extreme couponing

[greenkoolayd]

i caught this show while flipping through the channels the other night:

the TLC show

are these people smarter than everyone else, or just really ill?  will extreme couponing drive up prices?  i can see the logic in these people spending all that time on something that can end up saving 10 of thousands of dollars a year, but i can also think of better ways to spend time.

[jay-ell]

I have not seen the show, but my understanding is that, with the exception of those who use extreme couponing to cheaply acquire goods to donate to charity, a lot of these people are hoarders with a taste for games.

I use coupons, I even scope out sales and try to get items for as close to zero dollars as possible. It's kind of a rush when I get a couple packs of Go-Gurt for my kids for 1/3 of the normal retail price, or a year's worth or toothpaste for $2. I only spend maybe an hour a week on couponing, though, and I only use one copy of a coupon -- I don't go on coupon swapping sites or trade with friends or (people do this) swipe all the coupons out of other the newspapers in the box when I've only paid for one.

It's irritating when I go in with my single coupon and want to buy one item at [sale price] - [cents-off coupon] and the shelves are empty because "extremers" got there first. I've read on Consumerist that a lot of stores are cracking down on extreme couponers, limiting the number of coupons used per day and banning customers who abuse the system by using multiple copies of the same coupon to score dozens of bottles of shampoo or hundreds of rolls of TP.

JMHO.

[smick]

I have not seen the show, but my understanding is that, with the exception of those who use extreme couponing to cheaply acquire goods to donate to charity, a lot of these people are hoarders with a taste for games.

I've said the same thing!   That show is just a really tidy "Hoarders".   I think for a while they were scheduled back to back without any hint of irony.   "These people are bad, and you should pity them!   Disgusting!   UP NEXT!  Hildy buys 87 jars of mustard!  THRIFTY!"

[Asherdan]

It really is it's own industry.

[jay-ell]

I have considered signing up for that site, it would make the kind of couponing I already do almost completely automatic. It might save me more money, but I would need the $20/8 week plan for comparison shopping for that and I would need to make trips to multiple stores, and I don't think I'm quite ready to pony up $12/mo for the privelege

Perhaps when the kids are a bit older and I actually have time to grocery shop without dragging them along with me, I'll have the luxury of being able to go to more than one store in a week. 'Til then, though, it's the warehouse club once a month for stock-ups and Harris Teeter with double coupons in between.

[Carlos del Vaca]

I am much like JL. I clip coupons, and I get a kick out of it when I get something for free or almost free. But yeah, it annoys the shit out of me when I go to the store and there's a big empty space on the shelf where the item I want to use a coupon on used to be. It was a lot more fun when it didn't get all this attention.

I agree that many people on the show are basically hoarders. There's not much point in a "stockpile" when you have more stuff than you can use in any reasonable period of time. Once I had three free bottles of mustard on the shelf, I figured that was enough mustard for a while.

[side_show]

I have watched a couple episodes of that show, and mostly just end up swearing at the screen a lot. 

[AugustWest]

The episodes that I've seen all emphasize that these women spend 40 - 60 hours per week collecting and organizing their coupons and researching the stores.  They could use that time to work a minimum wage job and bring home ~$1000/month.

[jay-ell]

But, don't most of them have kids? In many cases, a minimum-wage job will not even pay for daycare for one child, let alone two or three. But you can coupon while your kids are playing independently (with one eye on them) or while they're sleeping (especially if they're young), and even if you arrange childcare so you can go to the grocery store alone, you can arrange it around your kids' and spouse's (or the kids' grandma's) schedule so it doesn't cost anything.

If I can spend an hour and save $20, it's worth more than $20 to me right now because if I got an outside-the-house job and earned that $20 I'd have to get child care for that hour, which (for two kids) would cost me about $14. And I'd have to pay taxes on it, to boot.

If one or more of them are in school for some part of the day, that frees up a little bit of time, but most jobs won't really let you only work between the hours of 9 and 3, Monday thru Friday, with no weekends or holidays.

Trust me, I've looked.

[Doc]

I'm not sure if we don't really do grocery store coupons over here or if it's just something I've never done personally, pizza and so on yes, and more recently discount petrol vouchers (normally that you get when you buy a certain amount from a grocery store) but not coupons for actual food in general. The stores just have specials and everyone buys the cheap stuff. Which is doubly weird because my understanding is that food is significantly more expensive here than in the US.

[pmcd9]

It's always been my experience that the store brand is cheaper than the name brand even with coupon. 

[jay-ell]

It's always been my experience that the store brand is cheaper than the name brand even with coupon. 

Nope. Sometimes this is true, but my local store doubles coupons with a face value under $1 every day, so taking that into account, here's a real-life example:

Store-brand sour cream: $1.19
Daisy-brand sour cream: Regular price: $2.45

BUT, it's on sale this week for 2.19, and I have a 75 cents-off coupon, which doubles to $1.50. So I net the brand-name product for $0.69, about 43% off the retail price for the store brand.

Even without the base price on temporary reduction, I might do even better with a coupon on a name brand if it's one of the every-six-weeks special coupon weeks. They alternate between "super double coupons" (double anything under $2) and triple coupons ($0.50 becomes $1.50). So if it's triple-coupon week, even if Daisy sour cream isn't on sale, I still get it for $0.20. If it's on sale AND I have a good coupon, I might get it free.

Harris Teeter's store-brand products are cheaper than name-brands, but usually the margin isn't so large that a doubled coupon can't span it. Kroger, OTOH, has dirt-ass-cheap prices on their store brand, and since they don't double coupons except during select weeks, you'll usually do better on store brands there. But the nearest Kroger is a 15-minute drive, and I can walk to Harris Teeter, so guess where I end up most of the time?

[pmcd9]

I'm sorry, you've made my head swim.

[jay-ell]

I'm the one who should be sorry, then.

Coupons: Not for the faint of heart.

[wombat]

Wait, can I return to the beginning of this?

There is a TV show about people who shop with a lot of coupons? Have people's standards for entertainment really fallen that low?