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Why do you coupon?

DH moved back here in 2007, it took him a while to find a job. I came here in Sept 2008 after waiting 18 months for my visa. The first trip to the grocery store, I spent nearly $300 getting groceries and supplies! I realized that with me not working and relying on DH's salary, we would be on tight budget!
We don't have coupons or much marketing promotions like this sort in Malaysia. My first introduction to coupons was during my first trip to Walgreen! DH got a bottle of Fructis shampoo on sale for $2.99(he thought that's a good price!), the old lady cashier who checked us out said I have a $1 coupon for you, so we paid $1.99 + tax for a bottle of shampoo, what a good deal! Only if I knew!!
I thought it's not a bad idea to save some money by cutting the coupons that came free with newspapers. So I got the newspaper inserts from in laws and started cutting out coupons for items that we do buy and threw away what we don't use.
A month later, I read an article in our local daily featured a story about 2 coupon shoppers who got EVERYTHING for free (Kay a.k.a. Avidreader is on CW). I followed the links provided at the end of the article to HCW and AFC. Later I Googled for Jewel Osco deals and found CW. The rest is history...
I have worked my entire adult life and take pride in being the hard working "Hakka". Not able to find a job here in US and staying home is not my choice. All the planning and hard work I do before shopping keep me busy and sane. :)
I like the fact that coupon shopping help us to be more generous than we could afford without all this crazy deals. We supply groceries and toiletries to DH's parents who helped us out a lot when DH first moved back here looking for a job.
 
Suffice it to say I have been couponing for six decades.

The profit is nice, but the true joy is in the donating stuff that is really needed to folks that need it.
 
parents were married for 12 painful yrs, my dad wouldn't know what a real job was if it hit him in the face and boy do i wish it would have. he was never happy always thought he was too good for any job. he would buy and sell and not the buying and selling that we couponers do but he was too much for instant gratification, afraid of hard work, wanted things to come easy to him. my mom always had a job and her parents helped out financially. he was NOT the provider, my mom and her parents were. unfortunetely they "had" to get married at the time cuz momma was 3 mos prego w/me, so i will prolly live w/that guilt forever (i know it's not really mine but it feels like it, so many things that would have never happened cuz of it but everything happens for a reason, right? you don't always know at the time but eventually you learn). so he was a supreme **** and eventually his constant trying to buy and sell to pay things off (which i understand but 10 yrs of it, it's called a JOB dad get one). in the end BANKRUPTCY, totally screwed my mom!! they divorced 2 yrs later now w/4 kids total. her parents helped out A LOT!!!!! granny was big on being frugal and believe you me living like this all my life i was all about learning ways to save and provide cuz my fam needed me. she did deals and used things up and used coups. somehow i decided that i was gonna be that person but better. after my dad left and my mom ended up on food stamps she would go thru them in the first 2 weeks of the mo and then be broke, she is NOT A MONEY CONSERVER so i started taking a packet and hiding it, she never even knew. i would put a few back every so often to try to stretch them, it must have burned a hole in her pocket. yrs later i get prego at 16 and gotta pay my own way according to me, my mom and her unconditional love could care less, she would give me the food off her plate and the shirt off her back. BUT I NEED TO DO IT FOR ME. pick n save use to have the in store coups and if you spent $20 you get the free item, well i learned that the $20 was before sales and coups so away i would shop. w/e ever i could that's what i would use and that's what we would all eat. i had to contribute more than just an extra person to take care of. it only got worse when i started working at wags and they had their rebate club book, i would send one to me and one to my granny's and that's where personal prods came from. name brand plugs for FREE, me my mom and soon my sister would be needing those monthly!!! any other rebate i could find for food or ANYTHING worthwhile. i'm 30 now and my mom still wouldn't know a coup if it hit her in the face but i do and i use them to my advantage and i still give her a bunch of stuff!! started on fst and then moved on to cw about 8mo ago from a recommendation from satileigh (thank you again) which only made my addiction worse, THANK GOODNESS!!! my job pays the bills, i'm not rich but i can afford what my son and i need and sometimes want and even he doesn't understand coups but he is all about making sure we can afford something and saving his own money so he can. i also get a boatload of coup inserts from my granny, mom, and people at work and i give back to those and they appreciate it but can never believe that it didn't cost me much more than tax if even that. thnx for posting the idea of this, it was great to listen to others stories and in a way it was nice to get this one out. sorry for the length, you can blame one of my many past counselors for encouraging me to get my feelings out!!! :) tyia for reading.
 
Just before I started couponing, I had a medical catastrophy. I had a hysterectomy because I had a tumor the size of a soccer ball removed. I had insurance, yet I received the bill. I opened the bill to read "you owe $19.875.xx" I about **** right there in my drive way. :surrender:

I looked online and found (of all places!) Hot coupon world. I learned a couple things there, as in buy a newspaper, match the sales. Whooptydoo! :47: My "coach" on that site lived in ?Maryland? so her giving me tips on how to coupon locally was about as helpful as a case of roids, really. Granted I could go to Walmart, but really, I needed something local.


I looked for a couponing site with a little more local deals. I found CW. I haven't gone away.
 
I've always been incredibly cheap: my son was practically raised on Maxwell Street and my daughter couldn't understand why it was OK to take items from garage sales (sellers would just say take it) but not grocery stores. This resulted in mandatory pat downs before leaving stores. I took Jill's class in February 2009 and started small stockpiling. I can honestly say that 1) most people think I'm nuts and 2) every month gets better. When I've still got lots of OS body wash and vegetable oil from the last deals, I don't have to worry about shelves being empty. Extreme couponing is an addiction, just like gambling, except for one thing: YOU ALWAYS WIN! These slots (cat machines) pay out 100% of the time. And those are my kind of odds.
 
I started cpning about 5 years ago. Before that I would price match my ads at Walmart so it was one stop shop with the best price. Once we moved to Indiana and got started at Wags i was addicted! I did 8 cards for a while at wags and 6 for a very short time at CVS I don't like doing CVS so that is down to 1 card and I flip it once a month. I always did well with cpns at Meijer thanks to HCW. I got a couple of friends from church started on couponing and one of them came across CW and my life has not been the same since! I enjoy shopping for next to nothing and having plenty to share with atleast 4 other families plus donating to the womens shelter and food drives. My husband really has no clue to what I save the family. He makes it and I pay the bills as long as he has money to blow he could careless. I love being able to teach my kids the value of a dollar. And I hope that I have helped people in the community by giving them the tools to do the same. I can't do the deals for everyone but can tell them how to start and then it is up to them to do the work. The hardest thing for others to do is to stock up and get out of the mentality I don't need it now.

Thanks for the thread!
 
The hardest thing for others to do is to stock up and get out of the mentality I don't need it now.

Exactly why most people think I'm nuts. When the Purina free dog food coupon ran in February, I picked up 75 of the Friday Sun Times, since it was way cheaper than the Sunday Trib was going to be. Extra paper went to puppy place and I started clipping. People would be amazed and say why are you buying so much? Well, I have four dogs, two of them beagles who consider a year's supply of dog food merely starvation rations, and this dry food was packed in thick plastic with 2012 dates. If you are going to use the item, you're only paying tax plus the newspaper cost, then Why Wouldn't You Do It?
 
I started couponing when I was 21 yo. I had just graduated college and my mom, brother and MIL all were laid off all w/in 6 mo of each. My then boyfriend/now DH was an over the road truck drive and I was the only one bringing in a real income and then had two households to support. I started with 5 newspapers and couponed as best as I could.

Then my BFF started having babies so we had to figure out how to coupon for them so we went to 10 newspapers each week.

11 years later, I'm only supporting my household financially but I help with where ever I can for a total of five households: mine, my mom, MIL, BFF and DH BFF. These households get first dibs on everything that comes into the house.

Next are the charities I supports: april is glass slipper with make-up; christoper house in the city get's all of our extra foods; we do trial size donations to the military and then the rest is usually up for sale via a spreadsheet at work called the "inventory" or at yard sales.

I get (60) sunday tribs and buy/sell/trade as much as I can to make sure as few coupons go to waste. I love to coupon and wish I could dedicate more time to stockpiling and making sure that people have all the coupons they need.

This will sound cheesy but I know I'm not going to be a millionar but my philosophy is, "saving a million dollars one coupon at a time." And helping others to the same thing is so very important to me.
 
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