I’m gonna try this, but only with toilet paper. If I could get tp for 80% off, or 50% off, or even 30% off, that would be great. It’s so expensive for something you flush down the toilet. I’m not opposed to stacking coupons, buying 10 packs at a time, whatever. The only problem would be where to store it.
Stick anything that’s in a box or bag in the freezer for 3 days, if you can. I mean, your basic potatoes shouldn’t go in the freezer. But those nasty instant mashed potatoes* that you keep for emergencies? Into the freezer with them! Same with beans, and rice, and flour, and sugar, and…you get the idea. It kills the eggs, if any.
*and I’d appreciate it if someone could tell me a brand of mashed taters that aren’t nasty, these days.
After the nuclear war, those people are going to rule the world. Like in The Atomic Knights.
To help finance my education, I am a cashier at a very large, well known grocery store. People watch this show and try to do what they do, and when I have to explain to them why it isn’t going to work, they go ballistic. I’m almost positive that much of what is seen on the show is faked, although there has been one instance in which I had to pay a customer (I literally had to take ~$125 out of the register and hand it to him.) The manager that came over to look at the transaction was livid, haha.
On this occasion, the customer had a very large quantity of coupons for a certain brand of teeth whitener ($5 off). However, the coupons also worked for the toothpaste that came with the teeth whitener, even if you bought the tooth paste exclusively. So it was $5 off of a significantly cheaper tube of toothpaste. In most cases, this would be prohibited by the coupon, and there would be a limited number of the item that you could purchase in a single shopping trip, but in this even there was not.
When I was a dirt-poor military wife, I did couponing for a while, until I figured out that buying store brands at the commissary, making most things from scratch, and avoiding anything ‘disposable’ ended up being cheaper anyway.
Five minutes for three coupons? Really now? I’d bet it was closer to one, *maybe *two minutes.
Am I the only one here that thinks this woman has the right idea? I’ve never seen the Extreme Couponing show so I can’t comment on it, but stockpiling foodstuffs and necessaries is a great disaster preparedness habit. And no I don’t mean preparing for the zombies and such, but other things like job loss, or unexpected bills? What if you had to suddenly pay a massive hospital bill, not having to worry about food for awhile would make it a lot easier. Or other expenses like getting a transmission replaced, or a new roof installed, I have a friend that’s a “food hoarder” as you people call it. Her family went on four vacations this summer because her food bill was bread, milk and veggies plus a garden, everything else came out of the stockpile.
Back when I was running machine shops for my company, I had a worker Valerie that was pregnant. From the time she and her husband found out until she took maternity leave, they would buy extras every week in their grocery list of both everything they commonly used, but of baby stuff so that while she was not working, they would have stuff and had stuff all ready in the nursery for when the sprog arrived. It worked, for the entire year she stayed at home they didn’t have money trouble from the lack of her income.
We commonly buy extra canned goods or dry goods - with dry goods like beans grains grain products and dried fruit/nuts pop them in the freezer for a minimum of 3 days to kill any insect eggs that are packaged with them and then pop the package for storage in a plastic tote that is insect proof and you wont get plagued by millers or other bugs. Our canned goods tend to be more stuff like tomato products for soups and sauces, or fruit - the only canned veggies we tend to use is corn/creamed corn [great add in to cornbread or for chowder making] water chestnuts, asparagus, green and yellow string beans [add a can of kidney beans, a chopped onion and sweet/sour dressing you have instant 3 bean salad] and assorted beans [kidney, garbanzo, great northern - good quick protein] We could probably eat for 2 or 3 months without having to go shopping for more than fresh dairy if we absolutely had to. Boring meals, but reasonably nutritious. If I bought the ‘dairy package’ and maybe a couple of the other dehydrated cheeses we could even do without that.
God help me, I like the Idahoan Four Cheese instant mashed potatoes, the kind you only add hot water to. With full awareness that nutritionally, I’d be better off eating cat litter, but we all have our vices.
I was thinking about this, and I’ve figured out that the people who pay for couponing are the people behind the couponers in line. The store benefits; they get your money and move product. The couponer benefits; they get money off their product. The cost of couponing is on the people who are having minutes of their life taken from them for no benefit at all.
Okay, maybe it was closer to three minutes than five, but it was a long friggin’ time. The cashier had to examine each coupon, talk to the shopper, look at the coupon again, write something on the coupon, talk to the shopper again, look at the till tape - I don’t know what the problem was, but if every coupon takes that long, people will indeed start getting up in arms.
My hubby has started couponing. He’s not extreme yet, but we do have certain items that will last us for about 6 months. He doesn’t pay for coupons, and his best coupon day was when he cut the grocery bill in half. Very often these days he’ll come home with something we’ve never bought before (like some fancy brand of panko breadcrumbs) and when I ask how much it was and why he bought it, he’ll say “free.”
More power to him, but I’m not helping and I’m not planning to let him stockpile the basement.
That’s weird. I haven’t been to any grocery store in a long time that doesn’t scan the coupons just like everything else.
I only use coupons for stuff I actually use. I would say that out of each coupon insert in my Sunday paper (SAVE over $672!!!), I cut out three or four coupons and save maybe ten bucks a week. (Every little bit helps.) Most of the coupons in there are for food that’s been processed to within an inch of its life, and then overpriced.
They were probably buy something get x free coupons and she had to write a price in on the coupon. Those will take a little longer but there aren’t a lot of those types of coupons. Also, maybe the cashier was a little inexperienced.
I used to do a lot of couponing. I might save $20 to $30 at a time but that was also back when everyone did double coupons. Now I may only to a few at a time if I have a coupon for something new I want to try and don’t want to pay full price.
Actually, I have a list of stuff that I want in my pantry. Things like rice and beans and pasta. The thing is, this list is only of stuff that we actually USE, and I rotate the foods so that I use the older stuff first. It is helpful if we have to pay for something unexpected, but I’ve also had to go through the cans and throw away things that are past their expiration date, and I hate doing that.
Stockpiling things like toilet paper, though, is never a bad idea.
Actually, we used to eat and enjoy plain Idahoan instant mashed, but they changed their formula, or our tastes matured, or something. Now the plain Idahoan tastes like paste. However, I have noted your response and I might try this. And possibly curse your name, if I like it. 
I have never forgiven the guy who convinced me to try Rocky Road ice cream, because I had been under the impression that I didn’t like it. Turns out that I do like it very much.
Years and years ago I was behind a woman who was just finishing checking out with four packed carts and an unabridged dictionary-sized pack of coupons.
I didn’t mind the wait, it wasn’t too long anyway, and it was fascinating to see the total go down and down and down. Ultimately, the store owed her a little under a hundred dollars.
Talking with her, she said they used everything they bought and kept an eye on the processed stuff. Since she was a SAHM with the kiddos in school, couponing was just part of her job. Did it all w/o computers and such. It was very easy to admire; I can’t manage to use the few coupons I clip before they expire.
Is this an American thing? We’re not allowed to combine coupons at any of the stores I frequent here in Montreal. Cat Whisperer, I see you’re from Alberta, does extreme coupon use exist there?
I might use about 1 or 2 coupons a year, most of them are on products I don’t buy, but if I could get real food (fruit, veg, meat, fish, dairy et al) and useful items for close to nothing, I’d be collecting coupons too.
I do moderate couponing. I attempt to “stack” store coupons, manufacturer coupons, and sales when possible. I don’t live in an area where double couponing is done. I only get one Sunday newspaper - though I do wake up at 6:30 am to grab the paper off my sidewalk, as some jerk had been stealing mine by about 7:30 for a few weeks in a row. (Probably some cheap couponer, as it’s only ever the Sunday one. Any other day’s will sit there for days if I don’t pick it up.) I also look up deals via couponmom.com (which matches store flyers to available coupons) and will do mild stocking up on products that we will use and will not expire any time soon.
One big downside of trying to be an extreme couponer is that you can’t have any brand loyalty. For some things I don’t care, but for instance I don’t buy beauty/hygiene products tested on animals, with extremely few exceptions. As noted by others, few fresh products are available via coupon, though you can find them for dairy/eggs pretty frequently, and store sales for things like meat or produce.
MoodIndigo, here people can use one manufacturer coupon and one store-issued coupon on the same item. So I could buy one tube of Colgate toothpaste for $4 at Target, but use a Colgate coupon for $1.50 and a Target-issued coupon for Colgate at $1.00, and thus only pay $1.50 for it. Where the crazy savings come in are at places that will double the value of coupons a few days a month, or will do things like have “buy 1, get 1 free” sales and let you use a second set of coupons on the free item too, so that you’re getting money back.
I don’t really know; I’ve never seen anyone at the store with a book of coupons, getting money from the store, but it could be coming.
I have a solution to the waiting for couponers issue - no coupons in the Express lines. I can live with that compromise.