A while back we happened to catch a few episodes of that TV show “Extreme Couponing” (at least I think that’s the name of the show…I don’t remember exactly). Of course the people and situations on this show are extreme, and it’s highly unlikely the average person is going to have the same success couponing. Besides which, we really have no desire for a garage full of 1,000 tubes of toothpaste, five dozen rolls of toilet paper stored underneath the bed, or 37 bottles of mustard in the pantry, but nevertheless, the show did inspire us to start couponing.
As I said, that was a while back, and after couponing for several months, we’ve now made the decision to stop. A couple of reasons:
1. Couponing takes a lot of time! Clipping, organizing, checking the sale papers for the best deals, then checking the deals against your coupons, then traveling all over town to different stores to get the best deals at each store. It’s a big commitment of time, and for the few dollars saved each week, it just wasn’t paying off.
But maybe more importantly:
2. When you coupon, you’re allowing the manufacturers to determine which products you use, rather than YOU deciding. Of course, I’m not going to buy Polident just because I have a coupon, but there is a great temptation to buy other products you might not normally buy just because you have a coupon: cake mixes, toaster pastries, frozen pizza, etc. Shopping with coupons, I think, it’s much more likely your cart is going to fill up with foods that are not exactly healthy for you—or, at the very least, products that you don’t actually NEED.
Having recently lost twenty pounds, I’m very interested in continuing to eat healthy. The best way to do that is to shop the perimeter of the store, avoiding the aisles as much as possible. Most coupons, though, are for products in the aisles. When you’re trying to fill your cart with fresh fruits and veggies, there’s not a whole lot couponing can do for you.
Yes, I admit, we’ll probably miss a few good coupons now and then for products we’re going to buy anyway (Tide detergent, Silk soy milk, Mt. Olvie pickles), but on the other side of this equation, we can now get in and out of the store in a snap! The time that was previously spent couponing and coupon-shopping can now be used for other endevours (even if that endevour is just sitting down with a good book!) And now, when we go to the store, we can buy what WE want to buy, not what General Mills or Pillsbury wants us to buy. We will be in control of our eating and buying habits, not corporate America.
Oh yeah! And there’s one more thing:
3. Russ says the best part about not couponing is that we can now buy what we need to buy when we need to buy it, and I don’t go into a foul mood because I either don’t have my coupons on me when I see a good deal, or I see a good deal only to find out that my coupon for it expired last week. Things like that really annoy me. I don’t like being annoyed, and Russ also very much prefers it when I’m in a good mood.
Time. Control. Health. Happiness. Some things are worth a lot more than “Save 50 cents when you buy 3!”
