The Frugal Urbanite household hit the point where we were so stressed doing everything frugally that we were running out of free time and something had to give or we would make ourselves miserable. The casualty ended up being coupons for a couple of months.
This is a fairly common occurrence and I’ve mentioned it before. Clipping coupons can take a healthy chunk of time out of your week and with me slowing down because of the pregnancy and all the work on the house, I just ran out of the time and energy to clip (or shop, for that matter) every week, so we had a 2 months coupon hiatus.
Because we were no longer shopping every Sunday, we started reincorporating BJs into our monthly shopping. I would normally pick up 10 or so jars of spaghetti sauce on sale at the store, but instead I would just grab a case at BJs for only maybe $.50 more for the whole mess (not to mention BJs would have taken manufacturers coupons if I had them). The meat there was a tad more expensive than the good sales at the grocery stores, but I discovered that the quality was better than the ’sale’ meat. I could get 90% ground beef instead of greasy 80% for only pennies more and big cuts of meat were nicely marbled instead of questionable like the pork shoulders at Giant. It’s very unlikely we’ll go back to buying these items at the local groceries.
We continued to look through the grocery store circulars to plan out the menus using sale items so we continued to save 30% or so at the local stores. We also had my big ol’ stockpile to work from, so we didn’t have to buy any toiletries (a big use of my coupons) or household items, which also saved us a bundle. It also meant that we had a lot of repeat meals to pull from the stockpile, but no one has died from eating pasta 3 times in one week.
In any case, we really only lost about $40 over the course of the 2 months, which we could absorb and sometimes you have to consider the cost of quality of life over how much you could save.
Has anyone dropped a frugal habit temporarily (or permanently) for the sake of their sanity?
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I suppose not a frugal habit, but many times I feel like I should stop one of my three “outside of my main job” jobs – just to keep me from going insane.
But I love having the money, it helps me be able to put more away on my debt. So I don’t.
.-= SS4BC´s last blog ..Asking for Money =-.
I actually stopped doing coupons when my little one was born two months ago. I hope to pick it back up again sometime in the future, but I’m not stressing out over it for now. Couponing takes a good bit of time, and being with my baby is so much more important than saving a dollar here and there.
.-= Tiffany´s last blog ..A Great Bulk Purchase: Kirkland Baby Wipes =-.
I took some time off doing major couponing in September when school started. I thought school would give me lots of free time…but it just seems to have made me busier driving everyone everywhere
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.-= Corrie @ “Cents”able Momma´s last blog ..UPromise: Many {Free} Ways to Save for College =-.
I go in cycles with my couponing. I’ll go hot and heavy for a few weeks, then slow down and only take advantage of the really good deals.
.-= Storm´s last blog ..Wordless Wednesday – Thank You =-.
I’ve never done coupons, or at least haven’t for years, for all the reasons you mention. The actual savings wasn’t significant enough to trump strategic shopping at warehouse clubs, health-food stores, and grocery store sales. For actual food, I always found the coupons were most frequent on name-brand, processed food I wouldn’t normally buy. And with three kids, both me and my husband working full-time, and lots of home and other projects, like you I found that the dollar savings was overshadowed by the time required.