saving money without searching through dozens of pages of coupons.
“I’m not that big a coupon-clipper,” she said. “It seems like a lot of coupons you see are (for) things that you never use.”

Already shoppers can print coupons from the Internet, subscribe to e-mail lists, and participate in online promotion programs.
But as more people buy Web-enabled cell phones, and as technology for browsing the Web on the go improves, coupons via cell phone may be the next big thing.
Department stores such as Sears and fast food chains such as Hardee’s already send coupons via cell phone, and now Kroger has become the first major grocery chain to hop on board.
Its new program, begun in December, lets shoppers virtually clip coupons for products such …

We start 2009 licking our collective wounds, and it has little to do with New Year’s celebrations or the Detroit Lions.
Michigan is an economic basket case, with nearly 1 in 10 residents out of work. While it is too soon to talk about Armageddon, once-comfortable suburbanites are starting to feel the pinch and making changes that for legions of Depression-era families was second nature.
They are growing their own food.
A typical family of four growing all its vegetables and using canned and frozen vegetables from the garden can save hundreds of …

Corn prices have plummeted by more than 50 percent over the past six months, while food prices are up 6 percent for the year, according to data released recently by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
At the same time, energy costs fell 17 percent and transportation expenses dropped 10 percent in November.
“The truth is corn prices have almost no effect on grocery store prices, and apparently even the impact of fuel costs is minimal,” said Randy Woodruff, president of the Wisconsin Corn Growers Association, in a press release.

Gas prices in the Tampa Bay area are down a stunning 60 percent over the past five months.
So where’s the trickle down?
As gas prices peaked in the summer, the nearly $150 tab for a barrel of oil was the prime suspect in everything from spiking airfares and surging food costs to announcements of much higher electric bills in 2009.
As oil prices have receded, however, the impact has been decidedly muted. Airfares have ticked down only slightly, and most local electric bills will still climb steeply in January.
The most glaring disconnect …