We know a lot about Alex Wan. He’s an engineer. He’s a politician. He’s partnered with a guy named Hot Gay Joe. And he’s cheap. A miser. A spendthrift. Say it ain’t so, Alex!
Wan, the newly minted rep for District 6 on the Atlanta City Council, also knows a thing or two about clipping coupons, so says a recent profile in the AJC’s “Atlanta Bargain Hunter.”
He’s so adept at finding a food bargain, in fact, that he scored $1,874 in savings while spending $3,274 on groceries last year and that came as he was in a six-way race for the City Council seat that had the added pleasure of a run-off. Now that’s impressive.
Too bad that he turned around and spent it on an overseas trip with friends. Well, he is a gay coupon-clipper.
Wan, 42, said he was bitten with the frugal bug years ago. What started as a game turned into something more serious when he saw the bottom line. He applied the same principles he used as an engineer to make himself a successful coupon clipper.
“It’s all about efficiency. I guess that’s the industrial engineer in me,” he said. “I always ask if there is a better way or more efficient way to do something. When I quantify it and see how much impact it can have, it’s a motivator.”
But if you’re looking to brunch with the first-term city council member, don’t schedule it on a Sunday. That’s his coupon clipping time.
Friends know not to disturb him on a Sunday morning. It’s when he reads the Sunday newspaper, drinks coffee and goes to work mixing and matching sales with coupons. He doesn’t mind postponing a purchase until it makes more sense financially to buy it. And when he and friends take trips, they hand the shopping list to Wan.
“All my friends laugh at me, but I don’t care,” he said.
