Extreme Couponing: The Return

This program came on last night (on TLC, check local listings) and I caught a good bit of it.  And here, I must apologize to the entire Extreme Couponing community.  In last night's episodes, the women were not freakishly ginormous.  I caught two episodes a few weeks ago and made a rash generalization. I humbly apologize.  Interestingly enough, this is what broke that post-fight-awkwardness between Shawn and myself.  I was griping because I just didn't get it.  I wasn't understanding how these women did it.

This prompted Shawn to look on eBay for coupons.  "People are selling coupons on eBay!" he shouted from down the hall.  "That's crazy!"

"I know," I said.  "People sell and buy anything on eBay."  Well, anything except the crap I try to sell.

This lead to a lot of back and forth between, joking and what not.  Extreme Couponing broke the silence.  Awesome.  I explained to Shawn that it irritated me when they didn't show these women buying beef, chicken, milk or butter.  "You can't live off fried noodles and 75 boxes of cat food!" I ranted.  "Maybe that's why some of those woman are so large.  You ever stick you hand in the cat food container?  That stuff is GREASY!"

To be fair, the woman that bought 75 boxes of cat food admitted it was more food than her cat could ever eat so she was donating most of it to the Human Society since they were always needing pet food.  However, it bothered me that in the shows I had seen, they do not show what these women spent on coupons, let alone the stuff they needed but had no coupons for.  The massive shopping trips, I figure, are for the TV show.  They come back without the cameras to get ground beef and bars of soap.  This is a good time to mention that often the TV show DOES NOT speak about how much the women spend on the coupons themselves.  At work, Patti told me one woman spent two hundred dollars per year on news papers alone.  That's not including magazines (such as All You, chock full of coupons) and eBay purchases. 

Shawn was checking out the lots on eBay and he pointed out some good information.  People were selling awesome coupons, in stacks of 20.  So if the coupons is worth $1.50 off a bottle of dish soap, you're pretty much set for life on soap even if in the end you pay $4 for the coupons. 

We looked at a lot coupons and Shawn asked a lot of questions about what things cost.  By this point in my life, I've pretty much memorized how much items cost.  "You could get the coupons for free rags (Carefree panty liners, to be precise), spend four dollars on it and you've got 400 rags until menopause!" he exclaimed with excitement.

This is where math get involved because I pointed out that I buy the Equate brand, 105 count for a little more a dollar so is it really worth the hassle? 

On some things, it might be.  If I can get a great deal on razor blades, I might buy 20.  The woman with the cat food did not have Double Coupon Day anywhere in her area and still managed to coupon tot he extreme.

So, I'm gonna start slow and easy.  I will watch my stuff.  When I get low on dish soap, I will search eBay specifically for dish soap.  I'm not going to enlist my entire neighborhood to save their coupons for me, go dumpster diving, or begin stealing Sunday papers off porches.  If I need something, I'll look for that type of coupon and go from there.  I do that anyway, but I guess I'll be looking for stacks of a certain coupon instead of settling for one.

We shall see.