Ok, so we have a few friends who are fanatics about clipping coupons and constantly bragging about the massive deals they’re getting and the money they’re saving. We usually clip a few here and there, but when we go out of our way to use lots of coupons, it seems like we don’t come out ahead.
Here’s what I mean: Double coupon days at the local grocery store sounds good but we have trouble finding extra coupons without buying extra newspapers (seems wasteful to me). Plus, our local store requires you to buy $25 of non-coupon items in order to use double coupons. The problem is, this store is really over-priced and I have a problem buying $25 worth of stuff from them at regular prices.
Then, when we take a look at the coupon items, often the price of the coupon item (with the coupon discount) is still more than the generic brand that we normally buy anyway. So there really isn’t much of a savings, even though the receipt says there is. The receipt just tells you how much you saved off the regular price of that item, not whether you got the best deal or not.
I know a lot of my friends look for items on sale or items they have coupons for, then stock up by buying tons of that item. For instance, one friend bought 10 sticks of deodorant one day. I know it’s a good price and I’ll use it anyway, but I’m not sure I need more than a year’s supply of deodorant, or any other product for that matter. What I’ve found is when I have that much stuff stocked up I either forget I have it and buy more, or it gets lost, broken, etc. So I like to buy only what I will use in the next month or two.
So I’m really not sure about this process. Is it really saving people money, or are we fooling ourselves? I’m not a believer yet. Will someone please prove me wrong??