Thursday, October 26, 2006

Mind your own da*n business.....

Maeve and I went to the grocery store this morning. When we finished checking out and the total amount came up on the screen, the lady waiting behind me says, "I just cringe when people don't use coupons." WTF? Geez, I'm so sorry that I'm not Miss Penny Pincher like you are and don't take the time to search through every newspaper or magazine on the planet to clip coupons. Sure it would save me money, but I'd like to think that I have better things to do with my time.....like raise a few kids. Of course, she showed me her HUGE pile of coupons. Lovely. I suppose that makes you oh so much better than me.

The fact that a person can be so blatant in public makes me ill. I should have said, "So I don't use coupons....want to give me some of yours?" LOL! That would have shut her up.

3 comments:

Jen said...

Coupons- you have to PAY for a newspaper to get them. You then have to BUY a (usually) more expensive brand of whatever it is in order to USE them. When we used to live next to a convenience store and walking to the corner to get a Sunday paper was possible, sometimes I did find enough coupons for stuff I actually used that I was able to save a bunch, BUT most of the time coupons involve buying a costlier brand of whatever product in order to "save" the thirty-something cents and then you're bottom-line price still costs more than if you'd bought the other brand sans coupon. Trust me. I've spent alot of time studying this and experimenting.

Even when I've got the good, "dollar off!" coupons, like for cat litter or dog food, I use them, only to have Kevin look at the receipt at the end and scoff "so you saved me a dollar?"

I agree, sometimes things add up, but only if you're using leading-brand products and have a ton of coupons. Otherwise, buy the cheaper brand and still spend less than you would with the coupon.

Coupons aren't the same as they were back in that nosey lady's day when there were only one or two brands of everything and you really did save. Now, when places like HEB and Wal-Mart (even Walgreens' own medicine brands are a good deal) have their own products, who needs coupons for a dollar-something can of Dole or whoever's pineapple when the other is 76 cents?

Especially when Sunday papers containing coupons cost at least two dollars. Some weeks there aren't coupons in the paper and other weeks you're lucky to find two dollars' -worth of coupons in it to USE to even break even on the cost of the paper.

Kim said...

Jen, you always make me feel so much better! LOL!

I buy the cheap brands and still spend $150 a week on groceries. *sigh* But it could be worse. We could be eating out every day. That REALLY adds up.

Audrey said...

I think that when you have coupons you buy extra things because you have the coupon. We tried clipping coupons, but we buy generic and they don't make coupons for people who already know how to save money LOL. She said that because she needed to feel better about herself. :)