Today I read an article on Mary Hunt’s Money Rules, Debt Stinks blog. It was about couponing. It got me thinking, once again, about whether this really is the best way to save money.
We’ve all seen them on the daytime talk shows, between commercials for medical assistant schools and mesothelioma lawyers…the *coupon queens*. They show you how they can buy $200 worth of stuff, but only pay something like $50 for it all.
Maybe these people have access to better coupons than I do. Honestly, the coupons that come in the Sunday papers are mostly for junk that I would never buy anyway. I’m talking about stuff like name-brand cereals, over-processed, over-priced items, and kid/baby products that we have absolutely no need for.
I know about online coupons, but in my personal experience, many stores around here will not accept them. So it’s just a waste of paper and ink to print some of these out. The only ones I bother with are the ones that are given out on individual store websites…for example, you can print coupons at Shaw’s website,but you can only use them at Shaw’s.
Even if I get a coupon for a product that I might consider buying, I often find it is cheaper to just buy the generic store brand. Cereal is a great example of this. Around here, a box of brand name raisin bran goes for about five bucks. A dollar off coupon reduces that to four bucks. The stores here tend not to double coupons any more, and those that do won’t double anything over a dollar, anyway.
But I can buy a same-size box of store-brand raisin bran for about $2.50. Most store-brand items are just as good as the more expensive name brands. So the only way it would be worth it to use the coupon is if the name-brand raisin bran went on sale for no higher than $3.50. Then, it would cost the same as the store brand.
Something that you almost NEVER see coupons for are fresh, unadulterated foods such as meat, fish, and produce. This is mostly what we buy. Yes, you can find a coupon for a can of Spam, and that would make it cheaper than a pound of fresh ground beef. For one thing, I hate Spam, and for another, that stuff is LOADED with salt, which Mike isn’t supposed to have too much of.
So we just buy whatever fresh stuff is in season and on sale. Locally-grown if possible. Yes, you can buy peaches imported from Chile in the middle of the winter, but they are way cheaper if you just choose to eat peaches when they are in season where you live.
All of this is just my own experience. Individual results may vary.
