Hi! I'm Katrina. I'm married to an elementary school music teacher and am mom to three busy teenagers. Although I dream of being a writer, I keep busy substitute teaching, directing Shakespeare plays, teaching homeschool classes and working seasonally at a local u-pick farm. These days my blog is mostly a venue for information about my homeschool classes, but the archives contain my old posts about faith, finances, food, and family. I also have archives of The Poorganic Life food blog and You Go Girl! studies. I love Jesus, my family, libraries, audiobooks, Harry Potter, talking about the Enneagram, gardening, Hamilton, and eating crusty bread.
I’m having a hard time deciding if coupons are worth it or not. Let me share my recent story and you may understand why.
I’m a single father with two girls (6 years and 21 months). They are both great girls and love their daddy. (OK so I’m mostly bragging at this point, but there is a point to that) They love spending time playing with me and can be very demanding if I don’t give them enough of my time. I also have a full time job that I work from my home, so I really don’t have a lot of extra time.
I have a great appreciation for cheapness and love to save money wherever I can, but shopping for groceries and toiletries is one area that I don’t do very well when it comes to saving money. I have some facebook friends that have posted such things as “I just bought $80 worth of groceries for $10”, to which, I’m completely amazed. I recently got some coupons in the mail that were above average coupons. Everyone of them was at least $1.00 off and some were even for completely free items with no strings attached, like a free loaf of bread. Finally, there was another coupon that could be used in conjunction with these which was an additional $5.00 the entire purchase. With a stack of great coupons in hand, I thought, this is my moment. I’m going to begin the process of saving money via coupons and I’ll be the one bragging on facebook. So I load up the kids and head to the store. The coupons were for a store I don’t usually shop in, so I’m not totally familiar with where all these items might be, but I have a decent idea. It seemed like the specific brands that the coupons were for were never in the obvious location. The store brand children’s vitamins were not in the vitamin section. The brand of shampoo that was on sale was not with all the other shampoo. I’m going up and down every aisle multiple times looking for these specific items. My kids were doing really well, but after nearly an hour in the store looking for this stinking shampoo that I’m going to save a dollar on, they began to get cranky, and frankly at this point, so was I. Who designed this store? What’s wrong with these people? If I just start kicking all the shelves down, will the brand of shampoo that I’m looking for just roll out into plain sight? Just as I’m pulling my foot back to do a roundhouse kick to the section of Pantene, I spot it, so I grab it and angrily rush to the checkout. Now for my moment of glory… Total cost of items $82. Now for the coupons to watch the dollars roll off. Final cost $71… I saved $11, but… shouldn’t I only be paying $11, that’s what my facebook friends would have said. I wish I could pay $11 to have that hour of my life back. I love the concept, but somehow it just didn’t work for me. Now I have another stack of great looking coupons, but this time, for Walmart, which I’m more familiar with, so I’ll give it another try, but I’m scared.
First of all, do not, I repeat, do not go to Wal-mart. You will not save money. You will be Wal-marted, which is like being punched in the gut. Walmart never has sales, so you won’t get the best return for your coupons. They are cheap, but not as cheap as a grocery sale.
Second, just using coupons, even a high dollar coupon, is not usually going to save you a ton of money because if the item is full price, you are still possibly paying a lot for it. You want to combine a sale with a coupon. For a basic explanation of “extreme couponing,” go to southernsavers.com and watch some of the videos or just read the tutorial. Unfortunately, I don’t think southernsavers covers any of your KY grocery stores, but maybe there is a blogger who does. I will try to find out for you. You can try hotcouponworld.com to start and find a grocery store in your area that someone is doing the “matchups” for. The matchups mean that they are matching up coupons that have been published with sales that are out and telling you which ones to buy. You save A LOT more money this way. Pick a store you are familiar with. It does get faster, but it still takes time.
Which leads me to three . . .it takes time to “learn” how to coupon and I have had many “roundhouse kick” moments myself, but they were more often expressed as fall to floor in puddle of tears. Now that I’ve been couponing for a year, it is second nature and I don’t have as many puddle moments, but it is still a time consuming “job.” I consider it that because that is what it is for me. You know the expression “time is money”. Well, that is true. In this case, I have time, but not money. Cutting coupons, organizing them, and planning my trips are my work and the money I save is my pay. You’ll just have to decide if it is worth it for you.