For me, it's my paycheck. It's the value I add to my family's bottom line.
I worked from the time I was 14 until I married my husband. I was raised to the the kind of person who works hard, and takes pride in a good job. That sense of exhaustion at the end of the day is a reward for a day lived honestly. Not working was a little bit of a brainfuck for me. On one hand, I was married to an IT exec, and I certainly didn't have to work. And I got pregnant a couple months after our wedding so with my diabetes I quickly became a full time patient with all the extra prenatal care a diabetic pregnancy calls for. Then I had a newborn...and after all that settled down, what? I stay home and watch Oprah and eat bonbons? Please. I couldn't. I couldn't NOT contribute something to our financial well being. It's just been engrained into my character since I was a little girl...I'm a Castillo. We work hard.
So then I got into coupon shopping. It's work. It takes planning and research and math. It challenges my brain enough, the couponing tetris, when you have to figure out what to buy with what and what else and what coupons to use on your transaction to get to your cat threshold but minimize your OOP.
I continue doing it because it's fun. I love sticking it to The Man, he's always trying to keep me down. I continue doing it because it affords me the opportunity to be more generous with donations than I would be able to if I were buying items to donate at retail, and I LOVE giving. Giving makes me all kinds of happy.
I get so much personal satisfaction from finding great deals and putting together the best scenarios. I get so much joy out of being able to donate and give to organizations who help people in bad situations. And I feel like I'm doing something to contribute to my own family's personal wealth when I can make each dollar my husband earns go further. I might not have a job that pays me a paycheck every two weeks, but I have a job that feeds my family as well as strangers in our community incredibly affordably. Each week when that Sunday paper gets FWAPPED! up on my driveway, I'm out there in a blink to snatch it up. Paperboy just dropped $100 on my driveway, that's my bread and butter baby!