Couponing is an Extreme Sport (WSJ)

We’re not talking about the people who come out of the grocery story having saved 75% or the Walgreens shoppings doing 3 purchases to roll their rewards. We’re talking about the guy with 1,142 packages of Jello or the woman who freezes months and months worth of eggs.

It scares me when I read about people using their bedroom closets and coffee tables as food storage, because that’s when I think it  starts to switch from being a savvy shopper and stockpiling food when it’s at its lowest price to hoarding. What the heck are you going to do with that much Jello? And these people don’t stop with massive amounts of one just one item.

If you’ve been reading for awhile, you know that I am a stockpiler, so it’s not like I don’t understand the purpose or impulse of buying when things are low. I also think that my house is a home and not a warehouse and I should be able to open my bedroom closet and find clothes, not canned peas or be able to store my video games controllers in the living room instead of pasta. Fortunately, I know that Mr  wouldn’t put up with that much stuff (he already gets antsy when I buy a single box of tomato sauce)  no matter how much money we’re saving.

A lot of people defend the practice by saying that they donate items to food pantries and shelters, which is well and good,  but they’re also preventing normal shoppers from getting good deals on products. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve needed to get a rain check on 80% of the items on my list because someone else cleared the shelf already. (If I show up 20 minutes after opening on stock day and the shelf is already empty, I can almost guarantee it was hit by one of these shoppers.)

So what do you think? Are extreme couponers hoarders, savvy shoppers, something else?

Popularity: 16% [?]

Popped into Consumerist today and found this: 11 Ways To Save Money Grocery Shopping.

This was the grocery list for 1 month for 1 woman:
Ground lean beef
Corned beef
Chicken breasts
Shredded cheese
Skim milk
Bagel bites (2)
Mini yeast rolls
Chili (2)
Refried beans
Taco dinner kit
Wheat bread
Wheat buns
Head of lettuce
Oreos
Pringles

All I could think of is ‘Where’s the food?’ Most of it’s junk and I see only one ‘vegetable’ (if it’s iceberg, it has zippo nutritional value). I’d expect someone spending like this on groceries to be asking US for help with their grocery budget.

Here’s my advice to this young lady:

1. Skip the processed foods.

Those refried beans were stupidly expensive for what they are. Buy a bag of beans and make your own, plus you’ll have a ton of beans left over for weeks afterwards.

That ‘taco kit’ is a waste of money. For $2.50, you could buy a bag of better quality tortillas, make your tacos and have enough left over to make breakfast burritos, regular burritos and other goodies to freeze or eat later. The ‘seasoning’ packet is usually glorified chili powder. Buy a jar of sauce and it will last for many taco dinners.

Canned chili is (again) a waste of money. If you’re already buying beans, beef and chili powder to replace the kit, you could make a big pot and freeze it for later.

Buy a larger block of cheese and shred it yourself. Cheese freezes nicely and you could use it to make the aforementioned burritos with the leftover chili, tortillas and cheese and freeze them for quick lunches.

Make your own bagel bites. For $8, I could make about 8 boxes worth from bulk bagels, the block of cheese and a jar of pasta sauce. If you lightly toast the bagels first so the sauce doesn’t make them mushy, you can freeze these successfully.

2. Buy more vegetables

Granted, this is only one month’s grocery budget, so perhaps she stocked up last month, but seeing only one head of lettuce is a little scary. Saving money at the cost of nutrition won’t save you money in the long run. You will pay for it later in poor health.

3. Skip the extraneous junk.

This advice is even given by the post author, but I see it wasn’t taken. She could have cut roughly $13 off of her budget just by removing the Bagel Bites, Oreos and Pringles. That’s almost 1/4 of her grocery budget.

So yeah, buying processed crap instead of real food isn’t a good way to save money, as evidenced by the original post. Sure she only paid $50, but she could have easily taken that money and bought a ton more ‘real’ food and been healthier for it.

Popularity: unranked [?]

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?

Popularity: 43% [?]

I’ve been doing some thinking on why I feel the need to share my grocery shopping with everyone.

I decided I really needed to think about this after re-examining how I feel about what I call frugal pissing contests. If you’ve ever seen a discussion thread where people talk about how low they set their thermostats and people start claiming lower and lower numbers until someone is talking about how they set the thermostat to 40 (just to keep the pipes from freezing) and their family wears winter coats indoors… that’s a frugal pissing contest.

It happens over groceries too, with people bragging about how little they spent that week or how big a percentage they’ve saved. What really got me thinking was when one woman was called out on how low her budget was, because it turned out she was on WIC and didn’t count that assistance towards her grocery budget. I can’t believe someone was lying over the internet about their grocery budget or that people were arguing over it.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I post about my grocery trips not to brag about my savings (because there are people who save a hell of a lot more money), but because I want to encourage other people and show that it’s possible to buy ‘real food’ and save money and because it helps me feel more accountable. It’s a little embarrassing to announce a budget and then totally blow it.

Anyway, the totals this week:

Total Spent: $85.71
Total Saved: $38.49 (~32%)

Would have been better but pregnancy tests really are freakin’ expensive (and positive, so cross your fingers for me).

Popularity: 23% [?]

Another not so great week, although we’re still on track to hit my $400 goal. This was both a meat week and we had to buy lunch food/drinks  to feed the friends who are helping us put in the new counter and backsplash. I was actually surprised that we stayed on budget.

Total Spent – $108
Total Saved - $53.22

And speaking of the backsplash, Lowe’s managed to screw up yet again, being the total to 4 idiotic mistakes on their part. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Mr. is riding me again on the grocery bill and it kinda makes me want to beat him with a baguette.  Not because he’s worried about the bills, but because it’s partly Mr. Dedicated Carnivore’s fault that the bill is so high.

Yours truly would happily go vegitarian three or four nights a week, which would put a nice big dent (~$40) in the budget right there.  Mr. actually whines when I suggest we cut out the meat at every meal and his list of ‘foods I will never, ever eat’ includes everything from tofu to quinoa. One of these days I will snap and blugeon him to death with a pork loin.

Then he gets started on how his budget during college/bachelorhood was so low (he ate pretty much nothing except chicken parm and broccolli) and how we don’t need the sauces and spices. Apparently the concepts of ‘balanced and varied diet’ and ‘no ones wants to eat food that tastes like cardboard’ are totally lost on him. And don’t get me started on the complete lack of knowledge on the subject of ‘portion sizes’. There is no reason to eat almost 3 cups of rice at dinner if you’ve been eating 5 meals throughout the day.

I think I’ve been doing rather well with the grocery budget. I’ve brought it down to under $500 ($400 is my goal and I think I’ll be stocked up enough to hit it next month), which is about $40 a week per person. Our housemate also pays for his share of the food.

That’s not the tightest budget that was ever created, but it’s what keeps everyone happy. I get my seasonings, the carnivore gets his meat and our housemate doesn’t have to cook for himself.

Popularity: unranked [?]

An average week for us. We hit BJ’s because Mr. was out of cereal so my ‘amount saved’ is a little vague because I had to calculate it based on the prices I could find on the internet.

Total Spent: $150.66
Total Saved: ~$95 or ~40%

The $4 off of Always Infinity Pads coupons that keep popping up in the P&G Saver inserts are awesome at BJs. A bulk pack of 48 was only $7.99

Popularity: unranked [?]

Total Spent – $73.38
Total Saved – $48.52

As you can see, we’re hardly ‘doing without’ and what we buy is relatively healthy (although mostly non-organic.) There’s a few more salads under the two visible ones and that’s a big ol’ 5lb block of ground beef hiding on the side.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Another crappy week. Mr. decided he needed new shampoo and Benadryl, which added a sudden $20 to the bill and this week we picked up some of our staples which never seem to go on sale around here (brown rice, kosher egg noodles, etc.)

Total Spent:  $99.35

Total Saved: $48.09

Popularity: unranked [?]

Kind of a meh week. I bought a big ol’ ham for July (50% off), some toiletries and some treats like ice cream (BOGO Free) which is why this week’s a little high for non-meat week.

Total Spent – $76.88

Saved – $64.12

I had a coupon for “Buy Ritz Crackers get Wheat Thins Free” and there was a store coupon for “Buy Wheat Thins and Crystal Lite get $2″. I also had a $1 off for 2 boxes of Ritz Crackers and $2 off of two containers off Crystal Lite. In addition, Ritz crackers were BOGO Free and the Crystal Lite was 2 for $3.

So it was:

2 boxes of Ritz crackers for $1.50  ($2.50 for 2 – $1 coupon)
1 box Wheat Thins for $0  (Buy Ritz Coupon)
2 tubes of Crystal Lite for $0.  ($2 from Wheat Thins deal plus $1 off)
Total – $1.50

Not bad.

Popularity: unranked [?]