The Lost Art of Clipping Coupons to Save Money
August 14, 2006 by Erik Folgate
Filed under Random
This may be a broad generalization, but I will venture to say that the younger generations of America do not use coupons the way that our parents and grandparents used manufacturer’s coupons. I was flipping through a sunday paper coupon book, and I started saying to myself, “why have I not been using more of these coupons?” I will admit it, I have never sat down and clipped coupons to use at the grocery store. After finding numerous $1.00 off coupons for items that I buy every other week, I realized that could be saving some serious money when I go to Wal-mart and the grocery store.ÂÂ
My charge is to follow me in swallowing my pride and start using manufacturer’s coupons. But remember that using coupons are useless if you buy something that you normally would not buy simply because you have a coupon. I think it is easy to fall into the trap of buying foods or toiletries. that we would normally not buy just because we have a good coupon for it. Also, you need to watch out for coupons that make you buy 2 or 3 of something in order to get savings. This is okay if you are buying for a family, but if you are buying for yourself, you probably do not need to buy in bulk simply to receive a small discount.ÂÂ
The problem is the coupons are only on name-brand products. If you buy generics or store brand products you’ll probably save just as much as you would buying the name brand with the coupon. So for cutting the coupon, I get a name? Great, but I’ll pass except in those rare cases the product doesn’t have a generic version.
I do get the Sunday paper to clip coupons and since we don’t eat a lot of boxed foods (ie mostly we just buy ingredients) there often isn’t a lot I want. But, there’s always enough coupons to justify the price of the newspaper. I think most people are just too lazy. =) My family made it a regular habit though, so I kind of consider not using a coupon to be wasting money, and get sad when they expire and I haven’t used them – it’s like I went and threw out a $5 bill or something.