Extreme Couponing

Today, like every Sunday, I was procrastinating writing these blogs by watching some TV. Because there was not a single good movie or TV show on I was forced to flip through the channels to find something—anything—to watch so I didn’t have to do my homework. So as I came across TLC I decided to stop and see if anything good was on. Though I was hoping for a wedding show, such as Four Weddings or Say Yes to the Dress, but instead it was Extreme Couponing. I had never seen it, but I had heard a lot about it and I was interested to find out what it was really all about.

          First I should say that I started watching in the middle of the show and didn’t get all the details. But anyway, as I started watching the lady was already at the checkout. The clerk started ringing up all of her items. After the items, came coupons. There were probably as many, if not more, coupons being scanned than items being bought. She also split up the items into three different transactions. As if she weren’t already taking long enough, in the middle of her last transaction, the computer froze up and wouldn’t let the clerk scan anymore coupons. The manager had to come over and call the head of the company to figure out what to do. The commentator of the show said that she spent 60 hours on this trip to the store. When she was finally all done, combining all three purchases without any coupons, she would have spent $1,077. After the coupons she spent $29 (not exact change).

          I don’t know about you, but I think this is absolutely crazy. First off who has that much time to cut so many coupons? I understand looking through advertisements you get in the mail and cutting out coupons when you think you might need something, but seriously do these people just spend all their time cutting coupons? And it’s not like they only but one or two of each thing. They buy like 10 sometimes. Why do they need so much? I feel like they probably only go to the grocery store once a month. Clearly, the savings are worth using all the coupons, but is it really worth all their time and energy?

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