I have a confession to make. I had all these great intentions of getting the Sunday paper every week, clipping the coupons, and using that and the grocery store and CVS ads to figure out the best bargains that week.
I haven’t clipped coupons in almost a month.
I do still check the CVS ad and the grocery store ad online every week. Both sites make it really easy. Not only is the sale ad available online but you can click on particular ads and the site creates a shopping list for you. Of course, I’m buying more than just what’s on sale, but it’s a great way to start a weekly shopping list.
I’m not sure why I gave up on couponing and the drugstore game. It might have been the time involved, or it might have been that I felt I just wasn’t finding that the coupons were for products I would normally buy. Additionally, I found that I was spending much more money than normal just to get the deals. Sure, I was ending up with more for my money, but did I really need the extra items that I ended up with?
I haven’t decided if I’m done with coupons for good. I will still check coupon sites online to see if there’s anything worthwhile. As for the Sunday paper, that’s still up in the air. If I subscribe, each Sunday paper would cost 75 cents. Will I get 75 cents worth of coupons from that? Sure. Will I get 75 cents worth of coupons for things I would normally buy in the time period before the coupons expire? That’s less certain.
Over the next few weeks, I may pick up a few more newspapers at the store to give couponing another shot and see if I can really make it worth my time.
Abundant Life Spending Spree… I think we’ve hit an end. I’ll have to ponder over the next few days, but I have to admit, all I keep thinking for the bigger amounts are “House.” “Bigger house.” “House in better neighborhood.” “House in better neighborhood with every green upgrade possible.” “House in better neighborhood with every green upgrade possible and huge tracts of land…”
But we’ll see if I come up with more!
Megan is a 40-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:
In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance. It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information. It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck. While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.
While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.
Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.
So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan. I needed to budget. I needed to know what I was spending my money on. I needed to prepare for the future.
I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way. I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.
Hah! We just got the Sunday paper for the first time in a few _years_ and I think we got stiffed on the coupon circular.
I haven’t clipped coupons with any regularity since I left NY state and the double coupon bonanza at Wegmans.
I’m on Day 13 of the spending spree, too. I think I’m going to buy hubby a helicopter and lessons. LOL.
I only really started serious couponing last year when I signed up for the grocery game. I can’t do without my coupons now. I regularly save $5-$19 with coupons. Your thinking was like mine before – that there were hardly coupons for items I regularly buy. Now because I only buy what’s on sale for a particular week and match the sale items up with available coupons, I can buy things I wouldn’t normally buy because they were too expensive. Granted, a lot are processed foods but there are coupons for rice, pasta sauce, granola bars, soy milk, etc. It’s not that time consuming for me because I don’t cut out all the coupons. I label the inserts by date and only clip out the ones I need for the sale going on. sites like couponmom.com will tell you which sunday paper the coupons were in so I just pull out that particular date, find the coupon and cut it out. If it’s a coupon for an item that I know goes on sale at CVS regularly, I’ll cut them out the same sunday I get them. Couponing has helped us get stocked up on lots of food items and toiletries and be able to share the wealth with others in need.
I don’t really bother with coupons. For most of them to be worth it, you really have to shop around and salewatch, and all that. I find that it’s almost always cheaper to just buy the storebrand than to use a coupon, even at a store which doubles coupons (yay, Wegmans!). That said, most of my groceries are fresh veggies, or other items that coupons aren’t available for.
Nearly all of my coupons come from the internet. Unfortunately, I can’t use the two major coupon printing programs because I run Linux, but some companies will send the coupons in the mail to you. I don’t go hunting for the coupons, and all I do is click a button that inputs my address, so it’s really no effort to me (and like I said before, most of these end up not being used).
I’m also more likely to find useful coupons on the internet, such as for soy milk or protein bars, and they’re often pretty good. I occasionallky dig through the coupon bin at Wegmands, and while I realize these are the “discards”, there’s never anything in there that’s useful to me.
That said, the coupons I do find and use, tend to be pretty awesome, especially after they’re doubled. I’ve gotten a lot of free, or nearly free, stuff this way, and occasionally I splurge a little bit, if the price after coupon isn’t much higher than what I would have bought (Stonyfield yogurt instead of the store brand, for example).
I used to clip coupons until I realized that I never brought them with me to the department store anyway. I’m too forgetful and too compulsive: a bad combo.