The stock market's tanked. Consumer spending is down. People are getting laid off.

But, for me, there's a silver lining: Being cheap is finally cool.

I can convince my friends to go to the cheap bar, to eat at the dining commons instead of eating out and to walk instead of taking a taxi.

My lonely crusades to save the extra dollar are now positively popular.

I thought I was the only one having a good time with this. But then I went home for Thanksgiving. And my family's just having a field day.

Now, my family has always been pretty frugal. But once the market dropped over 30 percent, my dad treated it as an official license to be as cheap as possible.

On Friday, we sprung for Burger King for lunch. I got a Whopper with cheese. My dad looked at me and said "the cheese is a rip off -- it's like 50 cents."

When he starts bringing his own Kraft singles into the Burger King, I'll know things have gotten really bad.

But the true key to the art of cheapness is the coupon. And with the market where it's at, my family has gone into coupon overdrive.

Need to figure out where to eat? Check which coupons are in the car seat pocket. Need to go shopping? Better get those scissors out first.

You know those magazines that say "$300 of savings inside?" We probably get close to that.

True coupon use requires skill and planning at all steps of the process. Study up, and you too can save a few dollars.

The first step is obtaining the coupons. Good places to check include newspapers and Web sites. The Collegian, for instance, has a coupon corner section on its Web site where you can print out deals for local businesses. You should also check the Valpak envelopes that come in the mail. There are a lot of menus and ads, but there are a few coupons hidden inside.

My favorite tip is to go to Be a Part From the Start, Penn State's rally for incoming freshmen every fall. The coupon book given out there is one of the best I've seen. It's so good that I go to the rally every year just to pick it up.

The second step is keeping the coupons organized. There are a number of schools of thought on how to do this. You can organize alphabetically by store name, or by category or by expiration date. I've thought about cross-indexing, but I haven't quite reached that level of hard-coreness yet.

The third step is using the coupons. This may seem like a simple task, but the coupon's fine print often causes trouble. For instance, some coupons aren't valid for exactly what you want to get or have an early expiration date. In this situation, you need to scope out the cashier lines to find the person who is most willing to bend the rules. Your best bets are finding someone who is new on the job and will just give you the coupon discount because they don't know any better, or finding a manager who will give you the discount anyway just to keep your business.

The other common trip-up when spending coupons is those that say "limit one per customer." If you're in a group of friends or a family, you might be tempted to put all your orders together. But with this coupon rule, it's not worth the risk. Just split up into one group per coupon.

Warning: don't try this on a date. Even if you give the girl the money for her order, she'll still probably treat this as a flag of hyper-cheapness.

But then again, in this economy, she might just find that attractive.

Ryan Pfister is a senior majoring in economics and information sciences and technology and is The Daily Collegian's Monday columnist. His e-mail address is ryan@psu.edu.