The New Chic: Shopping with Coupons

In the good old days, ordinary people used to sneer about rich people sitting in their big houses clipping coupons. In those days, clipping coupons didn't mean what it does today. The reference was to coupon bonds, a kind of corporate or municipal bond that had little coupons that you cut off and took to the bank to receive your interest payment twice a year. Thus, people who clipped coupons were the idle rich, whose only labor involved clipping coupons so they could cash in on their inherited wealth.

Now, it seems, nearly everyone is clipping coupons, but the coupons in question are the ones from the newspapers and the internet that give people a discount when they buy certain products. In these days of rising prices, nearly any kind of discount seems to be a good deal. A couple of days ago, the New York Times published an article about a Connecticut coupon-clipping queen and how she fed her family economically using coupons. When the New York Times thinks its Whole Foods, green to the gills, audience needs a lesson in using coupons, you know the economy is in bad shape.

I think that practically everybody who shops must use coupons sometimes, and some people use them a great deal. There are tips and even online guides to getting the most out of coupons. The thing is, shopping with coupons works better for some people than for others. For one thing, if you shop at a discount supermarket, such as Aldi, you may get goods at a price lower than you can get them at other stores using coupons. Also, some stores double the face value of coupons, while others, such as Walmart, do not. But if the price of the item is cheaper at Walmart to start with, using the coupon elsewhere may be a false economy.

Then there is the question of what you can buy with coupons. Now that I am dieting and trying to eat healthier food, coupons for foods filled with refined sugar and preservatives are no good to me, and one thing that is never covered by coupons is fresh fruit and produce. Also, because I am shopping for only one person, coupons that require the purchase of more than two items are usually not any bargain for me. The exception is non-perishables, especially paper products, which I can store ahead. As winter comes, I seem to hoard toilet paper. No blizzard in Oswego, New York will ever find me with an extra roll or two. And finally, there are the big dollars-off coupons for things that you can never find when you go to the store. The store has every variation on the product in question except the one covered by the coupon, so you're out of luck.

I have to admit, I'd rather be clipping the old kind of coupons rather than grocery store coupons, but with prices as high as they are, I'll clip the "ordinary" coupons whenever I can.