Couponing

Did anyone catch the new episodes of the series 'Extreme Couponing' tonight?? The first time they did an hour long special on the topic, I was very intrigued and hooked, so I was pretty excited to hear that it was made into a series.

They show families that save $50,000 over the years, but honestly they just buy a bunch of junk in mass amounts and they will probably never use half of it before it expires. Do you need enough chips to feed 800 people when you just live with your husband? Or enough salad dressing to last you years? These things expire, and even though they were practically free, I'm not sure how it is helpful to have. But, I get that this is the point of the show - to display how crazy people have gotten about it and how much you could really save if you tried. Some people even donate their goods to people in need, which I think is a great act of kindness.

While the people in this show are definitely on the extreme end, I think that there are a lot of good tips to be taken from watching. I will say that in the past couple of years I have started to plan my meals around the publix ad. On Thursday morning I hope on their website and plan out the next weeks meals and I compare it to their coupons section on the site. After I watched the first special on couponing, I googled printable coupon sites and found a couple that I now visit bi-weekly and print out coupons that I know I will use. I store them in my wallet and match them up to the store ad.

After this go around, I heard the work 'coupon matchup' and googled that, only to find more helpful sites that do a lot of the work for you. Honestly, I will never be as crazy as these people or spend 6 hours prepping for an insane shopping trip, but I also love a good deal and think that with just 20 minutes you can gather enough coupons and match them up easily to your ads which results in a noticeable savings.

Do you coupon or think it's a complete waste of time? Have you watched the show? What are your thoughts? Tomorrow I will make my food list for next week! I get sort of excited for Thursdays now :) Do you have any great coupon sites that you visit? Saving money can definitely get addicting, I can see that!