If you want to maximize your savings with coupons, it's important to know the rules of the road at the supermarkets and drugstores you frequent.

Unfortunately, the rules are different everywhere you shop, which can make bargain hunting a challenge.

At some stores, a 75-cent coupon is routinely worth $1.50 and can be valued as high as $2.25 during a special coupon event. At other stores, that same 75-cent coupon is worth just 75 cents.

Some supermarket chains will accept coupons issued by competitors. Don't like Store X? No problem. Store Y and Z will happily redeem a Store X coupon for you.

And at one major national retailer, the store will pay you if your coupon value exceeds the price of the item you're buying. You read that correctly. If the item you're buying is $1.50 and your coupon is for $2, the cashier will hand you the difference in cash. There's nothing shady or extreme about it. I promise. It's all spelled out in the retailer's official coupon policy.

Why all the coupon fine print? A lot of retailers have tightened up their policies in recent years to keep in check those couponers who have adopted the extreme methods depicted on the controversial TLC show "Extreme Couponing."

At the same time, other retailers have actually loosened their coupon policies, hoping to lure customers looking for ways to trim their budgets during tough economic times.

In the Triangle, coupon shoppers enjoy coupon policies among the most generous in the country, thanks to lots of supermarket competition. Those little slips of paper can save you hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars over the course of a year so it's well worth the effort to study up a bit.

For coupon newbies -- and those who need a refresher course - here's a roundup of the basic coupon guidelines at the major retailers in the Triangle, including all the information on the store that will pay you to shop with coupons.

Thanks to some ethics reform in recent years, things are pretty lean in more ways than one down on Jones Street, where legislators are having to do without fancy dinners and the like from lobbyists for special interest groups. A friend in the General Assembly says even tiny gifts are combed with the ol' fine tooth.

State institutions are doing likewise. I learned the lesson first-hand when, on a trip to Asheville to participate in a meeting of the Parents Council of the University of North Carolina at Asheville, I took along a couple of News & Observer umbrellas, the ones with the comics on them, to give to friends in the administration there. With my employee discount, I recall they cost me about 15 bucks total.

I dropped them off to the designated parties, and went about my business on campus. But another of my acquaintances with the university came up at one point and said, "We can't accept gifts. I know it may seem ridiculous to you, but the rules are very strict, and frankly, it makes it easier and more clear to us, so we just don't accept things, at least not as individuals." I think I wound up donating them to the university as a whole in order to comply, to go by the book. 

It seemed like a small difference to me, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought the rules were a good idea. Most little gifts are harmless enough. Time was you could go into about any office in the Legislative Building or nearby office building and see desks or bookcases crammed with various tokens -- a stuffed dog from the Association for All Virtue, a pen and pencil set from the Council of the Good and the Great, the random 'fridge magnet. Mostly, the gifts were, and perhaps to some small extent still are, just an attempt to get attention, to stay on the minds of lawmakers when the issues of this group or that came up in legislation.

Harmless. But rules regarding gifts are worth the inconvenience. And I'm kind of proud of my friends up Asheville way for being fussy about them. I just hope the upcoming months aren't too rainy in the mountains.