5 Reasons Coupons Aren’t Worth The Time

You’ve no doubt seen one of the videos of a coupon maven managing to buy some crazy amount of groceries for astonishingly little cash out of pocket. I know it’s inspired me to buy more than one Sunday paper hoping to shave real money off my grocery bill. After a lot of trial and error, I’ve decided that serious couponing is not the best use of my time. Of course, I’ll still take the time to grab one from the blinkie machine if I’m buying the product anyway or use the Catalinas for money off my next order I get at checkout but beyond that, I’ll leave the coupons for other people to mess with.

1. Most coupons are for things I don’t use. This is probably the most common reason for declining to use coupons. I will not even pretend that all of my family’s food comes from local farms where they are lovingly hand tended by vestal virgins before being delivered to my house on a goat-drawn cart but we do try to eat as much homemade food as possible.

There aren’t a lot of coupons for fruit, vegetables and fresh meat and I am more easily tempted by $.55 off frozen gooey ooey goodness than I should be. So, almost every time I’ve gone in with a stack of coupons, even though the register tape said I saved $40 or so, I wound up spending more and getting a lot of food that we didn’t need.

Of course, it’s not the coupon’s fault I so easily give in to temptation but if I’m going to work on a character fault it’s going to be not cursing so much in the car, not my powerlessness in the face of slightly cheaper Sara Lee.

2. It’s a lot of work. Even casual coupon use requires time to clip and stow them, but saving big money using coupons requires checking the various deals sites, making this list and that list, swapping, organizing, keeping track…none of these things are areas of strength for me. Heck, I can’t even cut straight lines.

I could use my quiet time to do that or I could use it to take on jobs like writing for blogs like this one and enjoy what I’m doing more. Of course, my situation is not the same as anyone else’s – I happen to have small children at home so doing couponing or writing while they are awake is not practical, leaving me a limited amount of time when I could do either one. I have access to decently paid freelance work I can do from home and a steady stream of clients which might not be the case for everyone.

The point is, you have to look at the whole picture and not focus in on one tiny piece, in this case saving money on groceries.

3. It adds stress to an already time consuming errand. I do enjoy grocery shopping, I really do, but hunting down the different brands I have coupons for, making sure they are the right size and variety adds a lot of minutes to my already packed schedule. And I’m going to be brutally honest and say I hate it when I’m that person holding up the line while the cashier tries to figure out why a coupon isn’t being accepted.

Most of the time I have one or more of my children along and it just gets to be too much for me. Again, everyone’s situation is different. I might have a different opinion when my schedule changes and I can get to the store alone more often. Right now the savings aren’t worth the aggravation for me.

4. Most coupons are for already expensive brands. Even with double coupons, I don’t always save enough to make the product worthwhile. It’s always shocking to me how little food is actually in some of those big boxes of processed stuff. On the other hand, store brands aren’t always a bargain, either and you have to read labels really closely to make sure you’re not getting a nasty surprise, nutritionally speaking.

I’ve found that I’d rather buy the brands I prefer, sometimes name brand, sometimes store brand. That way I’m getting a product my family will eat, I know I find the ingredients satisfactory and I don’t have turn every trip into a fact finding mission. Saving money on food my family won’t eat and is a nutritional disaster is a waste.

Other families might not have such picky eaters or have different priorities.

5. Couponing can become an obsession. This is probably controversial, but I find the huge stockpiles of things bought just because they were extraordinarily cheap or nearly free to be the opposite of what I value in frugality. I think that it keeps one’s focus on constantly acquiring instead of working on learning to live a simpler life that is less focused on material goods.

I know that many of these power couponers give away much of what they get and I can only speak for myself, not them. My feeling is that, for me, the drive to get more and more for less and less is not the direction I want to take. My preference is to make sensible choices, eat low on the food chain and eliminate waste as much as possible to keep my family’s food bill reasonable.

It’s all about making the choices that are right for you and your lifestyle and values. Coupons can be a time-saving, engrossing hobby for some and a not worth it burden for others.

Tracy O’Connor is the mother of 5 boys and a ghostwriter who knows her way around a supermarket. Follow her on Twitter.

photo credit: ©istock/ConnieTBallash