Considering.
I am not committed yet.
I am not even entirely convinced it will help my family's situation.
Luckily I do not have access to cable or satellite television so I am spared the shows about people who save millions of dollars devoting their lives to using coupons. I do admit there is a bit of jealously though. It is an impressive skill. It obviously pays off. Not only do you save money but apparently people want to watch you on TV too. I hope they get paid for those appearances.
Here are some of my hang ups with the world of coupons.
- I am lazy. I don't know that I want to devote hours to finding deals for every single item I intend to purchase.
- I also don't want to spend the money to buy news papers I never intend to read only to get the coupons inside.
- My observations thus far have lead to me to believe that simply buying the generic brand saves me more money than a coupon ever will. I was recently introduced to the idea of looking for things on sale and then adding a coupon. I guess that could lower it below generics sometimes.
- Coupons seem to be nearly 80% for foods I have no intentions of buying. OK, so yes, I have a discount for Captain Crunch . But I don't need 2 boxes, I wasn't going to buy any to start with. It doesn't save me any money if I am buying foods I wasn't going to get originally.
- Shopping with children and trying to use coupons never seems to end well. I always end up standing there for 10 minutes per item trying to make sure the product and coupon line up. Half the time I have missed some detail like the expiration date, wrong ounce, incorrect number of items etc. So I didn't save any money when I get it wrong on a product I probably wouldn't have bought otherwise.
- Things I need to buy- lettuce, apples, chicken, fish never seem to have coupons. When is the last time you saw coupons for fresh produce? (It is possible you have, I don't come across them.)
I did however clean out an abandon email account and signed up for some free coupon sites. I have stumbled upon a few that are things I do want to buy such as Vanilla Almond Milk. I love that stuff. I don't mind getting a dollar off. Especially since I don't drink regular milk, it is my replacement.
What about you? Do you use coupons? Are they worth devoting lots of time to? What are your tips for shopping? I would love to hear your suggestions.
i have an ongoing list of items we frequently use and i look for weekly specials on those things. I also look for coupons for those items too and keep them for a few weeks until the expiration is up. i do not buy newspapers or pay a thing to get these coupons - just what comes in the mail and on coupon websites. I spend about an hour a week planning shopping trips/menus and organizing the very few coupons i have. i like to use my coupons at friedmans and giant eagle because they will double them up to one dollar plus any card perks we get out of it too. I checked my savings for this year at Giant Eagle alone, and we saved over 300$ just by using coupons on the stuff we frequently buy.
ReplyDeletecan i type the word coupon any more in this comment??????
coupon.
I don't coupon because I already save more than I would save--buying store brands, shopping at Aldi & SaveALot, cooking from scratch, etc. Mostly they just frustrate me. Although, that could just be a comment on my lack of attention span...or something.
ReplyDelete