Extreme Couponing!

The coupon fever has hit! There's a show on TLC called "Extreme Couponing" that follows women who go to the extreme to save money at the grocery store. I mean these women are really crazy - it's literally a full-time job strategizing what products to get at what stores and which manufacturers are offering specials, etc. They have binders filled with coupons, maps of stores with aisles coded to match the coupons, and every inch of their basements stockpiled with items. Quite frankly, I'm skeptical of that show because Sam and I have done the math along with the show to see how much is being saved and we never come up with anything close to what they say is saved.

Anyways, I did my own version of extreme couponing tonight and I must say, even though I only saved $37.00, I was so excited that I had Sam take a picture of me in the check-out line and I squealed in delight when the cashier handed me the receipt. Wow. I should tattoo "DORK" on my forehead. $37.00 is a lot of money to save buy taking a few minutes to cut out pieces of paper, but the women on the show save hundreds if not thousands of dollars on a single grocery trip...one of the shows I saw, a women bought something like $1,400 in groceries and after coupons, paid only $50. Sam asked how many of the products that I bought with coupons would I normally buy without, and really there wasn't anything that I bought that I wouldn't normally. I'm careful to only clip coupons of items I already purchase so that I don't fall into the trap of buying things I don't like or won't use just because I have a coupon. And, furthermore, there were several items that I had a coupon for that I ended up not getting because a different brand was still less expensive without the coupon. So, I may not be an extreme couponer, but I'm a responsible one :)