If you have ever seen Ron White, the Tater-Salad comedian, a crass-Texan, then you will know what the above terms means. I have a love/hate relationship with Coup-Ins (aka: coupons).
I love, love, love getting deals. I love getting coupons in the mail telling me I will get money off the regular purchase price. I love deal cards that give me a certain percentage back on my purchases, and I love great sales. I love consignment stores that let you sell your stuff and they give you a percentage. All my childhood of course, we didn't have much money, so coupons were a normal part of our existence. And buying things on sale was a necessity. My friend Louanne got me looking for even better deals, finding things on sale that also use a coupon...What luck!
What I hate about coupons is that oftentimes, they are not for things I need. I am not too brand specific so that isn't really the problem most of the time. Mostly it is just that the coupons are for things I don't usually buy, like soda, potato chips, packaged type foods, or certain types of makeup. I pretty much discard those. What a waste of paper! I will save the coupons of the things I do need (milk, juice, deoderant, etc.), however, oftentimes I just bought them (which is why I got the coupon) and by the time I need to buy them again, the freaking coupon is expired. That drives me totally INSANE!
I love going to the store and using the coupons, even though the person in line behind me wants to chop me into little pieces because I am taking so long. Sometimes I get so worried about that person behind me that I don't check things thoroughly. I hate when I get home and realize they've messed up and forgotten to give me the sale price for one item, or have given me the wrong coupon price for another item, or didn't give me the 2 for 1 deal, etc. Then I have to go back to the store and have them correct it, oftentimes for less than $5.00 benefit to me, which probably cost me that much in gas just to drive back to the store, and causes more line disruption because then they have to return something and let me repurchase it, etc.
I love when I am purchasing big things to get the 10% off coupon, plus the sale price, plus some special manufacturer's coupon from the mail. I hate taking that item home feeling all proud of myself, and the VERY next day getting a new coupon in the mail giving me a better deal if I had waited one whole day to buy the darn thing. In those cases, I usually take the receipt and the new coupon to the store and ask them to give me the better price. They always do, but again, the gas that it took me to get there (sometimes to stores 1/2 hour away), makes me wonder if I am really getting the better deal.
I could be more organized, I admit. Right now, I just post the coupons on our bulletin board and when I go to the store or make a list, I look through the coupons to see if there is anything I need that we have a coupon for. But sometimes, I go to the store right after work or a doctor's appointment and then I don't have the coupons with me. Real couponers have an organizer in their wallet or car that have the coupons sorted by categories and by date. Don't get me wrong, I am a very organized person, but I am just not at this level of couponing (yet!).
I could also solve the date issue by buying things when I don't need them and stocking up. Now that Charles and I have a membership to Costco and two kids in tow, we might be doing this more often. Not only does they have great sales, but they also have great coupons. However we do have a space issue in our home. It is small at 923 square feet and we are adding two live bodies to this small space along with our cat and our dog. We don't have a hall/coat closet, linen closet or pantry to store extra food or supplies. All we do have is a laundry room currently stuffed with a stackable washer/dryer, a sewing table, old TV armoire filled with our coats, vacuum cleaner, small kitchen appliances, and pet food/supplies. It is getting crowded in there!
I am sure we'll find a good balance to our Coup-In life in good time. Suggestions wanted! That is my Coup-In, Lovin'/Hatin' story.
4 comments:
Could not have said it better!
I'm not sure if this will solve all of your problems, but it does cut down on the paper part, and part of the stressin' about expiration dates stuff. Coupons.com is a neat little site. It links coupons to your grocery store club card (or if you want, I believe you can print them too). My closest store is Safeway, so every once in a while I visit coupon.com and check out what coups the have, then I link it to my safeway card. THEN, when I get to the store and swipe my card the coupons automatically get deducted from my bill-like magic! You still have to somewhat manage expiration dates and remember what you've linked, but at least you can login and see when all of them expire, instead of sifting through paper.
Good luck!
I did not know this about you! I'm all for coupons..but driving back?!! Gadzooks girl! :>
Love you! And on Feb 28th when I cross checked all my coupons expiring that day with stuff we needed I headed for SuperTarget. Before coupons $98, after coupons $63. The teenage checking me out was in shock as was the dude behind me who was getting really impatient until he heard the total change.
It's been a while since I saved that much in one trip, but I was jazzed.
I wish you had more closet space, as you know it's not an issue in our casa so I have my little stockpile of toothpaste and all that other junk organized.
Take it one step at a time.
To Katie: Wow! That sounds soooo cool! To link it directly to the card. Brilliant! And less paper is definitely better...
To Steph: I only drive back when, like in the case of Babies R Us, after we purchased the rest of the stuff on our registry, the next day we got a bunch of coupons in the mail that would have saved us an additional $60.00 over our other savings. So I drove back the next day to get the refund.
To Louanne: Rock and Roll on the savings Louannie! Re: our storage situation, eventually, we are going to build another garage, so our current garage will be part of the house and that will give us more room. In the meantime, I am hoping that we can get our current garage a little better organized (it is in progress) to utilize the space for this kind of storage. like you said, one step at a time!
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