Extreme Couponing -- How Far Is TOO Far???

About a week ago, I received an e-mail from a faithful reader. She gave me a link to a blogger who bought over $1000 (yes, thousand) worth of groceries for less than $20. She posed a very valid question to me -- "Will I ever see THESE kind of savings here in Jacksonville?"

My answer? Yes, it's definitely possible to spend pennies and save hundreds or even thousands of dollars ... But only if you are prepared to do a number of things that, quite honestly, I don't really personally believe in doing as a couponer.

Couponing is great, and all of you know how much I love it. And we all live for seeing those savings on the bottom of our receipts. But how far is too far, really?

In my opinion, here is when you know you've taken couponing just a little too far:

• You're spending a good portion of your day-to-day life going dumpster diving, going through other people's recycle bins, or paying quite a bit of money out of pocket to collect 10 to 20 copies of the Sunday coupon inserts. (20 newspapers would cost $40 - that's almost my entire grocery budget each week.) In order to have insane savings, you have to literally have this many inserts.

• You're running out to buy printer ink and paper every week, to re-fill the 5 printers of the 5 different computers you have (so that you can print 10 coupons - print limit of 2 per computer!). Let's think about the costs of this!

• You have decided against a well-rounded, wholesome grocery trip each week that includes plenty of ingredients for meals, fruits, and veggies (of course, in addition to all of the pantry, canned, and frozen items that you get for free after coupons). Rather, you will now only buy items that are either free or generate overage. In this way, you are able to rejoice in seeing on your receipt that you spent pennies or a couple dollars in order to save hundreds of dollars. That's nice and all, but what are you going to eat this week???

• You're constantly fighting with cashiers and managers, demanding your way, and basically giving couponers a terrible name. (Which in effect makes it awful for the rest of us out there. Why do you think there are such strict coupon policies at some of these stores?)

• You're insisting that a store manager PAYS YOU CASH MONEY for the groceries you just bought. *Not Cool* I don't know how much I can stress this. People, if you are lucky enough to shop at a grocery store that allows coupon overage, at least be kind enough to grab extra groceries to cover it. Don't allow your bill to go negative and then demand to be paid. That's ridiculous and absurd. Think I'm kidding? People do it all the time.

• You're literally wiping out entire shelves of items, just so you can gain overage or stock up on a year's supply of free ketchup. Again, not cool! Ever think about saving some for the rest of us eager couponers out there? I have both seen and heard of couponers who will ask a manager to go to the back and bring out every crate of tomato sauce that they have - all 200 cans. Again, come on. To me, that is not being an ethical couponer. Help out your fellow couponer! Leave some for everybody else. I don't know about you, but nothing is more frustrating than driving up to CVS or Walgreens only to find that the shelf is completely empty of what you were planning on getting for free that week with coupons. Remember that awesome FREE Purex deal at Walgreens recently? This blogger that my reader sent me a link to...yeah...she bought TWENTY bottles of it. Needless to say, she wiped out shelves at 3 stores to get the deals, and left them empty for the rest of the couponers out there! Be considerate...

The bottom line for me? Couponing has been a BLESSING in my life. God has provided for our needs through couponing. Abusing it in the ways mentioned above is not being a good steward of your money, but that's just my opinion.

It's nice to see that savings to spending ratio on your receipt, but abusing the system is not what it's all about. Use your coupons wisely. Discover your priorities and what matters most to you.

What matters most to me is saving money with coupons, having a decent savings to spending ratio, staying under my designated grocery budget, getting most of my household items for free at the drug stores, giving away as much as I can to others, and planning nutritious/wholesome meals every week. If I'm doing that, I'm okay. =)

Plus...aren't coupons supposed to save TIME??? When it's becoming time-consuming and making life harder, I would say it's time to re-evaluate!

Want a good example for comparisons? Nightline just recently did a contest with 2 extreme couponers. They gave each of them $50 to get as much as they possibly could with the money and coupons. In this video, I think Jill has a pretty good idea of using coupons how they're meant to be used. I have nothing against Nathan, but I think he's taking it just a little too far. Jill knows she could just as easily do what Nathan is doing, I'm sure. She is simply choosing to use coupons wisely, though. Notice the wholesome, nutritious, and even organic products she has in her cart. She's buying what she needs, and stocking up on the close-to-freebie items (but not in excess). She spends a good amount, and has a great savings ratio!

What About You: What are your thoughts on this subject???

New Priorities, New Grocery Budget...

Many of you probably starting reading this blog after seeing me on the news, when I had already changed our grocery budget to $35/week. In a nutshell, the background story is that our grocery budget used to be $50/week, but then I did this $20 weekly grocery budget challenge for the month of October, and my eyes were opened! If I could easily spend $20 a week on groceries, then I could definitely lower our grocery budget down to only $35 a week.

Well it's been fun, my friends...but the grocery budget must change once again. The $35 has become harder and harder to stick to, and after much deliberation and discussion with my husband, we have decided to switch the grocery budget back to $50 a week (Ouch. I'm cringing at the thought of it, honestly).

These are some reasons for why we have decided to change our grocery budget:

• We started our $35 weekly grocery budget not long after we became Vegetarians. At the time, I was like most people in thinking that not buying meat would actually make our budget a lot easier to stick to. Little did I know, it would actually make it much harder to stick to!

• When cooking Vegetarian, you have to get creative. Many recipes call for exotic vegetables, spices, and other ingredients. Many of the ingredients are organic or can only be bought at an organic grocery store. You can imagine how this requires a little bit more money in the budget each week.

• I am beginning to lean towards more products that are Fair Trade and Organic certified anyways. I know we definitely can not afford to buy all Organic products at this point in our lives, but I would like to start including it in our budget sparingly.

• It is really difficult to come up with lunch ideas as a Vegetarian. A lot of times we have leftover dinner from the night before, but I usually just end up taking a PB & J sandwich, along with some other odds and ends. My poor hubby stays at home working all day, and I feel like he has nothing to eat for lunch. I need to start buying more fresh fruits and vegetables just for snacking on at lunchtime, in addition to what I buy for dinners.

• Back in October when we made the switch to $35 a week, I always received CVS coupons from the price-scanning machine for $10 off a $50 purchase. Without fail, every single week! It was part of the grocery shopping routine -- Stop by CVS and run inside to scan my card to get a $10 off $50 coupon to use at Publix on my groceries. Well, I no longer receive those, for whatever reason! I still scan my card every week, and no $ off a $$ purchase coupon. That is a large amount of money that I am no longer saving on my grocery bill each week, which in turn makes staying under $35 much more difficult than it used to be.

• We don't have the money to up our grocery budget. We barely pay the bills as is. However, we are switching cell phone services this month. (I will be blogging about this later on, because it is a company that I HIGHLY recommend). Our cell phone bill will be reduced from $130 to $75 a month. So that gives me room in the budget to somewhat justify this change.

• I need some wiggle room. Every week, I'm cutting things to buy, just so I can stay under the $35. A lot of times, these are things we really do need (like fresh fruits and veggies).

• I am back on my diet hardcore and have to buy healthy foods, as well as low-calorie snacks. (The snacks I can get for free or almost-free, though!). For example, it would have been nice to be able to buy some of the Smart Ones meals at Target a couple weeks ago, so that I could have something different for lunches at work every day.

• As much as I don't want to admit it, I was pressuring myself to stay under the budget for some wrong reasons. How often do I tell all of you to NOT compare yourself with other couponers? Well, I should definitely take my own advice, because I still find myself doing it. It's like I'm trying to make a statement of "I coupon, and that's why I can keep my budget so low!" It doesn't matter. As long as your couponing wisely, keeping your budget at what you have set it, and saving money...that's what truly matters. Every family has a different set of circumstances and needs. And for us, I think $50 will be a good number each week.

• It will make grocery shopping more fun for me, because I have that wiggle room that I talked about. We probably won't use the $50 every week, but we will have it there if we need it. Hopefully I can save a little bit of money out of the grocery budget each month.

• I can hit up the Target, CVS, and Walgreens deals when I need to, without guilt.

Will we use all $50 every week? Most likely not, like I said above. But I think this is going to be a nice change for us. It will make shopping quite a bit less stressful for me.

When I began discussing this with my husband, he said, "Well don't you want to be able to say on your blog that you keep your grocery budget low? That's the whole point of using coupons." And I said, "Yes, I'd like to be able to say that, but that's the trap I've fallen into." Like I said above, that's not what it's about. We have different circumstances and new priorities now, and as a result a new grocery budget must be put in place...

What About You: What's your weekly grocery budget? What special needs or circumstances do you feel you have to accommodate for?

Learning to say NO -- When a deal breaks the budget.

Let's just face it...Couponing is addictive! When I tell people that being frugal is truly fun (hence the name of this blog), they usually don't believe me at first. But as soon as they make that first savings trip to Publix, walk out of CVS with a bag full of freebies, or beat their all-time savings record...they start to understand how much fun saving money truly can be.

I'm sure you've experienced this fun and addicting coupon high as well! You start looking at that savings to spending ratio at the bottom of your receipt on every trip. You start feeling like you can NOT miss a single deal from week to week. You absolutely, no exceptions, will not pay full price for anything. The cabinets in your kitchen and bathrooms are overflowing, not to mention the donation boxes that are full to the brim. You take pictures of your grocery trips to share with your friends on Facebook. ;)

Where do you stop? Is there a limit when it comes to chasing the deals out there? I would say...YES.

This past week's grocery trip is a perfect example. I sat down to plan out my Publix run, and I knew I had less than $15 to spend in order to stay under February's grocery budget. I began going through the list of deals that I wanted to grab, printing coupons, getting excited about that killer Viva Italia sale. I then added up the estimated prices on my calculator to get a general idea of what our grocery bill would be...

I was over by about $10 or $15. I went over the list a million times trying to figure out what I could cut. I pretty much needed everything on the list for meals or staples. It came down to the awesome General Mills sale that was putting me over. I knew it would be a long time before I could get that great of a deal on some of those products again.

But, I figured out how much I was saving versus how much it was putting me over budget. I had to make the choice to not buy the products for the General Mills sale. I had to forgo the great sale, but it was worth it to stay under budget. It was so hard!!!

Sometimes you have to give up seeing that awesome savings number on the bottom of the receipt to grab savings in another way -- because staying under budget and not spending is the best kind of savings that exists. Don't you think?

What About You: What are your thoughts? Do you have troubles giving up a deal? Even if it means you'll stay under budget?