Jill Cataldo is considered one of the nation’s top experts on saving money through coupons, so much so that she’s been dubbed “The Coupon Queen.” Working out of the Chicago area, Cataldo has gained a nationwide following through shows such as “Good Morning America” and “The Early Show” on CBS, and through a syndicated column, which debuts today in the Sunday Journal newspaper.

Last week, Cataldo answered these questions from the Journal’s Ginna Parsons about her life as “The Coupon Queen.”

Q:When did you first develop a passion for clipping coupons?

A:My mom was a big coupon clipper in the ’70s, so I grew up watching her save with coupons, but the coupon clipping of today is light years ahead of the way people used to do things, manually matching coupons to sales and trying to keep track of what the best prices were to pay for the products they bought regularly.

I had always used coupons from about my college years on, but I wasn’t using them like this. I really started getting into it at this level when I was pregnant with our third child. The idea of having two in diapers was a big motivator. And you always hear about coupon shoppers buying hundreds of dollars worth of products for pennies.

I decided that before that baby was born, I wanted to be one. Who wouldn’t?

Q:When cashiers see you coming, do they roll their eyes and run?

A:No, not at all. At times I hear a lot of “horror stories” from people in my Super-Couponing live workshops, but I’ve had very few incidents myself like that. Occasionally, if I’ve had a really stellar trip, a cashier might look at my end total at the register and question aloud if that can possibly be right, but again – if I’ve couponed a $98 bill down to $8, it’s important to remember I’m still paying $98 for those groceries – $90 of it is in coupons. You have to think of your coupons like cash. They are cash to us, and they’re cash to our stores.

Q:How much time a week do you typically spend clipping coupons and how much time would it take me to clip coupons each week if I wanted to save, say, 25 percent on my grocery bill?

A:Twenty-five percent is a low estimate and very easy to achieve. You can easily cut your grocery bill between 30 and 50 percent – and at times more – in about a half-hour to an hour a week with the system that I teach. That’s another misconception people have, that this is going to take them a ridiculous amount of time to do.

When my coupon inserts come in the newspaper, I save the entire insert, intact. I write the date on the front of each, and I keep them in an accordion file. Then, I’ll use one of many grocery list matchup websites to help plan my shopping trip for the week. These lists are invaluable to coupon shoppers because they give us a list of everything on sale at our stores of choice, matched to the coupons we need to cut those sale prices further. Truly, anyone can do what I do – there’s no magic involved. But like anything else, the more you do it, the better at it you become.