Scott and I got sucked into this new series, “Extreme Couponing” the other day. It was like a trainwreck. When I first saw the title, I was like, “pshaw.” But then you get sucked in, because you hear them tell tales of 400 rolls of paper towels they didn’t pay a dime for, which are stacked everywhere in their house. At that point you’re intrigued because you think, “Hey, I want 400 rolls of free paper towels.”
That’s where the intrigue stops, and the “OMG” factor starts.
They show you these crazy stockpiles everywhere in these people’s homes – basements, spare bathrooms, under their kids’ beds, in their master bedroom, of all this stuff they bought for nothing or next to nothing.
The disgust sets in. These people have a mini-grocery store in their basement with all the dish detergent, paper towels, toilet paper, Clorox wipes, condiments, chips, etc. that anyone could ever want. What do these people do? They get on national TV showing off these hoards (that’s exactly what they are, don’t sugar-coat it) and how they can’t be content to use what they have in their stash, but how they go shopping four times a week to add to it.
What. The. Hell.
How greedy do you have to be to have such a stash of food, cleaning supplies, and hygiene items that you have to continually add to the stash? Scott said it right, the show Extreme Couponing should be followed directly by an episode of “Hoarding: Buried Alive” (which, side note, is NOT as good as “Hoarders,” but it’s the hoarding show on the same network as “Extreme Couponing”).
First of all, I was appalled, simply appalled, that these women stashed this stuff instead of donating it to a homeless shelter or some other type of charity that could use the donation. The stuff sitting in your basement is doing the world less good than the stuff sitting on the shelves of the store. At least on the shelves of the store there’s a possibility (albeit remote) that someone would buy them for a good cause. Seriously, people, use your insane couponing abilities for good rather than evil.
Here’s another thing – these women would get 10-20 papers a week to go through the coupons. See, what they don’t tell you is how much they spend on papers to get the coupons. Insanity. The one chick spends SIX hours preparing for ONE OF FOUR weekly trips. REALLY??? I don’t have that kind of time to sift through papers, work out the best deals, etc. I’m entirely lucky I can fit grocery shopping into my schedule, let alone six hours to prepare for it. If I have a list I’m doing better than usual.(Besides, six hours of my time, at my freelance rate - or even my hourly rate at work - will more than cover a grocery trip, without coupons. I'm just saying.)
Here’s another thing they don’t mention. After sifting through 20 papers, and clipping coupons (the one lady gets her seven kids to help), how much of a mess is there to clean up? I sure as hell hope to God they are recycling those newspapers they hoard since we know they aren’t being nice and donating what they get.
The one lady said she started couponing because her husband lost his job and she was afraid she would not be able to continue the life SHE was accustomed to living. What a selfish bitch. It’s not even about saving her family money, or trying to ease the pursestrings a bit, but because SHE wants to be able to go out with the girls on the weekends and have a glass of wine. Or, I’m sure, to purchase those $300-looking hooker boots of which she wore for her shopping trip.
This brings me to the shopping trip – this woman checked out $1,900+ of groceries and paid $103 and change. REALLY??? Of course, she bought 62 bottles of mustard. That’s a six followed by a two. (She had enough coupons to get 77 of them. But they ran out of bottles on the shelf.) Who the hell needs 62 bottles of mustard? I don’t think, in my entire life, I’ve ever had enough mustard to constitute six bottles of mustard, let alone 62.
One of the other ladies featured got $500+ worth of groceries for $5.97.
That’s insane.
Of course, thinking about the lady with the 62 bottles of mustard, they were buying things just because they could. Another lady picked up five containers of Viactiv calcium supplements because they were on clearance, and she had coupons. They weren’t on her list, but she bought them just because she could save some money. Really? I have a tendency to save money by buying only what I need.
One of the observations I made was that these women are shopping based on coupons. Which means they aren’t buying fresh produce. They aren’t buying fresh meat from the meat department. About the healthiest thing they are able to purchase is yogurt and frozen vegetables. I don’t know about you, but I personally don’t mind the slight hike in my grocery bill during the summer when I can get beautiful, fresh strawberries and sweet corn and stuff like that. I’d much rather go for quality over buying some crap just because I can save $0.75 on it. (That is, of course, if I'm buying it at the store and not a farmer's market, but reference the lack of time above, I take it where I can get it.)
This is not to say that watching this show didn’t get me to pay more attention to coupons online and pick up a subscription to the Sunday paper. Because I did. I know for a fact I’ve missed out on a lot of savings because I forgot to check coupons before I left or I left my coupons at home, or I let them expire, or my mom took all the good ones before I got to raid her paper, or whatever. I’m sure those things will still happen. And I’m okay with that. I’m only human. But, being human, it doesn’t mean that I can’t enjoy saving $20 or $30 when I go grocery shopping either.
As an aside, crazy couponing-hooker boot wearing lady is being investigated for coupon fraud. What is coupon fraud? According to this article, it’s using the coupon for things that are not actually listed on the coupon. I know I’ve had coupons not work because I didn’t buy EXACTLY what was on the coupon, and the system knew that by matching up the info based on the UPC and the barcode on the coupon, so honestly, I don’t know how this can happen. But you have to admit, when saving $1,800 on groceries, someone’s got to raise an eyebrow. The math doesn’t work for me – that would mean they’d have enough coupons to get almost every item for free… if I remember correctly, each of her bottles of mustard worked out to $0.39. Doing the math, that’s $24.18 just in mustard. That’s a quarter of the total bill she paid for that shopping trip. Something isn’t working out. I don’t know how her sorceress ways work, so I’ll go with coupon fraud until proven otherwise!
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