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I know I don't use coupons much anymore for the same reasons noted in the story. Also home printed online coupons are no longer accepted at our local stores due to easy fraud.
We use a few of them...mostly ones for soups, yogurt, canned veggies, etc. Seems like most coupons I see are for makeup or types of items I would have no use for, so don't seem to use as many anymore. On a really good day, I can save about $10 by using coupons. It almost isn't worth it, is it?
Usually the store brand ends up being less expensive than the brands that have the coupons.
I generally check the ads to see where milk or meat is on sale and don't run around from store to store wasting $5 in gas to save $0.20. Also buying bulk can save more than coupons for small amounts can.
Usually the store brand ends up being less expensive than the brands that have the coupons.
I generally check the ads to see where milk or meat is on sale and don't run around from store to store wasting $5 in gas to save $0.20. Also buying bulk can save more than coupons for small amounts can.
Noticed the same thing that store brands are cheaper then using the coupons and I rarely ever use a coupon now a days. We watch the adds and hit Krogers and cherry pick them for their 10 for 10 sale and we see who has the cheapest milk, etc, etc. We do all the shopping all at once and never make a special trip since we live in the country. The bulk store is 24 miles away and we stock up 3 times a year.
I've been a heavy couponer for almost 40 years and it became second nature to do so.
The least saved still was in the 30% range, often up to 50%.
Over the last couple of years, although the habit remains,it's dwindling to the point of not worth even the now little effort put into it for all the reasons in the article but even more because there are no stores that double them anymore (not in my shopping areas, anyway)
I think it's safe to say that the return is more in the $2 to $5 dollar range now, at most.
Of course some of this is also due to comparing shopping for a family to there only being 2 of us now.
I used to use coupons a lot until I realized I was throwing most of them away and pretty much quit. Also, the variety seems to have changed or you have to buy more than 1 of an item and they don't seem to be offered on many of the items we buy regularly. Sure you can get P&G coupons for Tide, Charmin and Bounty but a 25¢ coupon that gets doubled (our grocery stores all double coupons up to a certain value) isn't saving me enough to make it worthwhile. There was 1 insert in the Sunday paper last week. I saw one coupon that I might use.
I used to use coupons a lot until I realized I was throwing most of them away and pretty much quit. Also, the variety seems to have changed or you have to buy more than 1 of an item and they don't seem to be offered on many of the items we buy regularly. Sure you can get P&G coupons for Tide, Charmin and Bounty but a 25¢ coupon that gets doubled (our grocery stores all double coupons up to a certain value) isn't saving me enough to make it worthwhile. There was 1 insert in the Sunday paper last week. I saw one coupon that I might use.
those p&g coupons are a joke and the price of tide is a joke.
i do well with coupons but i try to be flexible with what ill eat and you still need to combine them with sales to make them cheaper than store brands/aldi. there are a lot of coupons that get thrown out, but they are still a part of a strategy that keeps my grocery costs very low.
Usually the store brand ends up being less expensive than the brands that have the coupons.
^^This^^
I've tried to get into the coupon thing but could never, ever achieve the results that so many brag of.
I don't know if maybe it's a demographics thing, but I NEVER found the great coupon deals some said they got - maybe some parts of the country get better coupons than others. The coupons that used to come once a week in my local paper were for name brands, that even with the coupon, still cost me more than the store brands and for convenience foods and snack/junk food that I don't buy anyway. My local paper no longer even carries the coupons at all.
Occasionally I will come across a coupon for something that will be for a dessert or something that I wouldn't normally buy but with the coupon gives enough of a discount that I can justify buying it as a rare treat.
I never see coupons (other than "in-store" coupons) for fresh produce.
I don't buy dairy (I milk a goat, make some cheese, yogurt, and cottage cheese) or eggs (I have chickens and ducks), so coupons for those items don't help me.
I am lucky to have Winco to shop at. Their prices are awesome without coupons (especially their bulk food section), and if I come across a coupon occasionally for something I would buy anyway, that's great; I just don't count on it and it probably only happens one or twice every couple of months (I currently have a $1.00 coupon for Diet Coke that I keep forgetting to take to the store with me).
I buy all my meat, except ground beef, from the "reduced for quick sale" bin at my local Safeway and Thriftway (my freezers are full of marked down meat). I get my extra lean ground beef at a local meat shop; if I buy five pounds at a time, I get 30 cents a pound off the per pound price.
I spend around $200.00 a month for groceries for two of us - using only an occasional coupon. And that includes toilet paper, shampoo, deodorant, dish soap and dishwasher detergent, and laundry detergent. That does not include pet food and wine.
The distribution of coupons has also shrunk. When we first moved to this area, there were two mailers of coupons, a free penny-saver paper with a coupon insert, and we subscribed to the local paper, which had coupons. Now, there is a coupon flyer maybe once a month, the penny-saver dropped the coupon addition, and we no longer subscribe to the newspaper.
The first paragraph of the article:
Did American consumers suddenly get rich, or just get sick of using coupons? Not likely. Did the number of coupons issued shrink last year? No again. Then why did the number of redeemed coupons decrease dramatically?
Perhaps the author of the article doesn't bother to check his or her mailbox???
Successful couponers have never just used a fifty cents off name brand at full price. OF course the store brand is still cheaper than that. The strategy is to shop at a store that doubles coupons for items that you buy anyway, and only when it is already on sale. This takes time and energy to plan. And coupons for produce often have to be downloaded and printed from the manufacturer's websites, and if your store doesn't take printed coupons...
So since there are fewer areas that have multiple stores within a shopper's convenient radius that all double coupons... I'm not surprised that the usage is declining. Still worth it for budgeting SAHMs in major metro areas, though.
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