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Are savings from coupons worth the trouble of collecting them?
Results so far:
| Yes | 72% | 822 votes | Total: 1134 votes | |
| No | 28% | 312 votes |
Yes
by David B Hitchcock
Created on: June 19, 2009
Are savings from coupons worth the trouble of collecting them?
Often when you are at a store checkout line, there will be someone who has coupons littering their items. Do you wonder if it's worth your time to save those nickels and dimes? Let's take a look at those coupons, where you get them, and how they can add up.
What are coupons?
Coupons are small notes from the product manufacturer to the store that they will pay some of the price of the item you are buying. Coupons can come on paper, cardboard, plastic wrappers, cloth, or any material. The important parts are that it has the product name, the source of the coupon which is generally the manufacturer's company name, and how much the coupon value is. There is also some legal information included, and generally there is a UPC code - one of those bar codes that are on nearly all food packaging these days. Those are for tracking and to verify it's legitimate. Often coupons are offered to encourage people to try new products, or old products that have changed.
Where do you get coupons?
You can find coupons all over the place. A generation ago there were generally clipped from magazines and newspapers. Sometimes there are stacks of coupons at stores next to the products you will buy with those coupons. Now with everyone using the Internet, there are many sources of coupons online as well. You can go to the manufacturer's website for coupons, you can go to the grocery store website for coupons, you can go to websites for groups that promote a type of product (for example baby products) and often get coupons. And there are websites that only deal in coupons. On the Internet you generally have to print the coupons off yourself, and bring them in. The other methods provide you with the physical coupon without that extra effort.
Can the savings from coupons really add up?
Let's take a look at a couple examples. Say you are single, and eat at home all the time. That's 21 meals a week, and some snacks. You do laundry, wash dishes, clean your place, and clean yourself too. Remember - coupons can be for any item, not just clothes. Say one trip to the grocery store for you includes a box of cereal, milk, bread, a couple frozen dinners, a bag of frozen vegetables, some deodorant, a bar of soap, and a bag of potato chips. All these items can have coupons for them. The items listed could cost $23 depending on where you shop and what brands you buy. If you look hard for coupons, and don't care what brands you buy (just so you can use the coupons that are available this week) you could easily save 50 cents to $1 per item on that list for a savings of $4.50 to $9. While that's not hundreds of dollars it is 5 - 10% of your bill. If you spend that $23 each week that would be $1200 and the savings would be $60 - $120. You can tell from that list of items you would need to buy more groceries than that each week, so your savings would be much higher in real life. If you only spend 10 minutes to get $9 of coupons, that's like earning $54 an hour. Who wouldn't want that kind of money!
And if you have a family of 4, those savings scale up. Sure you will spend a bit more time clipping and hunting those coupons, but clipping 3 coupons from one website instead of just 1 sure saves time.
Really that's what it comes down to - are you willing to invest the time it takes to get those savings on an ongoing basis? If you are, it's worth it for sure - every little bit helps. If you hate all the clipping and so on, then don't do it. But you have no reason to gripe when the person ahead of you saves $20 by using coupons!
Learn more about this author, David B Hitchcock.
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No
by Effie Moore Salem
Created on: July 16, 2007 Last Updated: November 18, 2011
Coupons are an asset if they are used right. And used right is using them to lower the prices of the food you usually buy and not buying the food simply because it’s on sale. And too, time is valuable and to spend hours clipping coupons is to waste this valuable commodity where chores that would also save money go undone. Yes, coupons save money as long as you don’t allow them to take over your complete grocery shopping life.
The Sunday paper is not cheap and to buy that for the coupons solely is a waste of money. In lieu of that it might be a better option to forgo the coupons or better still, ask your neighbor for their paper Monday morning. Yet, most of these coupons are for bran named foods and it’s far less expensive to buy store brands.
There’s some excellent buys in General Mills coupons on cereal with a whopping two dollars off, for three or four boxes at a time. Gluten free diners really appreciate not only their coupons but their supplying corn and rice cereals especially for them at half the price specialty food shops charge.
Coupon mania is addictive and it doesn’t take much to get into the habit of in a big way. Yet, as long as the food is eaten and is sitting on shelves going stale there’s probably not too much to get alarmed over. But caution is the watch word.
Another thing that could happen with coupon mania is that the type of food might not be up to standard if coupon clipping is allowed to get out of hand. With the lower prices, fresh fruits and vegetables might get passed over lower priced canned goods or less salty frozen vegetables
Coupons are great for those expensive dining out meals where a two or three dollars off is offered and who every frugal homeowner needs this kind of help with an occasional night out on the town. But less face it, some people love coupon clipping and others clip but don’t use. They have good intentions of saving on their grocery shopping but will find they’ve gone shopping with the coupons still on their refrigerator door.
Therefore, absent minded people don’t make good coupon shoppers. The best they can do is wander through the isles comparing prices as they read their grocery list. Of course the worse of these absent minded people often have the coupons in their purse but forget about them until later. Those people are simply not good coupon clippers and they might as well forget it even trying to compete with the regulars who push those bulging carts up to the cash register and take up precious time of those others waiting in line.
All coupons are not equal. But the best way to save with coupons is to always make a list with the coupons in front of you and if there’s on for the food you’re going to buy, then use it. And there’s no doubt the Kroger store is the winner with coupon deals. They snoop on shoppers when they are checking out and attempt to align the coupons with their shopping habits. And often they give freebies and sometimes have a five dollar gift certificate for a five dollar purchase.
Learn more about this author, Effie Moore Salem.
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