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This is starting to get ridiculous.

My son is really into couponing and now my wife is getting on the band wagon. This week there are some really good deals I guess. Well after church on Sunday, my wife said she had to get a newspaper. She went into the store and came out with 10 papers. Yes 10 papers, I said, "You're getting a little nutty aren't you." She said, "Oh no, this is a great week." I had to help her get all the coupons organized.

To them it is like a military operation, They have scouts in the stores and even have secret intell to find out about the upcoming sales and coupons for the upcoming week. It seems that my son is coordinating all this via his website. Women (and some men) all report on his site about what they have found and they get together to coordinate what to do. He now calls himself Mr. Coupon. They discuss the overall weekly stategy and instore tactics to get the most out of the week.

As an uninterested bystander, I only take notice when something unusual or big happens. Last year they had the famous Jello deal. This was where Jello paid you $.50 to buy a Jello with some other products. This time it is something a lot bigger. Last night, my wife went shopping and came home with $135 in gift cards. She did 3 transactions at 3 different stores. For each transaction, she used one coupon and paid $01. She purchased a Bayer Contour Meter and a $15 Kroger Gift card and paid $.01. She still has several of those coupons left, and then is going to start on the other good deals for this week.

Like I said this is getting ridiculous.

Dangerous business:

http://ww2.sandraseeley.com/2006/07/clipped-coupons.htm

Keith

I had been a Sunday coupon clipper for a long time. Bought only the Sunday paper and HAD to at least save twice the price of it in coupons. Most times saved a lot more but that was my minimum. It was the Sunday project to find out what I’d be eating for the next week and plan around that. I stopped over a year ago due to the local papers biased reporting practices. I do read of other local papers biased reporting of events and their subsequent decline of readership. It saddens me any business that is based on ‘reporting news’ to the public would not present the facts and let their reading public decide. So, I no longer coupon but do shop by sales and specials at my stores. And yeah, I kind of miss it… the clipping not the paper.

Now I keep up to date watching TV, BBC is the current choice, internet and sites like this. I can get many different views of the same event and come to my own conclusion. I enjoy the thread follow-ups which also present differing views of the same event. Sorry, this went off from clipping coupons didn’t it! I apologize.

Our weekly diet is basically decided by what's on sale. Luckily we're not fussy eaters, it only gets difficult to stick to this regimen when there are no fruits or vegetables on sale.

Winter is rough for vegetable consumption for me. Having a large garden in the summer I really cringe when I have to pay $3.00 for a green pepper. On the other hand I get more of a variety when buying them. When the garden is in season it is pretty predictable what is for dinner; green beans and something or squash and something, corn and something… When something is ripe and ready it’s what’s for dinner!

Haha, reminds me of watching my Dad eating Tomato sandwiches for breakfast lunch dinner and a snack during the summer.

I have found that, unless the item is on sale AND you have a coupon for it, it is almost always cheaper to buy generic or store brand products. I was into finding coupons for a while, but found out that I started buying things just because I had a coupon, and I wasn't really saving any money...

I have turned into a coupon freak too. There are some websites where you can get printable coupons. There are also sites which do the organizing for you and tell you where the deals are.

I do best by cherry-picking the weekly specials, and using coupons in conjunction with those when possible. The big-3 supermarket chains in my area occasionally have 2x and 3x coupon specials too. Like anything else, you have to be flexible, but disciplined. I don't buy stuff I don't need, but I'm not brand loyal, and sometimes I'll use the coupon just to "splurge" on something else I wouldn't otherwise buy.

Winter is rough for vegetable consumption for me. Having a large garden in the summer I really cringe when I have to pay $3.00 for a green pepper. On the other hand I get more of a variety when buying them. When the garden is in season it is pretty predictable what is for dinner; green beans and something or squash and something, corn and something… When something is ripe and ready it’s what’s for dinner!

You need to install cold frames in your garden, then you could keep it producing all year around. I have cold frames of my own design on all of my non-perennial garden beds and they keep cranking out lettuce, spinach, cabbage, brussels sprouts, broccoli, and other cool tolerant vegetables all winter long. There are even some self-sown cherry tomato seedlings that popped up in the frame in Nov that have been slowly growing all winter long, dispite OAT temps down to 12F. Since they are nicely established, I expect them to take off as temps warm up in the spring and produce an earlier tomato crop than transplants set out after last frost. I can go out on a sunny winter's day, slip inside the frame, and seed, weed, and harvest vegetables at the comfortable 80F temps maintained inside the frame when the sun is shining. I've found that the local treefrogs also enjoy it and move into the frames for the winter where they help themselves to any caterpillars. slugs, and other pests that they find on the vegetable plants.

Even if you don't extend the growing season via cold frames, you can always grow storage vegetables such as winter squash and wax melons in the summer and hold storage root crops like carrots, beet, leeks, turnips, parsnips, and the like in mulched beds for winter harvest. Seminole pumpkin/squash is a real winner. I grew 2 plants of this cultivar last summer and harvested over 80 fruit from each of the two plants and still have piles of this squash stored in the basement dispite heavy consumption of them ever since I harvested them in the fall. The only produce I buy in the stores are apples and this will end as my apple treees come into production over the next few years.

Hmm I mainly do my shopping at HEB, and they mail you coupons every week. They also have a bunch of extra coupons in the store. I haven't bought a sunday paper yet, but I doubt it'd have any more coupons than what gets mailed to me already.

I basically do buy nothing but generic, but damn these groceries are still expensive. Though at buying 30 items a week, if everything was 20 to 50 cents more expensive, that's an extra $6 to $15 I don't have to spend, $24 to $60 a month.

Hey Basjoos. Yes something like that is in the future, minus the basement storage. Moved two years ago (this will be third season) so still trying to get actual soil not rocks and clay to grow in. Another year or so of amending and it’ll be there. A nice compost pile area doesn’t grow overnight ya know and it takes a while to get enough garden/yard debris for improving tilth!

Speaking of mailed coupons, I have noticed a dramatic decrease in the amount of junk mail/weekly circular coupon things in my mailbox. Started back in December and now, there can be a couple days a week that I do not get any mail instead of several of them a day. Only complaint about it is that I have less paper for the compost.