Coupons

The other day the Roanoke Times had a story about a woman who shops with coupons and spends only $10 for $150 worth of groceries.

Every now and then you hear of women like this (it almost always is a woman) who can somehow turn shopping into a cash-back affair.

This is not me. I do well to save $5 off a grocery trip with coupons.

Normally I don't even bother with coupons but since food prices have jumped and I am stretching dollars it seems prudent.

I seldom have coupons for most of the stuff I buy. Or use. And I don't have the space to store 10 for $10. Or 4 jars of Ragu spaghetti when we only eat spaghetti about once every two months.

Not only that, I always end up with the store clerk who is the coupon policeman. "You already gave me a coupon for that," she says, handing me back my second one.

"But I have two of the items!" I might protest. She'll then look down her nose at me until I put out my hand for the coupon.

I meekly put the coupon back in the little envelope I use for that purpose.

Couponing (is that a word?) takes a lot of time, too. First you have to clip them out. I generally end up standing aside in some poorly-used aisle while I try to sift through all the coupons in my envelope to see if I bought anything that looks remotely like the picture on the rebate.

To do it properly, I have to make a list, then go through the coupons and see if anything on there matches what I need, and then note on the list that I have a coupon and what number and size I should buy.

This is very time consuming.

These days I have more time than sense so I am couponing.

But I will never manage to buy $150 worth of groceries for $10.

Here are some websites that the newspaper article listed:

couponmom.com
coupons.smartsource.com
couponwinner.com
promotionalcodes.com

I haven't looked at any of them. But I plan to, one day.