If you see one of these coupons (or one for imported cheeses or lamb chops) send it over. Otherwise, don’t bother me with coupons.
I had heard rumors that these women existed. A while ago I told my husband about these fanatical coupon-cutters who end up with $1000 worth of groceries for a few bucks, and he said, “that’s impossible.”
“No, it’s true! I read about it on the internet!” I persisted, realizing the absurdity of my statement as I said it.
And then this show came out on TLC called Extreme Couponing and I made him watch enough of it to see a blonde woman bring about a thousand coupons into a store with her and leave with $1200 worth of groceries. She paid $30.
“See, these people do exist!”
“Wow, she bought a lot of crap," was all he said and then left the room completely unimpressed.
I took another look at her grocery cart and spied piles (literally) of chips, soda, sugary cereal, imitation cheese, hotdogs, toxic household cleaners and other junk I usually don’t buy at the store.
And then it got worse.
This lady gave the cameraman a tour of her “stockpiles” in the basement below her home while her husband joked that they’d “be set for Armageddon.”
There were shelves and shelves of odd things, like 25 sticks of Lady Speedstick deodorant, enough Reynold’s Plastic Wrap to cover the moon, Jiffy Peanut Butter and Hamburger Helper (and the like). The husband was beaming with pride when he counted 50 bags of various chips.
Her basement was set up just like the middle aisles of any grocery store in the U.S. Those are the aisles where all the junk food is kept – and the ones most health-minded people avoid.
And then it got worse… or worser, if you will.
It turns out this woman spends four hours a day hunting down coupons, carefully organizing them, and then planning her day around shopping trips in order to be “the early worm.” On one such shopping trip, she snagged about 30 bottles of Maalox (a remedy for upset stomach). Phew! It’s a good thing she got there early!
(I can understand food storage for emergencies, but what are you going to do with 30 bottles of Maalox if a hurricane hits? Make cocktails out of it?)
Are you wondering why I watched this show if I feel so strongly about it? I’ll tell you.
Coupons have always been this thing that I feel I should do in order to save a buck, but never do because I don’t usually buy the junk advertised. After all, Captain Crunch for $.25 is still the same crappy food I wouldn’t feed to my kids if you paid me.
When we go to the store or the farmer’s market, I buy produce, dairy, beans, rice, chicken. Stuff like that. And then I cook meals out it. What a radical idea, right?
I do not find many coupons for real food. Just coupons for crap.
So if you’re like me and want to save some money at the grocery store, but don’t want to live on chemical-filled non-foods simply because they come with coupons, follow these tips:
- Invest in a deep freeze to stockpile perishable food when it goes on sale
- Buy large amounts of foods during the time of year when they’re heavily discounted (turkeys during Thanksgiving, corned beef during St. Patrick’s day) and put them in your new freezer (that you bought because of the preceding tip).
- Only buy what is fresh, in season and on sale at the grocery store. Then cater your recipes to those ingredients. You will eat better and save money.
- Look around you: what’s growing in your area that you can pick for free? We used to pick gallons of blackberries and freeze them. We also would fill our freezers with salmon every year. Here in Texas, it’s all about the free pecans in fall.
- Find your local farmers and buy from them. If you’re diligent, you can find farmers to provide you with your dairy, eggs, meat and all the produce you can shake a stick at.
But they won’t take a coupon. 
UPDATE: I think I may have been proved wrong. Holly over at her website http://www.foggyphils.com/ has taken on my challenge and posted a list of places where I can get some healthy coupons. Aside from hating to be mistaken about anything, I’m excited to check out her links!
You can check out her healthy coupons links here: http://www.foggyphils.com/hollyjournal/2011/4/16/why-yes-virginia-there-really-are-healthy-coupons.html
A big thank-you to Holly for such a gracious and informative response!
{ 31 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh sister, you are singing my song! I actually had guilt at one point for not couponing. So I tried to save coupons. But like you I couldn’t find anything worth buying on coupon. And since I buy all my homecare and personal care from myself and don’t have a pet, there just are no coupons for me. So the guilt went away. ^.^
Hey, but don’t go dis-ing the Captian, every now and again, it is our splurge in the realm of junk. Hee hee!
Becca,
I should start a support group for frugal moms who don’t use coupons. I struggled with the same guilt… but as you point out, there’s nothing we want to buy with ‘em.
About the Captain, there’s no judgment here, hon. I know you feed your kids real food. There’s a difference between feeding them real food and then having a “freebie” every now and then versus passing off junk food as sustenance.
I have a feeling that lady bought all those Maalox bottles for a reason, now that I think about it.
Love it. I tried once too, but declared I would only buy things we’d actually use, and could rarely find anything! Now that we’re in the RV I think we do even better (and our bill is lower!) because I know exactly what we have and I use it. I may pay more for one jar of something, but I’ve avoided having 8 jars of other things I won’t use stored away.
Margie Lundy recently posted..Tallulah Gorge
Margie – Thanks for your comment! Yes, it’s even more tricky in an RV, isn’t it? Like you, we have absolutely no extra space for items we do not use. One extra jar of tomato sauce can really make things tight in here.
We just bought one of those big bags of basmati rice from Sam’s Club, and you cannot live in the RV without being reminded of its presence… it’s just so huge!
This weekend, I’m going to rearrange the kids’ room (aka the garage) so that the extra deck box can be accessed better for emergency items. I really think having some extra food around is a good thing — as long as you use it and aren’t tripping over it.
Preach! Sometimes I feel like I’m not saving as much as I can because I don’t clip that much (I browse the weekly insert and clip what I expect to be buying soon), and I *really* want to know how I can get $1000 worth of food for $30. However, it’s like you said: the stuff I usually buy doesn’t have coupons. Then the generic brands of the stuff I *would* use a coupon for is cheaper anyway usually, so I hardly ever use them.
That’s why my wife and I are starting our own garden and plan to keep it up. We’ve got several sprouts already, I just need to get in the garden to turn the soil over so we can plant them!
-j
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Jason, thanks for commenting! With your clean diet, I’m not at all surprised that you don’t use coupons. I’m impressed that you’re growing a garden — can’t wait to do that myself! Let me know what you grow this year… and if you do any jarring or dehydrating. Very cool.
I saw that show too. I think those women have a smidgen of compulsive hoarding going on. It really turned me off from cutting coupons.
Hoarding is right! I do detect some OCD going on with these ladies. Thanks for commenting!
I gave up extreme couponing to go on the road full time, and just recently got back into it because we were spending a ridiculous amount of money on food. I understand your reasons for not doing it, but we get so much “real” food using coupons. I have pasta, beans, rice, vegetables (canned and fresh) salad dressings, canned tomatoes, cereal (not the sugar crap!).
These shows give couponers a bad name. There is an art to couponing and you need to have a balance between clipping coupons for things that you would never buy and buying 100 jars of mustard.
And yes Melanie, you have to have OCD to be a good couponer. Now when people ask me to teach them how, the first thing I ask them is, “Do you have OCD?” LOL
Kerry recently posted..Wednesday March 30- 2011
Hi Kerry!
Thanks for adding another perspective to the discussion. I’ve got to say that I’m intrigued… especially given that you’re on the road fulltime, too.
Could I ask you: Are there websites that specialize in “healthy” coupons or do you have to search for them all? I’ve made some lame attempts searching for coupons… I have a hard time wading through all the junk. But if I can easily get some coupons for beans or “staples,” I would love it!
Thanks again for commenting!
Every week I get (notice I did not say BUY!) newpapers, I aim for around 6-10. It takes about 4 weeks to have the coupons for the current deals, so it can be frustrating to start.
When I go through websites I make note of what things that I want free/cheap and match up my coupons. I’ve been very lucky because we’ve been in Florida all winter and I have found many local sites that do the match ups for me. I’m sure there is something similar for every area though.
Not all the coupons that I use are from the paper. Sometimes it’s a store coupon for the local grocery or even a competitor coupon. So when those things are really inexpensive, I’m stocking up.
If you want to email me, I’d be happy to help you wade through it to see if it’s something that would work for you!
Kerry
Kerry recently posted..Friday April 1- 2011
Kerry- A few questions:
1. How do you “get” your newspapers (and is this something anyone can do?)
2. When you “match up” your coupons, do you mean that you match up a coupon to an in-store sale… and that’s how the savings add up? (Otherwise .35 cents off an expensive bottle of olive oil isn’t going to cut it.)
3. How long do you have to hold onto a coupon (usually) before you find a “match-up” in the store?
Thanks for sharing your tips. I’ve started looking at coupons online, so maybe that’s a good first start.
I can understand how watching a show like that would really turn someone off to using coupons. However, it is called EXTREME couponing for a reason – normal couponers don’t coupon like that. I love to coupon, and it is easy to get sucked into getting a bunch of junk food just because it is a deal; but since there is no where to store it in an rv, the temptation goes away real quick. However, I think that I enjoy couponing more now that our fam (of 12) is fulltme on the road. I love to shop at new stores, and try new foods… and there are lots of coupons for ‘real food’ out there – you just have to do a little research to know where to look!
Oh, and it’s Lucky Charms that is the real temptation! LOL!
Dana –
Wow, you’re a family of 12 in an RV? Forget extreme couponing… you’re doing some extreme RVing!
It is fun shopping at new stores often, but it can also be a bummer when you’re in a town that’s limited to a Wal-Mart and one other supermarket (as we are here). You also have less time to know where to get the good deals on certain things. Back in Washington, we shopped at certain stores for their produce, meat or cheese, etc. There was so much to choose from.
Hi Melanie!
I can totally relate! We are working our way through NM, and sometimes are feeling very lucky if there is even a Walmart let alone a real grocery store! We just came from AZ – and had the best time couponing there – they double coupons – it was just like Christmas (well, almost – fun anyway!). And you are right, it is harder to know where the best fruits or meats, or dairy is… I have a favorite savings blog that I visit, and will sometimes ask for help – I always get a response if we are near a bigger city.
I also thought that I would chime in on the questions that you asked Kerry –
Saturday afternoon for cheaper.?. I don’t buy a lot of papers when we are traveling, I use mainly internet printables (and I get them for free when we are camp hosting during the summer). But, if you are staying in an RV park, they usually have a community center and get the paper, sometimes multiple copies – ask if you can have the Q flyers! And, if you are parked for awhile, ask your neighbors (if you know them well enough) that if they buy the paper, would they save any Qs they won’t use for you…
1. buy them – you don’t have much choice when traveling. In some larger areas, you can purchase the Sunday paper (it’s the one with the Qs – coupons
2.Exactly – unless it is something that you purchase all the time anyway, save your Q for when there is a good sale, and get a super deal. This works better in a sticks&bricks where you have storage room and ideally wouldn’t run low on items and ‘need’ to purchase them because you have a stockpile (doesn’t have to be big, just big enough that you don’t have to run out to buy an item). I usually do this when it is an item that we don’t use/have very often, it is a treat, or something new to try.
3. I save my Qs until they expire. Sometimes I do NOT find a good deal, and if it is something that I have a max price for, and I don’t get a good enough deal, I would rather toss the Q. When first starting to Q, it is tempting to buy something just because it is a good deal, or because you feel the need to use that Q after cutting and saving it – that’s were the extreme comes in. Thankfully most of us moved on once we had about 20 boxes of toothpaste we got for free…the extremes never move on.
I don’t know that I would Q on the road except that I really enjoy it! It does take a bit more work, but it can pay off if you DON’T go extreme!
Well it is nice to save some money I am concerned about a society that wants everything so cheaply and then complain that we are losing our jobs to China,. I would rather pay a fair price for items and know that people in my community have living wage jobs. When someone walks out of the store with $500.00 worth of groceries for $30 it means that somewhere along the line someone is not going to get paid fairly.
I sort of understand where you’re coming from. I also thought the more extreme couponing could potentially hurt companies, stores, and possibly jobs. But I soon found that just isn’t the case. If companies lost money from coupons they would not continue to keep publishing and sending them out to consumers. It’s part of marketing and advertising. They want you to give their product a shot in hopes that you will buy it when you don’t have a coupon. There’s a certain percentage that buy the product and forget to hand the cashier the coupon. Then there’s those that see the coupon which may trigger them to buy it in the store even though they don’t have it with them or its already expired.They even hire people to go around to grocery stores with coupon labeling “guns” to place on their products. The stores get paid the value of that coupon plus ~8 cents for each coupon. The Publix(s) in the Tampa area even work with an area coupon blogger to make sure they have enough inventory to accommodate the local couponers. They love couponers. An employee at Dollar General told me they get bonuses based on the increase in coupons redeemed. Now, there are some couponers that abuse the system but that has more to do with using expired coupons, photocopying coupons, and and exploiting the bar code to buy alternate products.
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Coupons are a part of the promotion of a product and their cost is absorbed by the manufacturer… who has the choice to print them or not. The stores do no suffer, or else would discontinue the practice.
Thanks for bringing up the issue, Scott, because it’s a valid point if you look at our whole consumer-based economy and its dependency on cheap imports from countries relying on their under-paid workers to made this stuff. The whole model is flawed and is changing as we become more global, the dollar loses its reserve-currency status, and the playing field levels.
Melanie,
Oh thank you so much for this post!
I have not seen the show and have to admit that I have not read every single comment here but you have helped me breathe a huge sigh of relief tonight.
I met an extreme couponer not long ago and ever since then have been trying to be more “coupony.” I have been actually feeling guilt because I could not keep up with organizing all the coupons and not having them went I went to a store,etc.
I found the same thing you described in that many of them were for junk food and products I would not normally buy. So not me. I would also need to spend entirely too much time on it and didn’t find it paid off for us the way others have described.
My husband likes to say “You can go broke saving money.”
So, for now I will do what comes easily in terms of hanging onto what I come across and already purchase and spend the rest of my time doing things I feel passionate about- hanging with my family and reading new (to me) and favorite blogs;)
Thanks again.
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P.S. I came over a few weeks ago and read your GORGEOUS post to your neice on her 17th birthday but I think I neglected to comment. Lovely.
Dayna recently posted..the stuff of inspiration
Dayna, thanks for the comment! It’s nice to know I’m not the only one who once suffered from “Lack of Couponing Guilt” but has gone on to accept this as a good thing.
I think some ladies really, truly enjoy the “hunt” for the coupon while others (like myself) despise the process. If you don’t enjoy it, then you probably won’t get all the great deals out there from lack of enthusiasm, and then you don’t see the results other coupon-loving shoppers are having.
It’s a vicious, vicious cycle.
Thanks for stopping by, and I’ll take “gorgeous” any day… even if it’s meant to describe a post. (Update on my niece: She still has no clue about her direction in life and plans to work at Schlitterbahn Water Park this summer to sort it all out.)
I totally agree with you. I have tried couponing in the past but they never offer coupons for the items I buy. Over half of our grocery bill is fresh produce so I would love the 75% off coupon you showed – even 25% off for a week would make me happy! We also never buy the “junk” you buy with couponds. A coupon for bulk brown rice sounds good =)
Tiffany, wouldn’t it be funny if someone printed that coupon out from the top of the post and tried to use it? The thought did cross my mind.
I agree with you… I would jump at the chance to save a smidgen off produce or brown rice. I’m trying to convince Holly over at http://www.foggyphils.com/ to devote a page to keeping track of just organic and healthy coupons so people like us can have a place to go to instead of getting lost in a sea of $.75 off Crap of the Week coupons at most other websites or in the newspaper (I haven’t touched a real newspaper in… can’t remember how long!).
There is most definitely a balance.
I do coupon…while 95% of coupons I run across are garbage, there are some excellent high value coupons for organic condiments like ketchup, mustard and salsa, as well as organic produce, organic oats and general savings in the produce, meat and dairy sections of co-ops and higher quality grocery stores.
Also, get my coupons from my mom, who gets a weekly paper but would just recycle them, so there is no additional cost. I figure 5 minutes from my week is certainly not a waste of time.
It strikes me as a situation where to each, his own is the most appropriate label. Though as the daughter-in-law to a very seriously progressed horder the “stockpile rooms” make me sick to my stomach as I think to the challenges that our family now faces in keeping a safe and clean living environment for my mother-in-law.
Teresa -
“To each his own” is definitely a phrase I agree with on this hot-button topic of couponing. I think I’ve come to the realization that if someone doesn’t enjoy digging for the gold in the mound of coupons, they probably won’t stick to it. I have also learned that there is some gold to be found out there thanks to ladies like you who have graciously pointed this out to me.
As for the hoarding aspect of extreme couponing, I think hoarding can strike anyone with any thing. We like to garage sale… and I know some people take that to the limits and lug back piles of junk to their homes with all the best intentions in the world. We all have the human appetite for “More.” I think the wiser of us choose to pursue “More” of better things, like experiences, relationships, knowledge, wisdom, etc.
Pursuing “More” material things never seems to work out unless you own a warehouse.
I hope everything works out for your mother-in-law.
I call that show “organized hoarding”.
Gotta say, they are organized! I was thinking during the show that they should open up shop in the basement and sell it all off for a profit. And then pay for a trip to Europe. Now that would be cool and worth all the couponing!
Thanks for including my link in your update Melanie. I know how frustrating it can be to have to filter through a bunch of crappy food coupons so I thought I might also mention that there is a thread wiki on SlickDeals in the Drugstore/Grocery B&M forum under Printable Manufacture Coupons. It is an alphabetical list of coupon links by Brand name. That way you only look for the specific items on your list. I’ll try to post the link without going to my account. Otherwise you should be able to find it easily by googling it
http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?t=2297891#edit31586958
Holly @FoggyPhils.com recently posted..The one thing that will get you a dirty look from your wife while living in an RV
Hey Holly!
Thanks for another cool link! I’ll have to get to it after I first read your provocative post The one thing that will get you a dirty look from your wife while living in an RV
Gotta find out what that is.
The coupons for good stuff are out there. They are not as prevalent, and also most people just do not know how to find many of them.
Here is a good site for coupons for many healthy or organic products:
http://www.mambosprouts.com/
My thoughts exactly.
You probably noticed that I published a link to this article in my “Tuesday Tours” column last week. Thanks for writing such an interesting and thoughtful post.
P.S. I would probably be a diligent couponer (is that a word?) if I could find a 75% off all produce coupon!
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