Coupons: The Final Word

We hope you’ve enjoyed our two-week-long campaign against coupons! Okay, it wasn’t necessarily against coupons entirely, just sort of against making them the be-all and end-all of your feelings of consumptive self-worth. Here at MSGB, we like to look at the whole picture and find ways to pat ourselves on the back for making choices that are good for the environment and healthy for our families, too. (And hey, if a coupon comes along that is easy to use and fits those goals–all the better!)

Also, it is worth nothing that over the course of this project, Larms and I have both had trouble shaking the distinct feeling that one unintended (or intended, depending on how deep the conspiracy-theorist in you runs) consequence of keeping all the heads of households out there so singularly focused on the task of saving a couple hundred or even thousand bucks at the grocery store each year (and giving them the feeling that they are “winning” at an important game) is that they don’t have time to notice/pay attention to the BIG and OUTRAGEOUS things happening in our country every day that have a MUCH larger impact on our collective standards of living (and are really at the heart of why we’re all “losing” in the fight to retain a vibrant middle class in our country). From last week’s headlines alone, I can think of coal-mining companies blatantly disregarding safety standards while paid-off politicians look the other way and predatory banks and corrupt politicians colluding to pillage an entire county in Alabama. But hey, I just got ten boxes of Jell-O for 20 cents, so it’s all good.

Coming up the rest of this week and next: We’ll be back to lighthearted romps through the land of all-natural cleaning supplies and toiletries. We’ve been experimenting something fierce and have results and recipes to share!

It’s RAINING diapers! Or, how to ruin a deal in 10 days.

Larms pointed out earlier in this series that one problem she has found with “deals” is that they can make her, the coupon-dabbler, purchase something she wouldn’t otherwise. In such a case, rather then saving money, she is spending an extra $.99 to get that thing that yes, normally does cost $1.99 but that normally she would never buy in the first place. Which means she really would have been better off without the coupon. Could she have avoided this pitfall if she were more judicious in her clipping? Sure, but I would argue that if she knows she is prone to veering off the tightly-disciplined path every highly effective couponer must follow, she could just as easily save herself the trouble and not start down said path in the first place. She’ll come out about the same money-wise but WAY ahead of the game in time and effort expended.

The thing that bites me in the you-know-what is along the same lines but hits my checkbook PayPal account (and the poor environment) from a slightly different angle. Here’s how it goes down:

A friend (we’ll call her Parms) alerts me to a completely irresistible deal. I mean, this deal is so smoking hot it would just be stupid to pass it up. Basically it’s some obscene amount of diapers for some obscenely small amount of money. By some calculations, the final price could come out to 8 cents per diaper. For my little lady’s size, I think it was 11 cents per diaper. Still, a very, very good deal (as 17 cents per diaper is already considered an EXCELLENT PRICE among the diaper-purchasing-savvy out there). Of course, this deal is on Pampers, which, you know, are not the chlorine-free diapers that the planet and I prefer, but I just decide I’m going to do it. I’ve been such a goody-goody-earth-friendly-diapering mama for so long, don’t I deserve some CHEAP STINKING NAPPIES, and lots of them, now and again???

So I do all the things I’m supposed to do. Plug in this code here and that coupon there, add that filler item to my cart, print out and send in a rebate. And I get my diapers. And I say to myself, fairly pleased with the situation, “Now this is a GIANT box of diapers! What an AMAZING DEAL.”

And then…something goes…awry. See, my normal diaper-changing routine looks something like this: Take kiddo upstairs, take off old diaper, look at small stack of expensive chlorine-free diapers (33 cents a pop, in some cases!!), think about how I don’t want to pay for those again anytime soon, nor make a trip to the store to get more (and now here’s the important part) choose to use the cloth diapers instead.

But here’s what the routine looks like now that my jumbo tub o’ Pampers is sitting in the corner of the room, beckoning me with its abundance: Take kiddo upstairs, take off old diaper, look at pile of Pampers so plentiful it’s like manna from heaven, look at cloth diapers gathering dust under the changing table, (and now here’s where things completely unravel) pop another one of those sweet, sweet disposables on.

And there you have it. All I have to do is go through the Pampers three times as fast as the chlorine-free diapers and I have suddenly crushed myself two times over: 1) I haven’t saved any money in the end (meaning all the time I invested “earning” the deal by jumping through their technical hoops was also wasted) and 2) I just put 3x the number of diapers (that are already more harmful to the environment to begin with) into the landfill than I would have if I’d stuck with my combo of chlorine-frees + cloths.

I know you’ll say, “What is your problem? Just have some self-control and don’t burn through the Pampers so fast, you moron!” But see, a lady’s got to know her limits and these are mine. After a long day at work, I WILL take the easy way out if I don’t have the proper incentives not to. What can I say? Unlimited access to Pampers broke me.

I’m sure most people do not have willpower issues like I do when it comes to getting the most out of a bargain. But I also bet most people are vulnerable to SOME hidden downside of the “can’t lose” deal. The key is knowing your own strengths and weaknesses and working within them to get the result that will make you happiest and not, say, filled with self-loathing that your child is wearing chemically-loaded diapers that smell so strongly of fake baby powder that you can no longer even sniff out if she’s pooped or not.

Where’s the coupon for that can of organic store brand beans?

I will delve deeper than most of you ever cared for me to go into the topic of organic produce later this month, but today I wanted to touch on it briefly, in a gut-feeling, not-yet-completely-edumacated kind of way, for our ongoing “To Coupon…or Not to Coupon?” series.

Largely driven by having a new, relatively unsullied and ever-eager mouth to feed in the family, I have over the past few months placed an increasingly high priority on the intangible “savings” of feeding that mouth, and the mouths of her parents, food that has not been sprayed with tons of pesticides and preservatives. After all, what is more important to me? Doing my best to ensure that all three of us live long and healthy lives or ensuring that I can go on an annual cruise in my retirement (that would then no doubt be cut tragically short by colon cancer)?

(Quick requisite disclaimer: I acknowledge that having a choice between options such as these is a privilege many cannot imagine, and I in no way believe that families who are struggling to make ends meet should be worrying about whether or not their lettuce comes from a family-owned organic farm (unless they want to, of course). By the same token, I think we would ALL be a lot better off if the families who CAN afford to think about such things do, as those families have the power to drive the market for everyone else into healthier, more affordable directions. (Wal-Mart’s numerous and insidious societal sins aside, their recent move toward supporting organic and local produce comes to mind here as a result of the mainstreaming of organics. (Let’s not take time right now to ponder whether they’re price-gouging those small farmers, k?)))

While I like to get as much organic stuff as I can, I also don’t want said organic products to send my grocery bill skyrocketing. I like to find the right balance between reasonable prices and a grocery cart with as few toxins as possible.

(Just one other aside before I continue: I am also lucky to live near a Whole Foods as well as a Superfresh (A&P) that has recently launched their own totally decent organic store brand (Green Way). Larms will probably have a few choice words for me and all of us at some point about how tough it is to even FIND varied options like these out where she lives.)

Here are a couple rules of thumb (in no official order of priority–I’m still working out the hierarchies myself–any advice on that welcome!) that make me feel pretty comfortable:

1) If the organic version is no more than 10% over the conventional price, go organic. So if the organic can of beans is $1.09 and the coventional is $.99, I’ll choose the former–10 cents on the dollar seems like a worthwhile tradeoff for my health.

2) If it’s an everyday staple of our diet, go organic. For instance, I eat oatmeal every single morning, so whatever toxins are in conventional, I’d be getting a huge dose over time if I didn’t mostly stick to the organic version.

3) If it’s primarily for the kiddo, go organic. Now that she drinks milk, we buy the organic stuff for her, even though it’s ungodly expensive in comparison. Here is a case for me where the price difference is so much that it doesn’t seem quite worth it for the adult milk in the house, given how little of it we actually drink, even though it makes the dreaded list in Rule #4 below.

4) If it’s on this top 12 list of foods that retain pesticides, go organic (unless otherwise decided due to another rule taking priority–although looking at the original article and seeing the list of known side-effects associated with the pesticides in these foods, I might be changing my mind on that soon). It’s not all bad news. These are the top 10 foods where organic doesn’t matter so much. (If you’re trying to make a tropical fruit salad, you’re GOLDEN.)

5) If it really seems important to go organic (like with the meats) but organic is wicked expensive, just don’t buy it very often. We have meat with our meals only once or twice a week. This saves a good deal of money and means that when I do buy it, I can splurge to get the good stuff like grass-fed beef or free-range pork, or whatever seems less shady than steroid-infused chicken parts packaged in China. Or if it’s not the good stuff, at least it’s not going into my body every single day. (On that note, my husband is SUPER-psyched about the advent of the Elevation Burger fast-food chain and wants to let Corporate know that they BETTER be bringing their Philly franchise to a block near us).

Outlet shopping made me cry.

Lesson learned recently: a bargain isn’t a bargain if it is on something you completely don’t need and if getting it sends you into a panic attack!

For background, we live near a beach resort area with a ton of nice outlet malls. Totally fun for leisurely shopping, often nice “deals” (compared to standard retail mall-type shopping) on lots of swanky-name things and less-swanky-name things too. So one of the last Saturdays in March I thought we’d go down there for some low-key shopping and some other errands I had to do in the area. I had FOUR coupons, people. They were practically burning a hole in my purse, I was so hot for these babies.

It was a truly harrowing experience. The whole area was as busy, on this Saturday in late March, as it used to be on, say, Memorial Day weekend maybe 10-15 years ago (zomg i’m old). The parking lots were crazy, traffic was heavy, the stores were mobbed and completely overwhelming. My emotionally fragile pregnant self actually got upset and started to cry after leaving one particularly overwhelming, busy store.

(Carter’s childrenswear, if anyone is curious. Floor to ceiling colorful cute outfits CRAMMED into a store full of bargain-crazed women, most with children with them. Shudder. I also stood in line for quite some time behind the numerous women with monstrous piles of clothes and complicated coupons before realizing that the thing I came there to return was not actually from that store, thus having totally unnecessarily spent probably fifteen minutes of my life in this godforsaken onesie-hell.) (Nothing against Carter’s, really, their stuff is totally cute, this store was just OVERLOAD.)

The best part is that we didn’t even end up finding anything really worth buying or crazy cheap (which should not have been surprising, since we didn’t actually need anything), so this whole experience accomplished nothing. I did end up using two coupons, because I just couldn’t stand leaving without having used some of them, even if the result was not actually a bargain. How lame is that? And, in classic form, one of them didn’t even end up working (the cashier my husband went to, since we each could only use ONE coupon, wouldn’t let him use it on a clearance item). Ha! On the upside, though, when baby is about two he’ll have a pretty adorable t-shirt with a monster truck on it waiting for him.

That was a very good lesson in “chasing a deal that isn’t a deal on stuff I don’t actually need to begin with” for me. I won’t be making the 45-minute drive just because I have some stinking coupons again anytime soon. Unless there’s something really specific that I really need that I absolutely know I can find at a specific store. And considering how unpleasant the entire shopping experience was, I’m not sure when I’ll next need something THAT badly.

I know it only costs 13 cents, but what if I don’t want it?

Larms got us off to a great start by pretty much summing up my own thoughts on and experiences with couponing, give or take some driving all over town for various city-block death-marches instead. “Lucky” for me, I do have all three major drug store chains within a 4-block radius–but do I actually want to hoof it around that radius, child in tow, for the express privilege of spending my post-work afternoon standing under fluorescent lights and listening to bad elevator music? I’ll pass, thx. Also, to be completely fair, you should probably add in some additional lame and discouraging planning failures on my part–I seem to be the queen of not realizing that a certain sale doesn’t start until the next day, or arriving on the last day of a sale only to discover a looted wasteland with only flavors nature never intended left.

Here’s my feeling about 90% of deals out there: They exist because a mega-company is trying to get you to buy, and then become a loyal customer of, a new product you in no way actually need. If you really needed it, you wouldn’t have to be given an incentive to buy it. In other words, if the bulk of its ingredients weren’t made up of nutritionally useless corn products or corn by-products whose subsidized production now outpaces our population’s reasonable ability to consume them, its makers wouldn’t be so desperate to unload these empty calories on us so cheaply. (And yes, I just stole the bulk of that thesis from Michael Pollan.)

Thus I’ve found that even when I do make the effort to poke around on the coupon websites or clip things out of the circulars, at best I come across a small handful of deals to set aside, and more than half of those I don’t end up remembering to use before they expire (since usually they are for items I only sorta-needed in my ambitious imagination anyway). Our blog’s little side-project of going chemical-free hasn’t helped matters, since cleaning and beauty products were the last bastion of coupon-eligible items I did “need” from time to time. Blast you vinegar! Why you gotta be so all-purpose?

So what IS a woman to do who’s decided that for her, coupons just don’t make sense, but would still like to be frugal while feeding her family responsibly-sourced, healthy food whenever she can?

In a nutshell, here are three strategies I stick to that complement my limited abilities to follow directions and plan ahead, but help fulfill my desires to keep it simple, make us healthier and not completely break the bank:

Simple: I go to only one drugstore and two grocery stores (which happen to be across the street from each other, so it’s almost like one). I try to find the best deals I can at those places, but I don’t spend time worrying about or looking for what opportunities I’m missing in other stores.

Healthy: Unless I have a very compelling reason (like friends are coming over and we want chips and dip), I follow the rule of sticking to the outside edges of the grocery stores. This ensures that I buy mostly real, fresh food and that I don’t buy things we don’t need (usually manufactured by companies I don’t want to support).

Cheap: I go to the grocery store about twice a week and only buy what we will actually eat in the next few days. This has really revolutionized my life in the sense that we almost never, EVER, end up wasting any food. Sometimes I’m astounded when I think back over a month and realize that in that time we threw away exactly one-half of a wilted carrot and maybe a quarter cup of leftover rice. When your fridge and pantry aren’t so full that you can’t see everything in there, it’s really easy to make sure you use up everything you have before you go out to get more. This has actually become a pretty satisfying game for us–and, unlike deal-seeking, is one I actually have a real talent for! And let’s face it, it’s just more fun to do things when you can dominate the crap out of them.

Is there a coupon for the 30 minutes I just spent driving to use some coupons?

A couple of months ago I came upon the discovery of an entire online community I had no idea existed – coupon/sale/budget blogs! Now, I don’t completely live under a rock – I knew about the general concept. But I did not realize there were entire websites devoted to things like matching up coupons with sales and rewards programs at grocery and drugstores with the goal of getting things crazy cheap or even free. (If this world is totally new to you too, some standard starting spots are here, here, and here.)

A common approach is to use these coupon/sale/rewards strategies to buy things, often for little to nothing or in some wild cases even making money, and make a point to use whatever there is and stockpile things you prefer or need. You can get Crest toothpaste for free, that’s what you use.  You can get four boxes of whatever cereal for 25 cents, buy them and use them. Of course, there’s a lot of variation. There are folks who do that, and there are also those who work to do it on an organic or veggie lifestyle too, and many who focus more on just getting things they actually would buy otherwise (although my suspicion from my own experience is that this is a lot less fruitful).

I have to acknowledge up-front that this post itself is coming from a place of privilege – we have the luxury of not having to scrimp like crazy on groceries, personal care or household products. Not throwing money around and eating out every night of the week, but we are very comfortable compared to many families, I know. So this is my approach to this issue as a mostly optional exercise – just an opportunity to save. It is only my own measure of the activity as it relates to my own situation and time. My perusings around the related blog-world, especially the blogs of those families who use these strategies out of necessity or to enable major life choices like having a stay-at-home parent, living debt-free, etc., left me with great respect for the energy and creativity people put into it (and the often seriously impressive results!).

Unable to resist the prospect of such bargains and quaking in my sensible shoes as we face starting to pay for full-time infant daycare in a few months, I thought I’d dabble a bit and give it the occasional whirl. I mean, from spending a bit of time on these blogs you do get the distinct sense that having ever paid more than 25 cents for a bottle of shampoo makes you a complete tool.

Well, after a couple of months of these sporadic efforts, I can say with confidence that trying to emulate the most hardcore shopping strategies of the coupon/sales/rewards budget shoppers is not an efficient use of time for this working almost-mom. No offense whatsoever to the moms who do put time into it, who have incredibly organized strategies and totally dominate the sales and their budgets. I actually am in total awe of them (that’s why I got so fired up to try!), and wish I had the time and drive to be better at it.

For my life, here’s a quick point/counterpoint on it:

Pros:

• Things for cheap! Free! Mad crazy bargains!

Cons (for me):

• Multiple stores, for me, can mean a lot of driving. Driving = money and time and pain in the ass.
• I apparently suck at it. Several of my attempts have failed – I do something wrong, don’t plan properly, don’t realize that you can’t just use $3 in such-and-such rewards with a manufacturers coupon, etc.
• It can be complicated, especially at the drugstores where big parts of the deals are various rebates (which require sending them in/registering them online AND then a trip to the bank once the stupid $3 check comes in) and “register rewards” that give you coupons for your next purchase in a fairly short period of time. I just went out of my way to a drugstore I don’t usually go to to buy some stuff for cheap, and part of getting that stuff cheap was a coupon that I have to COME BACK and buy more stuff to use?

In addition, I found myself often tempted to buy things I might not have even bought otherwise just for the deal. Of course, that’s clearly just my own failing – the experts would never make such amateur mistakes! But I do think it’s one of the central issues for me. Our overspending, which has gotten worse over the past few years, was more about buying stuff we don’t need than spending too much on actually necessary purchases – I wonder how common that is?

Realizing that was important, though. While I’m not feeding us both on $20 a week in groceries, I am making more of an effort to plan complementary meals, be less wasteful about food, and scale back our spending on personal care-type and cleaning-supplies things. Does our household really require every bizarre cleaning-product invention in order to be clean (Antibacterial Dishwashing Plus Rinse Agent Air Freshener Disposable Automatic Toilet Cleaner Wipes, anyone?)? Um, no.

Also, as I think Olivemom will be looking at, many coupons do indeed fall into the category of “stuff you don’t need” (or in our case, stuff I didn’t really want or that I otherwise would not be buying). Lots of various processed food items (Pillsbury refrigerated biscuits…various odd yogurt products…PopTarts…you get the drift) and cleaning supplies or household products I’m either trying to use less of already or are just completely unnecessary (whatever freak motion-sensor-flameless-candle-air-freshener product Glade has just released).

So, while it’s too much for me to keep track of sales and coupon matchups for food, personal products AND cleaning products at like seven different stores, this hasn’t been a total bust. I have been able to at least commit to keeping track of diaper prices/sales/coupons and have saved quite a bit using Seventh Generation coupons to make the switch to less toxic cleaning products, and I think this combination of trying to buy less in general + pay attention to coupons/deals for items we really do use has been an improvement for us. Whatever product I need and may have a coupon for at the moment might not be QUITE as cheap at Target as it would have been when it was on sale at Walgreen’s on the other side of town three weeks ago if I paid closer attention, but I think I’ll live.

Coupons Schmoupons

Don’t get me wrong. I am no stranger to the couponing way of life. My mom did it religiously for a number of years back in the day and I loved loved LOVED cutting them out for her and keeping her little book organized and unexpired. And it definitely helped us eat and live as a solidly middle-class family would, even though our actual income was often quite a bit less than that. I certainly grew up assuming that everyone clipped coupons and it would be totally foolish not to, which is why I immediately started dabbling in it when I got out of college and was dismayed to find out I was going to have to PAY for food a la carte–what a burn!!

Over the years, however, and especially now that I’ve got the job AND the kiddo, I’ve slowly come to the conclusion, in spite of considerable pressure from Wal-Mart, et al. to feel otherwise, that “getting the best financial deal” at all times is overrated, especially when you consider the myriad other factors that comprise the true concept of value. (Time, quality, social and environmental impact, time, convenience, health, and time all come readily to mind.)

Over the next week or two, we’ll do a series of posts on shortcuts we’ve found to saving money while avoiding time-sucks like scouring the interwebs for deals and then running all over creation to obtain said deals. At the same time, we’ll try to highlight some of the other factors we consider when deciding what constitutes a true “deal” (with of course a giant disclaimer attached that while we have the luxury of taking other factors into consideration, we do understand that many families do not, and therefore wholeheartedly endorse doing whatever the bleep you have to do to get by if that is the case).

And don’t forget, I WILL be coming out with my organic cotton vs. conventional cotton smackdown before the month is out. I just have to, you know, learn something about it first.