Why I don't 'coupon'

I find that many of the blog posts I read are about people over-achieving in various ways. This is not one of those posts. I may make new enemies here. This is an explanation of my under-achievement as a "couponer."

(Anyone else feel sorry for English teachers these days, with nouns becoming verbs just because society wishes it?)

It never used to be so hip to clip coupons. There's a whole show about it (so I hear- never seen it- don't want to pay for cable) and every so often I'll see an article about it in the paper or in a magazine. When I do, sometimes it makes me think I should try harder if there are so many people out there saving so much money. But then one of two things happens: Either I get put off by the extreme measures these people take (dumpster diving, anyone?), or I give coupons another shot, only to learn the same lessons over and over again. This last Sunday, there was an article in our paper about the winner of the newspaper's couponing contest. It gave an example of how her system works.

The article described how some of us average Joes might go about saving money with coupons. The example was a coupon for $8 off two cosmetic products of a certain brand. Someone might buy two products with a combined price of about $14, pay around $6, and "feel pretty good about it." The winner of this couponing contest, however, approaches this deal differently. She gets FORTY of these coupons and buys EIGHTY cosmetic products. Only she gets them on sale for $2.55 each. If you do the math, the store owes her around $3 for each pair of products she buys. The article stated that with just this one deal, she is "$116 ahead."

Intriguing, but I have several problems with this.

-Where do you get forty copies of such a coupon? In the paper? Lots of serious couponers get multiple Sunday papers so they can have the coupons. I don't consider myself an environmentalist, but where do the rest of those newspapers go? And the Sunday paper costs $2 a copy. I think it's more likely that this lady gets her multiple copies online. Anyone out there buy printer ink recently? That's not free either.

-What store would have any stock left if someone came in to buy eighty of something? This lady  admits that she herself considers it in bad taste to clean out the inventory, leaving nothing for anyone else to buy. She only did it for the contest.

-Who needs eighty cosmetic products? And who has room to store this stuff?

-I haven't seen many, if any, coupons like this that don't have fine print restricting the value of the coupon to the purchase price of the item. It's uncommon to come across such a valuable coupon at all.

-It looked as if it was necessary to do multiple transactions in order to buy all this stuff. And not two or three transactions. A bunch. You would need to go to the store at 3 a.m. in order to avoid incurring the wrath of your fellow customers. And what about the poor cashier? I got in line behind someone at Wal-Mart who was ad-matching. I switched lines because she haggled over everything she was buying. When I got done waiting and then paying for my stuff, she was still in the middle of her transaction. Sometimes time and the consideration of others is more important than saving a few cents.

-I am very aware of the power of using a coupon for something that's on sale, but WHEN was the last time you saw products that average $7-8 on sale for $2.55? It used to happen. I used to capitalize. I used to get cereal, for example, for less than a dollar a box. I watch the ads. I used to watch the coupons, too, but both the sales and the coupons have really dried up recently.
Like I said, these kinds of articles make me think that maybe I should do more. It's not that we have more money than we know what to do with, making coupons not worth the time. We, like most people, could use lower prices on the things we buy. So I used to clip coupons, with varying amounts of success. But more and more, the coupons I see are either for products I don't use or for brands that are overpriced. A quick perusal of one coupon insert in the same paper as the article I've mentioned yielded the following:

-A $5-off coupon for vitamins intended for people age 50 or older. Useless.
-Good coupons for Triaminic. I have kids who get sick, so I would use this product. However, store brands are just as effective and cost way less, coupon or not. Moving on.
-Dog food- don't have a dog. Cat food- Have cats, but one of ours requires a different kind of food.
-50 cents off pasta sauce. We use that, and I could double the coupon. But it's for a brand that costs more than twice as much as what we usually buy. Plus, the coupon is for 50 cents off of TWO jars. That's what gets me. Especially with cereal coupons (cereal is PRICEY) where you have to buy three or four of something to get the (small) discount. So you wait for a sale on cereal, which may or may not come before the coupon expires. These days, it usually doesn't. I do watch.
-More drugs I either don't use or could get cheaper with a store brand
-$5 whitening toothpaste- Useless. Plain old peroxide works better and is dirt cheap.
-$2 off laundry detergent- Okay, I was planning to buy laundry soap that very day, so from the entire insert, there was one coupon that was potentially useful.

And that's how it is. So many weeks went by when I didn't see anything useful that I stopped looking. The same is true online. Even if I did find a few good ones, I'd forget to bring them to the store. Or if I did remember, I found cheaper alternatives than using the coupon. Or the coupon was for a product that was so new, the store didn't have it yet. OR! I'd successfully match coupons to products, pay the cashier, and walk out with the coupons still in my purse. There's a limit to how much I'm willing to beat myself up over these things. Especially with cranky kids in tow who need lunch NOW.

So we pack up and go on our planned shopping trip. I nearly forget my one useful coupon, but I go back in to get it. At the store, someone is totally rude to me in the parking lot, and I forget to bring the coupon into the store (I KNOW, I should put the coupon in my purse, for crying out loud, but we're in survival mode these days and efficiency is not my strong suit). We go look at the detergent. The brand on the coupon is even on sale, and I can get a 70-load bottle for $8, if I go back out to the car and get the coupon (in 100-degree heat, with a young kid, and not feeling all that great). Or I can buy our usual brand and get 80 loads for $8.

Guess where the coupon is now. Starts with recycling and ends with bin.