Coupon craze

I have never been one for coupons. I read accounts of ladies who clip coupons vigilantly, matching coupons with sales prices each week and saving hundreds of dollars, and my response is one of admiration and amusement. ('It only takes me 30-45 minutes a week to read the fliers and clip the coupons, and I can do it while I watch TV!' Yes, but I don't watch TV. So there you have it.) That is way too calculating and mathematical for my taste.

Then I started noticing that our Kroger doubles coupons up to $0.50. Interesting. We do get the paper, which is just full of coupons on Sunday mornings, despite our not having paid any subscription dues for the four years we've lived here. Convenient. I started spotting items on sale for a dollar, and thinking to myself that if only I had a $0.50 coupon for it, it'd be free!

So, here and there, I started clipping a coupon or two, only if it looked interesting and only if it was something that looked as if it might go on sale at some point. I was determined not to let coupons trick me into buying something I did not need, or into paying more for a name brand item than the store brand item would have been. I kept the small handful of coupons in my wallet, checked every so often to weed out the expired ones, and bought a few items here and there when it was a good bargain. (Hello, Chex mix!) But that was all extremely superficial, unstudied, haphazard, and didn't really affect our grocery budget.

But all that changed recently, when I discovered a treasure trove. A veritable treasure. 'Lady Catherine,' she said, 'you have given me a treasure.'

I am now an avid coupon fiend, the kind who hits up friends on Sunday mornings to ask if they are done with their Sunday paper and may I please have the coupons, the kind who walks over to the neighbors' porch under the ostensible excuse of delivering a plate of cookies, having thoughtfully picked up the paper on the way up the driveway, and casually asking if you'd mind sparing the coupon section, the kind who asks her eye-rolling husband to ask all the other guys in the carpool if they wouldn't mind sharing their coupons, because they really weren't going to use them anyway, were they?

Two weeks of dabbling, and I've gotten:

Stocks and stores of medical supplies, the receipts for which will help drain our FSA
Enough toothpaste to last the year out
Diapers and more diapers
One half gallon of Blue Bell ice cream!!! (And at $5.99, you have to know that was a splurge)
Any amount of Useful Things such as disposable pans, dark chocolates, and the like

No, I am not in over my head. I started this all with a $25 gift card, so I know I haven't wasted any real money. This is so fun. And I thought I was good at bargains before now! Ha, what did I know then?