Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Couponing?

As a soon-to-be mommy, I am definitely all about saving money.  Considering that my work time will be cut down to part time after our bundle of joy arrives, I understand the importance of saving a buck or two wherever we can.  So, when I heard about TLC's new show, Extreme Couponing, I got really excited about being able to gain possibly some new tricks and tips on how to save money on our grocery bill.  I've used coupons in the past and since we shop at King Soopers, I treasure our King Soopers card and watching the number shrink at the checkout counter.  Unfortunately, I can't seem to find the full episodes of the show online (if you know where to find it, please let me know!).

After watching clips and clips of the show, though, there are a couple of things that strike me.  

1) These people have a lot of extra space to stockpile.  Although I don't completely agree with some of the forum trollers who claim these people are just as bad as hoarders, I do think that there's a line that should be drawn there.  There's an expiration date on salad dressing, people, and let's face it: if you have 25 bottles of salad dressing sitting in your basement and there are only three members in your family, do you really think you are going to get through that stash before the expiration date hits on one of those bottles?  And was it worth it if the bottle does expire?  If so, then kudos to you.  But for me, that would annoy the crap out of me.

2) I was a bit bummed by what these people were saving their money on.  Before I go any further, let me clarify something: buy what you want at the grocery store and eat what you want.  That's your lifestyle choice.  Our choice is to eat primarily fresh foods, meaning we stray from canned foods and try to eat as cleanly as possible.  This creates an issue though when trying to coupon.  The coupons aren't on the fresh foods and vegetables in the grocery store.  So, when I look to this show for inspiration, it's disappointing to me because I look at what these people spend their money on and it's mostly spent on processed foods.  But that's just not what we spend our money on so it's hard to find a way to save on that.

Although we don't spend an enormous amount of money on groceries, I'd like to see our bill get a little lower.  But I have to wonder if it's possible to get it any lower than it is at this point.  Since I'm awake at 5 am though, maybe that's what I'll do for the next half hour before I have to start getting ready for work: research.

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