extreme pain in the ass?

It's the show that everyone is talking about lately--Extreme Couponing on TLC.  Have you seen it?  If not, it's basically a show about women (mostly and the rare man) who buy outrageous amounts of products from their grocery store and use coupons to get them for practically nothing.   I'm talking $800 worth of stuff for $1.50.  Sounds great, right?  I mean like, Let me have a piece of that coupon pie!  I want to get stuff for nothing too!

Would I go this far?  Ummm.. Not likely.



So after watching an episode or two, I think--I'm intelligent, I can do this too.  I mean, it's not rocket science, right?  Basically it's just a matter of clipping the coupons and then waiting for the store to put the product on sale and then buying a large quantity of the item for little to nothing.  Okay, so I begin my coupon clipping--well, I've always used coupons so I just continue clipping them.  But this time, I watch the flyer for the sales and then try to match the items up!  Ha!  I should save hundreds now!

Flyer and coupons in hand we march to the grocery store yesterday to get my cheap stuff!  I buy the quantities needed for the coupon and the sale and pile them into my cart.  By the time we are done getting the stuff we need my cart is completely full.  I mean, full.  Like more full than usual.  (Did we really need all this stuff?  We didn't even buy any meat as we have plenty in the freezer....)  I'm beginning to wonder if this is really going to work or not.  I will say there is stuff we needed that I didn't have a coupon for so that may throw off my master plan. 

I go through the check out.  Beep, beep, beep.  After the store took out it's sale prices and then my coupons were taken off I had saved a grand total of.......wait for it..........$65.00!!!  Yay for me!  Then I look at the balance due.  $301.00.  Um, excuse me?  I still owe $300???  Really?  Oh boy.  This is about $100 more than my usual shopping adventure, (we are a family of five)  (who eat a lot).  I'm not sure this is going to work out for me.

On the other side of that, we did need to buy dog food, Iams, for our dog whom our husband deems worthy of $30/bag dog food.  I needed my Propel water packets in grape which I can never find anywhere that were $4/each  and I cleaned out their shelf.  Oh and the expensive olive oil, which I DID have coupons for but still cost $3 each and I got four of those.  And we are now the proud owners of 4 boxes of cereal and 10 cans of light tuna fish (which the hubs uses for fishing bait).  So maybe it wasn't sooo bad considering all the stuff I got and now won't need to buy for months!  right?  months, right?  um yah, sure.

As I ponder my *failure* at extreme couponing on the ride home, I think maybe I didn't do too badly after all.  I mean, you never see those folks on the show buying $50 worth of fruits and vegetables (I'm not talking frozen--I mean fresh!), which is about what I spend weekly on those products.  You do see them 'buying' 100 boxes of instant pad thai in a box or 50 bottles of hot sauce.  Really, what I am going to do with 50 bottles of hot sauce?  I still need to buy grapes, bananas, watermelon and pears!  They do manage to get out with 60 bottles of soda or gatorade sugar drink, but do you see them buy milk or yogurt?

There's the Asian boxed food--upper right.  I mean is there anything there worth eating anyway?  15 bottles of ketchup?  really?



So, I suppose I did have some measure of success.  I bought the products we actually use for less money by using coupons when they were on sale.  I don't have a million cans of things that we don't like in a brand that is gross just because they were free.  My kids will be able to eat an apple, a real apple, not some canned and sweetened thing in a package.  I probably can't quit my job just yet though.