Couponing
You might be familiar with “extreme couponing,” otherwise known as the “sport” of strategic shopping and coupon use. Judging from TLC’s Extreme Couponing, it does seem to get a little hoarder-esque. The above embedded clip features a woman who bought 75 bottles of French’s mustard because the sale and coupons brought the price per bottle down to dirt cheap. Other episodes featured a family who wiped their grocery store out of Excedrin because they were getting it for around or under $1 a bottle and the couple who had dog biscuits on their list but TLC never showed a dog and the couple never mentioned stocking up for friends or family. Yeah, some of these folks take “extreme” very seriously.
Thus far, every episode features a couple or a family who creates large stockpiles of non-perishable items and frozen foods; they usually have a mini-grocery store set up in their homes. Thanks to the show, every time I dig out my coupons, my boyfriend innocently asks if we should make a stop at Depot to get me a shelving unit. (Fuckin’ smartass.)
Then I remind him that due to my coupon skills, we’ve basically gotten our last two Target trips for free. (In his face!) I don’t take it to the extreme that the folks featured on the show or on multiple blogs do, but even so, my couponing has allowed us to keep an excellent standard of living (given our finances). We don’t make out as well as most coupon users do because we try to limit our purchases of processed foods and we have a nearby Trader Joe’s where we can snag most of the traditionally higher priced items. Even so, we do still make out pretty well.
Like most avid couponers, I have a system in place. It took me a few hours to get completely organized with it and I don’t think I spend more than 2 hours per week to get everything in order. I bring my coupon organizer with me every time I go out shopping. I rely on a list and try my hardest to limit impulse buys. Every week, I clip my Sunday coupons, print off internet coupons, and log them into my coupon spreadsheet. Every shopping trip or two, I pull the receipt out of the bag and then log the receipt into that same spreadsheet; on the shopping trip tabs, I log the original price (when possible), the amount I saved with a coupon and the amount I saved from sales/special promotions (like Target’s “buy 2 or 3, get a gift card” promos).
You might think the last portion is excessive, but I can access my Google docs through my phone. (Thank Science for Android!) When I was last at BJ’s with Anarchist Boyfriend, we began to turn down the soda aisle. I told him that I would be a minute because I had to check something on my phone. I was then able to use my spreadsheet to comparison shop between Target and BJ’s. (For the record, BJ’s is only negligibly cheaper than Target for 24 oz. bottles of Diet Pepsi. IIRC, BJ’s was $16.99 for 24 24 oz. bottles compared to Target’s $4.39 for 6 24 oz. bottles; the last few times, I scored 6 packs for $3/ea and $2.75/ea.)
See? You really can use a smartphone for more than just hours of Angry Birds!
Financially, it helps us out a lot. I switched over to John Frieda foam hair color (which, for the record, is so worth the money). I had wanted to try it for awhile, but balked at the $11.99 price tag. One week, while at Target, we walked past the display and I noticed that Target was running a buy 2, get a $5 gift card promo. I also knew I had a stack of John Frieda coupons. Between Target coupons/promos and manufacturer’s coupons, I walked out with two boxes for $8.98 and a free $5 gift card. The first time I tried it, I learned that I only need one box of the John Frieda as opposed to the two boxes I needed of liquid dyes. Even though I was buying Colorsilk in the past, I still made out like a bandit! ($7 for Colorsilk vs. $4.50 for John Frieda)
This week, my newspaper ran coupons for $3 off John Frieda hairdye and $2 off any John Frieda product. I ran out on Sunday and picked up 5 more newspapers (in addition to my Sunday only delivery) in order to get more coupons. You might think that sounds insane, but I spent $8.75 and got a minimum of $25 in coupons that I will definitely use. (There’s a bunch of other awesome coupons in there that either my mom or I can use, so I will probably wind up getting closer to $100 or so back for that additional $9 investment.) Additionally, Target is running another gift card promo on John Frieda products (hopefully on the dye, but I’m not totally certain). If my hair dye is included, I’ll potentially get $18 off plus $10 in gift cards, thus basically knocking my cost from $72 down to $44 for 6 boxes of hair dye….which puts my price per box at slightly more than what I’d spend to color my hair with Colorsilk. (And if I went excessive and used all of those coupons on hair dye, I’d be knocking my price per box down to slightly above $6/ea.)
It does take discipline. If you’re still reading along, you might be thinking that the amount of work is overwhelming and I can definitely understand that. And I get that a couple coupons probably won’t rescue you from the brink of financial disaster. But you know what? I just tallied it up, and in May, we spent $505.59 at Target. Between sales, coupons, and the 5% discount for using the Target card, we saved $198.56.
Doesn’t seem like that big of a time investment now, does it?
