I caught part of an episode of Extreme Couponing on TV. These people seemed to be saving tons of money, but weren't using the stuff they bought. They were showing off their storage rooms full of unused merchandise and they seemed really proud of themselves.
I don't get it. Am I missing something?
I've never seen the show, but you have accurately described my older sister, from whom I have been estranged since she refused to acknowledge the death of our mother 12 years ago (but that's a whole nother story). When I last visited my sister in her 3-bedroom mobile home, one entire bedroom was completely outfitted with metal shelving and stocked like a Mini Mart with canned food, housecleaning supplies, and personal care items. She chuckled with deep satisfaction as she took me down the aisles and showed off, for example, her stacks of toothpaste boxes for only 19 cents apiece after coupons, and the rows of bathtub cleanser, bins of spices, and towers of toilet paper. The Nirvana of all couponing are the items she got for FREE, woo-hoo. It was scary.
From her numerous co-workers, she gathers the coupon sections that come in the mail and Sunday newspaper. Then she spends her weekends going around to all the major supermarkets in the greater Los Angeles area, finagling for the best deals. Couponing is her passion and has been for years. I am nothing at all like her, and she didn't inherit couponing or hoarding from our parents. Go figure.
Weird, I was just thinking about this topic just a few minutes ago. I rarely use coupons, but I did today because I had some good ones for a few things that we needed.
I haven't seen the show, but I've seen photos of people's hoards. What I typically see is a lot of packaged, processed foods. We don't eat that way, so except for the occasional coupon I come across, there is no point to seek them out.
Funny, I have seen this show and thought the same thing. On some shows they do show a few people giving items away to food pantries, shelters, churches and other people who can use 100 tubes of toothpaste...
The other thing I can't get is the amount of time (and sometimes money) these people spend on their couponing. When I figured it out to a conservative hourly basis and rough expenses (printing, etc) it really doesn't pay off all that much. Maybe if you factor it in as a "paying hobby" ??? I'm all for coupons, but the extreme thing didn't make sense to me.
Ella - much good will the spices do your sister if she ever gets around to using them - they go off.
We don't have coupons as a 'thing' here in Australia but I can't see much use for it for my household unless they were (a) fast use items (toilet paper) or expensive items (cleaning products that I like) or (c) I was giving them to others. Apart from that, I simply don't have the room for that level of storage.
I watched some of the clips online. Those women have serious OCD. Really, I can understand it to a certain extent for those with huge families and small budgets. I clipped coupons and organized my shopping according to the sale fliers while I was sick and unable to work. It helped stretch my budget and I needed all the help I could get living on less than $10,000 a year. I think the best I ever did was about $165 worth for $25, because a new supermarket was opening in town, and the established store did triple coupons and all kinds of BOGO sales that week. But I still only bought stuff I knew I'd use and that I liked. None of it ever got stockpiled for long, though - we ate it or used it immediately because we needed it!
Seriously, the clip of the women with the entire underside of her king sized bed stacked with cereal boxes and her bedroom closet stuffed full of granola bars and packaged snacks grossed me out. Talk about a giant sign that says "Rodents Welcome!" And you'd never be able to kill them - all the preservatives in the snacks would make them live forever!
jbeany - "And you'd never be able to kill them - all the preservatives in the snacks would make them live forever!" ROFL - just as well I wasn't drinking at the time I read this!
I don't get it, either. I spend about a minute each week flipping through the coupons in the Sunday paper and rarely see any for anything we use -- usually $1 off our brand of cat food, maybe once every six weeks or so. (That's $10/hour for those of you keeping track, and thus probably not even worth my time to do that.)
The vast majority of food for which there are coupons is overpriced, overprocessed junk food, anyway. I don't understand the delight in getting garbage at a discount, even if it's free or almost free. It's like buying an ugly, itchy shirt because it was "only" $5.
I also flip through the Sunday paper and clip coupons for things we use and need NOW -- lately there have been $1 off coupons for Silk soy milk and there is usually a coupon for olive oil when we need it. Usually the store brands are cheaper and just as good. I couldn't imagine spending more than 10 minutes a week on this!
We save the most money by buying things when they are in season / on sale. 99 cent green beans at Sun harvest this week -- never buy them when they are almost $3 a pound.
i would cut expenses anywhere and everywhere before i cut costs or quality on our food.
i figure everything else can sacrificed before we start eating processed crap.
i would cut off the internet and stop travelling. seriously.
we eat seasonal, local, organic and whole, as much as we can, without being total bores or snobs or fanatical maniacs about it.
we both enjoy good health, and i know without a doubt that good food is a factor...plus some lucky roll-of-the-dice genetic action of course.
extreme couponing looks pointless and aimless to me...just another addiction. or malfunction, or something. or a consumer sport.
maybe i could understand if there was fresh food and organic chickens at the end of it.
but how much toothpaste does one household need?
I too find these shows ridiculous. Sure, it must be nice to clip coupons for 3 weeks then spend 30 minutes in the checkout line to buy 471 dollars worth of groceries for 7 cents, but wouldn't it be more efficient to just GET A JOB, work for one week, buy the dang groceries, and take the next two weeks off?
Also, these schemes often rely on having the stores double and triple most of the coupons and from what I've read online, these people are often told after a while to shop elsewhere because of gaming the system.
I am so glad a thread was started for this topic. I have some friends who are addicted to extreme couponing and have even started purchasing the coupons off of eBay. Did you know you can buy coupon lots because the sellers state that they are selling their "time" to clip them, which makes it legal?
Anyways, they get items really, really cheap. But the time invested, as well as the money for the subscription to the newspaper to get the coupons and the money spent to buy them makes me question: Did you actually save money on that jar of free mayo that will expire before you can use it?
And like many have mentioned, most of the items are not good for you in the first place. Who needs 20 cans of Spaghetti-Os or 10 boxes of Pop Tarts? I would rather spend the money on healthy foods. One of my friends mentioned that you can purchase meats cheaper because the meat manager will slap a coupon on them when they get old. Who wants old meat?
I clip coupons occasionally, when my parents, who already subscribe to the newspaper, give me the coupon inserts. Occasionally I will get $1 off of a Maybelline mascara or a few bucks off of paper towels. But I don't go crazy.
I don't subscribe to a newspaper,and when I do come across the coupon pages, there's seldom anything I need or use regularly. We had one of the two grocery stores in town build a new store and they had great opening specials - on things I actually want, like eggs, olive oil, and some meats. In addition, they had a 10% off your entire order on the opening day. That's my kind of coupon! But ordinarily I don't worry about coupons and just take note of the things on sale. Do your grocery stores now give you coupons that are targeted to you with your receipt? Most of the ones they give me seem to miss the target, though occasionally I get one I can use (like for contact lens solution).
@pkilmain The grocery stores in my area print out coupons that are supposed to target the buyer as well. I worked for a supermarket while I was in college and I found out that those coupons missed the target on purpose. The computer takes note of what you purchase and a rival brand gives you a coupon to persuade you to try their brand. It's such a game. I wish coupons and bonus cards would be done away with completely and that the stores would just charge better prices from the start!
Music: I have a background in marketing, and coupons are a way of making pricing flexible without diminishing the perceived value of the product. They can be especially persuasive in introducing new products or having people switch to a different brand (hence the coupons on the back of the receipt for something different but similar . . .) Auto dealers haggle. Colleges offer aid packages based on financial need. It's all the same premise.
One clutter-producing technique at our local store (we only have ONE grocery chain in a city of 1.3 million -- they drove everyone else out) is "buy this get that free." We have "meal deals" every week which involve buying the main course, typically a big pack of meat, and then getting 6 or 7 other items free (but the 5 lbs. of fajita meat and get the tortillas, cheese, avocado, cheese, lettuce, a jar of salsa and a liter of soda free.) Or, buy the name brand loaf of bread and get the store brand free. Or just buy one thing and get another -- over christmas, it was buy a pack of pecans and get a jar of marshmallow fluff free (the ingredients for a popular fudge.) Or buy something and get $1 off something else (buy ground beef and get $1 off off produce.) DH, in particular, has a REALLY, REALLY hard time turning down the free stuff if the main item is something we were going to buy anyway. That's why the Mail Carriers food drive is getting 3 jars of fluff.
I LOVE the coupons on the back of the receipt, actually. I don't have a lot of brand loyalty, or change my buying habits much from month to month, so the similar-but-different is great. Our local big box store also gives coupons for nearby businesses - restaurants, salons, movie theater, oil change, video rental - since they're in our neighborhood they're often places I already go, or had already intended to go. I've found some great local businesses that way.
I would have brought them up before, but I totally don't think of those as "coupons" because I don't really seek out coupons, but i often use those.
I hate cluttering up my wallet with coupons, and half the time I forget to use them anyway. Once in a while there's a really good one (at least $1.00 off) for something that we do normally buy, and we keep an eye out for it when we go shopping.
It's such a relief when the coupons are finally used up and gone. The idea of actually spending time to accumulate them strikes me as profoundly weird.
@susanintexas That definitely makes sense and I totally see it as being a great marketing tool. I just feel that coupons stress me out. Sometimes I forget to use them, get mad when I don't have one, etc. But your explanation was a good one and I appreciate it! I guess I just have personal issues with coupons.
@Astreja I feel the EXACT same way. I feel such relief when they are used up and out of my wallet - one less piece of clutter in my life!
@parsifal Since I first posted, I read that sometimes the stores break their own rules when the show is filming, so what you're saying makes sense.
@themusiclivez I'm really surprised that people buy coupons. I've never heard of that.
So I'm not alone in not "getting" this show. I do clip coupons, but only for stuff I would have bought anyway and I toss the ones I forgot to use after I've gone grocery shopping (less frustration that way). I have the uncomfortable feeling that some of the people on this show will make their next television appearance on Hoarders. It's all very sad.
@Karen I agree with you on the hoarders comment. I can already see that with my friends. They will never use the stuff they buy before it goes bad. They don't look at it as a waste of food/time/money for purchasing coupons.
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