<p>My newest guilty pleasure!</p>
<p>[TLC’s</a> ‘Extreme Couponing’: Little piggies go to market, and clean up on Aisle 5 - The Washington Post](<a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/tlcs-extreme-couponing-little-piggies-go-to-market-and-clean-up-on-aisle-5/2011/04/04/AFqJp9kC_story.html]TLC’s”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/tlcs-extreme-couponing-little-piggies-go-to-market-and-clean-up-on-aisle-5/2011/04/04/AFqJp9kC_story.html)</p>
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<p>haha; interesting take on this…there were two women on The TOday Show this morning who claim that they saved the equivalent of their kids’ college educations by couponing…heck, one of them has 7 kids; if I had to feed 7 kids and planned on sending them to college, I certainly would be doing this…</p>
<p>fascinating how one perspective thinks this is “disturbing” while another found it “fascinating”…</p>
<p>why is saving $$ disturbing?? am I missing something?</p>
<p>edit: Just saw the article in full; the woman in the pic was the one on The Today Show…</p>
<p>well depends on how many tubs of * gold 'n soft* you want in your freezer when you die I guess.
;)</p>
<p>I have a good friend that is obsessed with extreme couponing. I can’t do it. I have tried. It’s exhausting.</p>
<p>I don’t want to buy 8 bottles of shampoo and go to 5 stores to do it. I want to shop as quickly as possible in the stores I like to buy just what we need. I don’t have unlimited storage. </p>
<p>Costco trips used to scare me, too.</p>
<p>I look at the coupons every sunday in my paper. They never seem to have coupons for the food that we eat. I saw one of the programs and it showed the garage where they stored all the food. How many bottles of root beer do you need. Or bottles of ketchup. Heck we don’t even need one bottle of root beer.</p>
<p>I think of it as a food addiction minus the eating part. They can’t use the stuff–they just have to own it.</p>
<p>I do see the comparisons to hoarding - the way they arrange and rearrange their “stockpiles” - the way it takes over their lives. Saving money is fine - but this does seem a little over the top.</p>
<p>I have tried stocking up on some things with sales & coupons and it often backfires on me, as my kids change their eating habits. Anyone want a few boxes of Frosted Flakes, Chocolate Cherrios or Strawberry Mini Wheats?</p>
<p>^^sounds like my house; I usually donate my extra stuff around the holidays and to the local soup kitchen…</p>
<p>I guess taken to an extreme degree, this is like hoarding, but I’ve never tried to feed a family of 9…</p>
<p>My biggest concern would be expiration dates; even on cereal…</p>
<p>And storage space -you seem to need an extra room or convert your garage into a pantry!</p>
<p>emeraldkity:
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<p>LOL!</p>
<p>I focused my attention on this show for about half of an episode, so maybe I missed something, but all of this does not make sense to me. Let me see if I have it right.</p>
<p>These people use coupon clipping services, or go dumpster diving for multiple Sunday inserts, in order to accumulate a stockpile of coupons for whatever.</p>
<p>They access their highly organized vat of coupons whenever an item goes on sale, and make sure that they shop at a store which will double those coupons (if possible).</p>
<p>The theory is that there is a three month sale cycle for most products, so they watch this and pounce accordingly.</p>
<p>Is that it?</p>
<p>The thing is, even for people who have nothing to do all day but play this game (or who genuinely need to dramatically decrease expenditures), how does it really play out the way they say?</p>
<p>If there is a $1.00 coupon for razor blades, and you are lucky enough to have one which doesn’t expire too quickly, most stores only double up to $1.00 anyway. And razor blades still cost…I actually have no idea but I will guess…$4.00? So Big Brand is on sale for $3.49, and you get it for $2.49. That isn’t free. When does “free” really happen? And you had to use more gas, dumpster dive, and expend huge amounts of time for this discount. The real killer is that the generic brand at the low end drug chain is $2.49 every day. </p>
<p>Are these people addicted to name brands or something? I would switch to generics before I would dumpster dive.</p>
<p>I think the general concept is the $3 item is on sale for $2. They have a $1 coupon for the item. The grocery store they are shopping at does double coupons. Therefore - the item is free. And then they take it to the extreme - have 200 coupons from the clipping service or from their own collections - and get 200 of said item for free. But it looks like you can’t be too picky on what items or what brands. It may all be free - but it’s an odd selection.</p>
<p>I think they are also forgetting to factor in the cost of the clipping service - and more importantly - of their time! There’s an opportunity cost of spending so many hours focused on coupons and grocery shopping.</p>
<p>But I guess as far as weird obsessions go - pretty harmless.</p>
<p>I try to clip coupons, I really do. I usually save about $15 per week. But that’s it. I could probably save multiples of that if I were willing to buy processed food. But I I’m not. </p>
<p>I’m curious. What do these extreme couponers eat? Do they buy fresh meat and veggies?</p>
<p>Most coupons I see are for junky prepared foods, high in sodium and full of chemicals–no thanks. If these people spent the time they devote to couponing to a paying job, they’d have a lot money for college tuition or whatever. I find obsessional behavior of any kind to be very off putting.</p>
<p>Are there any coupon doubling stores in the Chicago area?</p>
<p>These coupons often require the purchase of two or three items, no thanks, I only want one.</p>
<p>DB: good point…the only thing I really use coupons for are dairy stuff (eggs, milk, cheese) and paper goods; since the majority of my purchases are fruits and veggies otherwise, it wouldn’t really matter for me either…and with a gluten free kiddo in my house, I can’t use that processed stuff anyway, even if I wanted to…</p>
<p>my 80 yr old mom is the “coupon queen”; she finds ones for me that I don’t ever see…but she is not a hoarder (of coupons or food, anyway)…</p>
<p>I still don’t know how any of this would really make sense (even in an obsessional way) if you live alone or have a small family…</p>
<p>I watched one episode. I don’t get it either. </p>
<p>The big thrill is to walk out with a regular retail price tally of $600+ and spend under $10 for it. So what! Notice how they say they need 35 items of OTC medication (same one). Why? How much of the “pink stuff” does one family use in 2 years? Do they ever resell it for a profit? Does it get thrown out when it expires? </p>
<p>I think the idea is to “hoard” and have shelves full of “stuff” and pay a few dollars for a big total, but how many potato chips does one want to eat? I noticed that they were not buying fresh veggies, or fruit. One lady bought a chicken. I did not notice any fish or red meat purchased. It was all a bunch of processed foods (chips, hot dogs, sodas, cereals, OTC medications).</p>
<p>Also, one store made them have DIFFERENT people checking out (there was a limit to how much the same person could buy), so they called friends to drive to the store to help them out. Errr, I cannot see that most people would bother friends that way, other than for a TV show.</p>
<p>Also, one lady seemed to display her shelves and said that she was proud to show them off. It almost seemed to me like these items were displayed and then shown like some people might show off their trophies. In other words, she seems proud of her accomplishment as a extreme coupon shopper. To each his own!</p>
<p>One woman I know buys a ton of stuff for not much with such couponing tactics in order to stock the local food pantry.</p>