The Fascinating World of Couponing

I think most people have seen a news segment or a TV show that focused on the woman or man who was an “extreme” couponer. That is not what I ever set out be, nor did I ever turn out to be one. That said, I do get bit of a thrill when I hand my pile of coupons to the cashier and the total keeps going down, down, down.

The road to successful couponing is a journey that each person must take for themselves, as there is no right way or wrong way, but rather what works for you, the time you have to give to it, and how far you wish to take it. What follows is my personal venture into savings using coupons.

I used to subscribe to the Sunday paper years ago when I was living in a condo, but the paper kept getting stolen before I got out of bed on Sunday. I did a stake-out of the paper one weekend, after paying for a month’s worth of papers I never got to read. I got up extra early and sat on my sofa where I could see the paper on the mat through the crack at the bottom of the door. I hear a door open in the hall, and WHOOSH! the paper is gone and I hear the door across the hall slam. Ok, this is truly an awkward situation. After considering what just happened, not being a confrontational person, I figured they were the thieves, and I was going to stand up for my rights. I ring the bell, the wife answers the door, looks disgusted, and calls her husband – the thief – to deal with me. Yes, he did indeed steal my paper every week to read the music section. Don’t feel sorry for the guy. We were on the penthouse floor. He could afford his own paper. After hearing paper thievery was rampant in the building, I canceled the subscription. After moving into the house with my husband, I figured it was safe to order the Sunday paper again. Not so much. Seems the paper people (they are not young kids here, they are adults) drive by and throw the paper on the end of the driveway. Not a good thing in rain or snowstorms. Canceled again.

Years pass, literally, and I don’t use coupons. Then printable, online coupons came to be. I jumped on board, but quickly got disillusioned for 2 reasons. First, it was costing me printer ink, which is not cheap, and the coupons seem to be the same products over and over. There is only so much yogurt or Pillsbury rolls or Cheerios one can eat. Or not.

Then I got this strange idea – look for coupons on eBay. I have no idea where I got the idea to look there, but there it was. People selling 100 coupon packs for a few dollars. Disclaimer: they are not actually “selling” coupons, but rather you are paying for their time to cut and send them to you. This was nothing short of perfection in my budget quest. I get coupons, don’t have to cut them, and somebody is making money from my admitted cheapness and laziness. Win-Win situation, I think. Average outlay for this amazing service is $3-$8.00 per month, depending on how good the coupons are, who and where you get them from, and how many you anticipate needing. The savings far out-weigh the cost.

Looking at the budget, and what we tend to buy the most, I was also able to search by product. If you have a baby, you can get just baby item coupons, just diaper coupons, etc. If you have a dog, there are just dog food coupons. I needed to stock up on Magic Erasers since I use them a lot for cleaning our house and boat; there they were, 10 for $2.00 plus shipping of 55 cents. $2.55 to save $20.00. The only limit is your imagination when searching eBay for coupons.

The next thing is to have a system once you have your pile of coupons, either from actual self-clipping or using the eBay route. I used a couple systems, like organizer wallets, but leafing through the coupons in the store got old fast. I am not a leafer. I use these clear, pocket pages that collectors of baseball cards use, that come in many sizes. They work because I can put all the coupons for certain departments on a page, I can see the expiration dates for ease of use and tossing old coupons, and it has cut a lot of time off the system. (HINT: these are also available on eBay!) I leave the binder at home – I did take it once to the store and got looks from people. I now just take the coupons I wish to use in an envelope to the store.

Anyone who uses coupons has to admit to the thrill of watching the number on the screen at the cash register drop. The more it drops, the more puffed with pride I get that I am beating the system. I’ll get into that in my next post. And if it ends in a jealous look from the person behind me when I am not paying a lot of money for a cart of groceries, that just makes my day…sometimes my week.

My system has shaved a range of $30-$50.00 per week off our grocery bill in coupon use alone. On the low end of savings, that is $1,500.00 in savings per year. But the ways to save do not end there.  But I’ll end there because I know you are just itching to get over to eBay and see this money saving world of which I have written. Go look…enjoy the savings!

Needs vs. Wants and Rationalizations

With a few of our shopping faults discovered, we started making headway. I made a shopping list, but we often veered off the path and without a doubt, after we would check out, I would get angry with myself that we had not saved as much as I had hoped. We were still in the baby steps phase as I look back on it now, but there was something else at play that I figured out after one shop.

Rationalization. There it was. The word came out of my husband’s mouth as we were pushing the cart to the car. I was complaining that the bill was higher than I had anticipated and would have liked, and I wondered out loud that if I hadn’t gotten the magazine, the bill wouldn’t have been as high. At that point, my husband stopped dead in his tracks and said, “You always rationalize things. If we hadn’t gotten toilet paper, the bill would have been lower, too!” Sarcasm noted, but he got me thinking deeper into spending. To a degree, I think most people, at one time or another, have rationalized spending:

I got a promotion! Let’s go celebrate!

I quit the job I hated, and I am free! I bought myself a new handbag because I deserve it after putting up with that office.

I have a hot date so I need a hot new pair of shoes.

My girlfriend dumped me so I bought a new Wii to occupy my spare time.

All rationalizations for spending. If money is no issue, then it needs no further thought. We all at one time have used spending to feel better about the bad stuff, or to celebrate the good stuff. And that is fine. But at some point, when you want to get a lasso around your budget, you have to seriously account for things – needs vs. wants.

I started to ask myself before each purchase outside the grocery store: is this a need or a want? If it wasn’t a need, then I would wait a week and see if I still wanted it. This was tough, because as I mentioned above, or rather as my husband pointed out, I could rationalize with the best of ‘em! But it really wasa big step, because it kept me thinking about staying on track with our spending.

Like every woman, I have my vise; for some it is shoes, for some handbags, some like jewelry, but for me it is cosmetics. And iPad apps, but that is a whole different post. I love makeup, I have since my late teens. Anyone who can go without makeup is as lucky as they get, but I am not one of them. I went to a pizza place to pick up some pizza without my usual makeup, and the guys treated me like a second-class citizen. The next time I went in with my makeup on and it was, “Señora! What can I get for you today?” “You come over here so I can help you!” Yes, makeup is my friend. But in the realm of budgets, it can also be my foe.

Unfortunately, I have extremely sensitive skin. I have tried the makeup from the drugstore, and it causes me dermatitis. A friend’s wife sells a popular brand of makeup, and my husband asked me to buy some from her as a friendly gesture. I explained that it wasn’t a good idea because of my sensitive skin, but did it as a favor. After one application my skin was a blotchy, red disaster that took two months to get back to normal. I gave the makeup away to a friend. After trials of many brands, and a box full of products that gave me skin problems, I found that the one makeup and skin cream I can count on is Clinique. It isn’t cheap. This wasn’t me rationalizing, it was a clinical, painful, ugly fact that only Clinique could solve. [For the record: I am in no way, nor is anyone I know personally affiliated with the company. The product just works for me.]

In my new habit of price checking and comparison, I am now aware that an eyeliner pencil can be $5.00 for most, but for me they are $15.00 so my eyes don’t get puffy. Now my one obsession, and yes, I think it truly is one, is also an expensive one. I need to always use the needs vs wants rule when I go to their website after they send me the VIP email with the weekly deal. Do I want the new blusher and matching lipstick? Of course I do! I want the two different shades that are “IN” this season! Then I say to myself, do I need them? No, the other blush isn’t anywhere near gone, and really, will anyone notice that “Precious Posy” is last season’s color? I think not. And if they are so astute to the hues of makeup, then they should be in the fashion world and not in mine.

There you have it: some spending boils down to rationalization, and to control it, you need to consider needs vs. wants.

The Biggest Offender...and Baby Steps

Looking at the bank statements, I was shocked to see the outlay for groceries. When my work schedule got busy, I stopped doing the once weekly shop, and my husband took over. He shopped daily for whatever he felt was needed for dinner. The beautiful pantry he made me was not particularly well stocked, as a pantry should be with all the essential items to cook. This is my fault, and I knew I needed to go back to an active role in the grocery area. $200.00 or more at the grocery store for 2 people was over the top. And we weren’t eating Porterhouse steaks every night either!

Then my husband got sick, so I did a shop late at night alone. It was an eye-opener! I had this whole big cart of groceries, and it was less than the grocery bills for an entire week when he shopped. In my amazement, I blurted out to the cashier, who happened to be male, “I can’t believe how much less this bill is when I do the shopping!” The cashier laughed out loud, and said I wouldn’t believe how many times he hears that from female customers. Ok, we are not unique, and that is fine with me.

This had the wheels turning in my head – I had to look at this closer. $200.00 down to $120.00. WITHOUT a single coupon! What was different? Quantity of groceries? No, I had a whole cart filled with groceries that I had to take in the house and put away, and it was going to be no small feat. I was now on part one of our budget mission.

I decided to make grocery shopping with my husband part of our weekly routine again, budgeting my time just like I wanted to budget the money. We used to shop together all the time, and I actually missed it. We are good shopping together, and we have fun. FUN? Yeah…we laugh, sing to the piped in music, kiss in the aisles. I get to watch other women flirt with my husband when I am picking out produce and he is in the bakery section squeezing bread for freshness, then watch his face turn red as he looks at me with an expression that says he is not guilty of anything! He won’t squeeze bread to this day if any women are around! Aside from our quality grocery shopping time, I had to focus on WHAT was causing the bill to be so out of whack.

There it was. The waters parted, the skies opened, and my vision was 20/20 again. I stood and watched my husband put things in the cart without looking at a single price. One of these, 2 of these…we need another box of this. But wait! I think we already have 2 cans in the pantry. Then comes the question from my husband I dread the most: Are you sure? I think I am, but am I? I hope I am. The feeling of doubt surges through me over how many cans of tomato paste are at home. Or not at home. If I am wrong, he will have to go out again and get paste if he is going to make his delicious sauce. I thought…hmmmmm. Error number 2 in our grocery bill lowering crusade – not truly knowing what was in stock in the pantry and freezer. Mental note jotted to actually look before each trip.

Getting a Clue

I have been married to my husband for 10 wonderful years. He helps me around the house, and picks up chores if I work late to help make my life easier. I realized I had relinquished many duties to him due to late work nights, and some had to do with shopping and budgeting.

I didn’t realize in a light bulb moment what was going on, and it wasn’t just shopping budgets that got our finances out of whack. As with any couple, incomes change, bills go up [and up and up], and finances often hit critical mass before you need to hit the breaks on the the debit card.

This blog chronicles how I spent 6 months cutting hundreds to thousands of dollars off our annual budget by making simple adjustments that we could both live with, having very little impact on our day to day lives. I think it improved our relationship as well because we are both on the same path to being comfortable with our monthly budget.

The spotlight on our situation came in the form of daily emails from the bank which I opted to receive to monitor our accounts. When I first started this, I was religious in reading them each day. Then as emails started to pile up, I lost my way…I stopped watching them so closely. Huge mistake. When I started paying close attention again, I realized the outflow was moving way faster than it used to. So I looked at the statement and scrutinized each entry. Spending was surprisingly 50/50 as far as who was using the money, but I noticed a few categories had gotten out of control.

I am blessed with a husband who listens when I need him to do so. Like every man, he can have what I call “husband ears” if I am yammering about cosmetics or some other thing, but when I went to him with budget concerns, he was 100% on board with whatever I wanted to do. So it was time to hatch a plan.