I have a blogging buddy who ran across a rather unbelievable post by some blogger about what they thought about couponing. Okay, so maybe it isn’t for everyone but Neal did a great post about why this person was ill-informed and why. Here’s the post. Visit Neal’s blog — Stl CouponWizard– and leave a comment and tell him I sent you. 
This is Neal. He loves coupons!
I was alerted to this article by another blogger and had to check it out and see what this loon had to say. Well I’m sure you can guess what my reaction was.
Yeah that’s right I think this Gal needs to start using something other than the doggie door because she has hit her head a couple of times real hard and lost all of her common sense. not to mention wasting all of her other cents. I will go through this and try explain this in simple terms just incase they track this copy back to my site. Which I hope they do sense they did not allow comments where I found the post.
Couponing seems to be a time-tested strategy used by moms everywhere to stretch the household budget. But there are many reasons why using coupons won’t necessarily help you come out ahead. Here are eight reasons why the savings generated from coupons aren’t always worth the costs of collecting and using them.
In Pictures: 5 Money-Saving Shopping Tips1. You have to buy a newspaper.
This doesn’t apply to any free coupons you happen to get along with products or in the mail, but once you pay for a newspaper, you’ve lost money. You then have to make up for that loss by using enough coupons to break even. Then, you have to use even more coupons to come out ahead. And that doesn’t even account for the value of the time you spend clipping and organizing them.If you pay full price for a paper it mat cost you $1.50 (in Saint Louis), that paper normally contains two inserts with about $100.000 worth of coupons in both. On a weekly trip to the store if you use the $0.40/6 for yogurt (doubled), and the $1.00/1 coupon for the Hillshire sausage you have already saved the $1.50 the paper cost you and still have $198.20 worth of coupons left.
2. Clipping coupons takes time.
Yes, you can do it while you watch TV and turn “unproductive” time into “productive” time. But there are a lot of things you can do while you watch TV – mop the floor, prepare a week’s worth of meals or actually let yourself relax and not do anything for once. Your time might be better spent on another activity.Duh, you don’t clip the coupons instructions here Learn to file them and clip them only when you need them. That way you can sit down and watch the TV with your hands free for the popcorn.
3. Getting a newspaper invites lots of additional advertising into your home.
Advertising is powerful stuff – this is part of the reason why companies offer coupons in the first place. You might actually end up buying more stuff by having all those ads around, negating any savings you get from coupons. The same is true if a coupon compels you to venture into a store you wouldn’t otherwise visit. (For more money-saving tips, see the Budgeting Basics Tutorial.)Well this is an easy one, No doubt this person does no reading on the subjects of her post. If she did she would have learned that a growing number of people in these hard times have found real savings through coupon use. And with the numbers of people using coupons new methods of collecting, filing and using coupons are published each day in the newspapers that also better prepare the couponer to get the best deals out there. And there are Puzzles and comics in the paper.
4. Many of the coupons will be for things you neither need nor want.
Unfortunately, coupon circulars aren’t customized to your shopping habits. If you are a die-hard bargain hunter, if may be hard for you to turn down a good deal, even if it means buying something you weren’t planning on getting anyway. However, from a financial perspective, buying more than you need or want just doesn’t make sense. (For more on this topic, see Attention Discount Shoppers: Don’t Buy Just Because It’s On Sale.)You would think the author could come up with a new excuse. Of Course You by things you may never use. But when you make money for picking it up off the shelf or get it for free Who wouldn’t pick it up. If you don’t use it somebody will, donate it or give it to family or friends. Use the profit off these items to get what you need. I have Tuna, Peanut Butter, Office and School Supplies, Pasta Sauce Ritz Crackers and many other Pantry goods for Free buy Buying thing I will never use. Try donating these products, it will make you feel much better about using coupons.
5. Coupons can tempt you to spend your grocery dollars on things you shouldn’t.
Coupons don’t always market the healthiest foods. This might mean that they’ll lead you to buy things that aren’t very good for you. Anyone can see that clipping coupons that tempt you to purchase sugary cereals and fatty or salty snacks isn’t the greatest thing for your health. If your idea of a healthy snack is more “I’ll have an apple” and less “I’ll just have one serving of potato chips,” you’re unlikely to find much in the coupon circulars at all that will interest you. The “fruits and veggies” section of your coupon organizer is going to be a lonely place. Do you really want an incentive to bring more junk food into the house? Plus, if you have a monthly grocery budget that you stick to no matter what, coupons will only get you more food or different food – they won’t truly save you any money.Come on now, The Door on an airplane could tempt you to use it. But if you have any sense you won’t until it is the proper time to use it. The same goes when you shop, People use coupons to save money when shopping, sure the temptation is there but we are not a bunch of robots. We have common sense and if the people that run our country had the same frugal senses that we have we would all be better off.
6. The same coupons tend to be offered over and over again.
After a few months of coupon clipping, you’ll realize that you’re repeatedly clipping the same coupons. This might work for you if you use the same products repeatedly, but it’s not so great if you prefer variety and experimentation. You often won’t use all the coupons you clip by their expiration date, so you’ll have to toss that yogurt coupon that expired on June 30 only to clip another identical one that doesn’t expire until July 31. This is time consuming – not to mention aggravating. The redundancy of coupons is especially annoying if the coupons are for items you don’t even want to buy. (Check out alternative ways to save in A Map To Grocery Store Savings.)If you would watch coupons for any amount of time you would discover that there are coupons for both new and well established products. Coupons are issued by manufactures and when paired with the sales that are also incentivized by the same manufactures you do exactly what the manufacture and retailer want you to do. That is you move product off of the shelves. You try the new products, if you like them you talk about them and other people buy the product. There are a lot of the same coupons from week to week but I as most people do find products they like and will continue to buy that product over time.
7. You might become a slave to coupons.
It can be very difficult to buy something without a coupon once you get used to using coupons. Knowing that you can get ice cream for $2.50 might make it difficult for you to spend $4 on it even though many times, it would be worth it to spend the extra $1.50 rather than pine for ice cream and cast longing glances at your freezer every night for three weeks until your next coupon arrives. You might also find yourself making more trips to the grocery store in order to purchase things only when you have coupons for them.OK you got me on this one. I’m a slave to coupons, If You use them every time you shop and save the money you planned to save I don’t see the problem. Once again we are not mindless robots out here. Most of us save enough using coupons that it no longer hurts to buy that $4.00 tub of ice cream not to mention the Chocolate sauce that we paid less than 25% of retail for to drown those big scoops of ice cream in. Coupons will enable you with your savings to splurge on the thing that you would not normally buy because of the cost of the item. I for one will volunteer to be the slave of this kind of savings.
8. Shopping takes longer.
If you have to hunt up and down the aisles in search of the item you have a coupon for, you’ll spend more time at the store. This could also lead you to spend more money, potentially negating the savings you’re working so hard to accrue.Only if you allow it to. The right planning of your shopping trips and the proper filing of your coupons help cut this time down. No longer do you need to page through the ads to find the deals or even the cheapest hamburger at your choice of stores. the Thousands of Bloggers like me have every stores ad posted with the location of the coupons for the sale items listed. The time saved compiling a list well makes up for the time in the store. I always ask people that give me the excuse “ I don’t have time to do coupons” What do you have more of, time or money?
The Bottom Line
Yes, you can save a lot of money with coupons, especially when you combine them with sales. However, there are some drawbacks to coupons that must be taken into account. Perhaps the most dedicated coupon clippers can overcome these hurdles and still achieve overall savings. If you’re not one of them, there’s no need to start clipping. (For another perspective on this topic, see Coupon Shopping: Clip Your Way To Savings.)The bottom line is that you can save a lot of money when pairing coupons and sales. The only drawbacks of using coupons is that you will met some of the nicest people that can be found in this world. Most care about others and are willing to pass these deals on to others to help them save money by word of mouth. Thousands of bloggers out there spend unbelievable hours at the keyboard passing on this information, most making less money than what they would if they were flipping hamburgers. In these time we need people that are looking for ways to help others not people that want to discourage people from trying to make their lives better by using coupons.
Sorry folks I felt the need to respond to this, Even though I am sure this post will never be seen by the people that need to see it. Coupons are real savings for a lot of people, if used properly they can be the difference in our budgets that make our lives better and give us the opportunities to get those thing we would not otherwise be able to afford. Coupons are like any thing else they are only cumbersome if you allow them to be. Good couponing to eveyone!
THANKS NEAL!
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