When Carrie Kirby leaves CVS, she usually carries out household goods and, remarkably, a couple of bucks more than she started with.

You see, Kirby, 35, of Oak Park, Ill., is sort of a whiz with coupons. A combination of reward programs and diligently collecting manufacturer and store coupons — found both online and through old-fashioned clipping of store circulars, as her Depression-era grandmother did — has helped Kirby and her family of five live off an $80 grocery budget, and except for a mortgage, live a relatively debt-free life.

Kirby documents her frugality and offers tips on her blog Frugalista. She's among the growing number of personal-finance bloggers who offer advice, review various finance services, and chronicle ways to get out of debt. The recession has piqued interest in frugal living and managing personal finance, driving readers (which translate to traffic and thus ad revenue) to these niche blogs.

Stay-at-home mom Nata-Leigh Preas, 33, of Batavia, Ill. said reading Kirby’s and other personal finance blogs helps her manage her family’s finances. And because Kirby is in the Chicago area, Preas knows the deals listed on Frugalista apply to her.

“Since I stay at home and bring in no income, I feel one of my many jobs is to figure out how to get the most of my husband’s paycheck,” she said. “Those include couponing, cooking at home, finding free local activities to do during the day. All these things take some encouragement and research, which is where blogs come in handy.”

For Linsey Knerl, 31, $80,000 in debt was a reminder of a mistake in her life. She married young — too young, she laments — at 19, and after a do-it-yourself divorce, got saddled with her ex-husband's gambling debt.

"You have to get rid of that debt because of what it stands for," said Knerl, of Tekamah, Neb. "A lot of time, it stands for bad choices."

To erase that debt, Knerl said she and her current husband made dramatic lifestyle changes: moving out of the city and back to the farm, driving used but reliable cars, not going out as often. And she became a blogger herself. She documented her decisions on WiseBread, one of the most popular personal finance blogs.

When she first started blogging two years ago, Knerl said, readers scathingly criticized her for her first post about how to live without air conditioning.

"I got very horrible, mean and nasty comments from people who haven't yet dealt with the recession," she said. "I say I had my own personal recession … so I was already dealing with a lot of things people were just dealing with recently, and they would make fun of me. 'Who would turn off their air conditioning? That would be so ridiculous. It's not like you'll ever be so poor you're not going to turn on your air conditioning.' "

But now, she said, the very ideas she was criticized for, such as life sans air conditioning, are gaining in popularity.

Knerl, like many personal finance bloggers, lacks a background in managing finances. Yet she said there's a draw for readers to learn about personal finance from regular Janes and Joes.

"It's the reality TV of blogging," she said. "They like to watch reality unfold, and it's one thing to read a book by the Daves [Ramsey] or Sues [Orman] and have them tell you. … When you have people who are in the thick of it, or very recently in the thick of it, you kind of trust them a little more because they haven't got that financial degree."

With $235,000 in debt, Matt Jabs, 33, of Lansing, Mich., decided he wanted to lead a debt-free life, so he created his blog Debt Free Adventure, as much to educate himself as others. His debt is a combination of two mortgages, two student loans and a consolidated loan of three credit card bills and a high-interest auto loan.

"If you don't own your possessions, your possessions own you," Jabs said.

While he said he and his wife have not made drastic changes to their lifestyles, he said the blog gave them a better idea of their financial goals.

Despite the various goals of personal finance bloggers — to take control of their own finances, to find ways to live on less, to explain and offer tips — they make up a cohesive community, carrying on conversations outside the blogs, commenting on each other’s posts or tweeting at each other on the social network Twitter.

"The personal finance blogging community is very supportive of each other," said Jason White, 32, the man behind Frugal Dad. "You’d think with such a crowded space that there would be more animosity towards newcomers, but I didn’t experience that myself, and I haven’t seen much of it either. For the most part, we try to highlight each other’s work, give credit where it’s due and answer any questions. The niche is big enough for us all to be successful."

There's also a business incentive to promote the personal finance community. While many people blog as a pet project, some, such as Kirby and Knerl, do it full time. Having conversations about each other's posts and linking to each other drive traffic, which translates to dollars.

Jabs said his blog averages about 1,000 unique visitors a day, but it can fluctuate up to 4,000 if his posts get picked up by other outlets. Debt Free Adventure brings in about $1,000 a month from ads, he said.

Bloggers monetize their content by working with agents, such as Google AdSense. WiseBread, for instance, works with Federated Media, which has access to large clients, such as American Express Co. and Microsoft Corp. WiseBread’s ad sales are split roughly half between the blog and Federated Media, according to founder Will Chen. The bloggers are paid by page views and given bonuses if they bring in especially high traffic.

Since writers get paid by views, old posts can continue to bring in money. In one instance, one writer gets paid for his one and only contribution to WiseBread two years ago, about how to game the McDonald’s Monopoly promotion. The post always experiences a surge in traffic when the fast food giant runs the promotion.

Knerl, of WiseBread, declined to disclose how much she makes from blogging, but she said she gets paid more than the typical blogger because of her work as a consultant, which includes editing, finding new bloggers and other outside projects.

While the recession has cost many folks their jobs, it has only benefited personal finance bloggers. For one, they were prepared to live frugally. For another, when others wanted to change their lifestyles and learn about living frugally, they turned to personal finance bloggers, which meant a surge in traffic.

White, of the Atlanta area, established Frugal Dad in the spring of last year, before the recession hit, and saw interest in his blog dramatically increase as the economy soured.

"I had a few months to establish the blog before frugality really became in vogue," he said. "Suddenly, thousands of search visitors were looking for ways to get out of debt, save money and survive the recession."

 While bloggers are enjoying the traffic bump that came with the downturn economy, an upswing in gross domestic product of 3.5 percent in the third quarter means the recession is likely coming to an end. Some bloggers aren't sure that frugal living is a mindset that will stick with their readers.

 "I think this will be a life changer for a small percentage of people — and other people will go back to their old ways," Kirby said.