Got Coupons? I Wish I Did.....

Hi Friends-


I'm back! It's been a day or two and I haven't blogged. Sorry about that. Sometimes life gets in the way. My family and I are preparing to go on a vacation early next week, so I'm letting you know now that I probably won't be blogging during that time. Hopefully, I will have lots of things to blog about once I get home.


So on to tonight's blog topic: extreme couponing. Have you ever seen the show Extreme Couponing on TLC? It's one of my new favorites. It comes on Wednesday nights at 8 central time in case you want to check it out. The premise is pretty straight forward. Each show highlights two individuals and follows them through a shopping excursion. During this time, they interview the person in their home, show them clipping coupons, and them showing off their stockpiles of stuff. Let's not confuse these people with hoarders. That's a completely different show. Just as engaging but totally different. I find the idea of extreme couponing very interesting.


Who doesn't like to save money, right? As a kid, I can remember my mom clipping coupons and using them at the store. I hated going to the grocery store. My daughter....she loves it. This could be due to the fact that I'm a bigger push-over than my mom was and Raelynn gets to pick out stuff to put in the cart. That fact aside, I don't mind going to the store. I usually go once a week. My church has it's large, weekly service on Saturday nights so I try to go grocery shopping on Sunday mornings when everyone else is at church. (Side note: When I bump into people that I know at the store during these Sunday morning trips, I start to feel guilty. Like maybe they think that I don't go to church. I always try to work this into the conversation. It never occurs to me that they aren't in church either so I shouldn't worry about it.) On occasion, I use coupons when I shop, but find that I can't always coordinate using the coupon before it expires. Most coupons that I see are for things I wouldn't use anyway. Of course, this was all before I saw the show on extreme couponing.


These people are DEDICATED. Most of them go to stores that double coupons, have member bonus cards, and take advantage of all the sale prices. Most of these people don't work for a living, but spend over 40 hours a week searching for coupons, printing coupons, clipping coupons, organizing coupons, and scouting the stores for sales and whatnot. This is where my problem starts. I do have a store that double coupons up to sixty cents (no it isn't the evil Walmart that I shop at) and has member cards that give you some discounts. I think I could even look through all the sales fliers and do multiple sweeps of the store to record sales that aren't listed. My major problem is getting the coupons to begin with.


I don't subscribe to the newspaper. My mother does. I could always get her inserts but these people on the show have a TON of coupons. Multiple inserts and from different papers. On the show I saw tonight, some woman bought an insane number of yogurt cups. Like over 500. I think she may have gotten them free using her coupons in conjunction with the sale going on in the store. Where does she get all those coupons? It boggles the mind.


David says another problem we'd have if I took up this hobby is storage space. I don't have a garage or basement, so we'd probably have to build on to our house in order to store everything. According to these people, they save enough money each year that they could probably build on to their house without paying much. Somehow I don't see myself this fortunate.


It really looks like these people spend a huge amount of time planning and organizing everything. They have these huge binders with special pages inside to hold all their coupons where you can see them all. I think I remember one of those shows where they said that the lady's coupon binder weighed like 20 pounds or something. I don't know about you, but the thought of organizing all that sounds like fun. I like organizing stuff. (For those of you that know me in real life may argue with that fact, but I find that when I'm not working I enjoy cleaning and organizing stuff.) Knowing myself though, I can tell you that I'd end up going all OCD on that stuff. That's just how I roll. Go big or go home.


So....I'm preparing to leave for my trip and will have to do more research on extreme couponing when I get home. If you have any advice, tips, or inserts you'd like to share, let me know. I'm already anticipating all the fun I'm going to have clipping and organizing during this endeavor...because hey...who doesn't love buying 500 cups of yogurt, right? Doesn't that sound like fun to you?


Until tomorrow (hopefully)....Toodles!