America is all about saving money and finding deals these days. Every day a knock-off Groupon website pops up, including a new one started by Glenn Beck. American Pickers is a hit show where people dig through garbage in hopes of finding expensive antiques. And there is actually an entire website devoted to sleeping in airports to save money on vacations. While I'm a guy that loves a deal, I also love not wasting my mother f****** time (to paraphrase Al Pacino in Heat). Many money-saving devotees go to extremes, spending insane hours coupon clipping and living in discomfort to save peanuts on often impractical goods.
Case in point. A few years ago I was in Walgreens picking up some cold medicine. At the register in front of me was a silver-haired woman looking to score a deal on the store's 2 for 1 Ruffles potato chips promotion. The only problem: the store was out of Ruffles. So the woman demanded the cashier write out a rain check for 2 bags of Ruffles at the sale price. Never mind the fact that she could have walked 50 feet down to Safeway and bought a bag of chips if she were that desperate. No, this was more about getting the deal. It didn't matter if it took days or a week for Walgreens to restock Ruffles, this woman was going to get that deal.
Well, the memory of the cashier reaching under the counter, literally blowing dust off of the stack of rain checks, and then trying to figure out how to fill one out is forever burned in my brain. But this woman has nothing on the coupon-clipping, money-saving women of TLC's Extreme Couponing. Yes, they are all women on this show – save for the depressed husbands that get dragged on 5-hour shopping trips.
In case you are unfamiliar, Extreme Couponers go to any means possible – even potentially illegal ones – to save money at the grocery store. They clip coupons from their papers and their neighbor's papers, download coupons off websites, plan weeks in advance for shopping trips, and generally devote full-time job hours to saving massive amounts of money on groceries.
But is it worth it to spend 40 hours a week in order to stockpile 72 packages of Excedrin? I wanted to find out, so here is my running diary of Episode 2 of Extreme Couponing.
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00:54 - The narrator tells us we're about to witness some of the most "dramatic check outs you've ever seen." Well, I've never seen a single dramatic check out ever, so this show will be the first. Television has brought us a lot of dramatic things over the years: dramatic story arcs, dramatic characters, and dramatic cliffhangers. But television for the most part has devolved. Now the bar is so low that we're compelled to watch dramatic check outs.
1:25 - We're only a minute in and we've already had our first blasphemy. The narrator informs us that collecting coupons is a religious experience, followed by our first coupon-cutter stating about her stacks of coupons, "I would say this is about a hundred Holy Bibles." Her 11th Commandment is "Thou Shalt Not Pay Retail."
1:36 - Our first Extreme Couponer/blasphemer is named J'amie Kirlew, who bills herself as "The Diva for Coupons." She's also a big fan of the color purple, as she's wearing a purple blouse, sweater, nail polish and has a heavy lacquering of purple eye shadow. Her hair, make-up and features make her seem very bird like, she's got quite the beak on her. She claims to dedicate 100% of her time and her "talents" to couponing. It's true, I've seen her scissor work and it's phenomenal.
Side note: I'm not adding any further apostrophes to her name out of principle. From here on out she will be known as Jamie. Anyone that spells their name with an apostrophe and is not an All-Pro wide receiver or a Grammy winning singer is taking the diva thing too damn far.
2:35 - Apparently a shower filled with 450 rolls of toilet paper is only the beginning to Jamie's stockpiling. Her storage room has 60 boxes of cereal, 70 bottles of laundry detergent, 100 containers of cleaning wipes, and 200 hand soap dispensers. Did I accidentally click over to an episode of Hoarders?
3:10 - Jamie started hoarding/couponing when her husband lost his job. She was worried she'd never get to go out with her friends again for a glass of wine. Oh, the humanity! Jamie was determined to live the lifestyle her family had become accustomed to, so she started couponing – spending up to six hours a day clipping coupons and planning for one of 4 weekly shopping trips. She's makes spreadsheets, does online research, and meticulously plans her strategy. She even has an alphabetical list of every item in her local grocery store.
All of this makes me think... Jamie is obviously smart and extremely organized. She basically spends 40 hours a week at this "job" to scrimp and save on items she doesn't exactly need. You don't need 200 hand soap dispensers, usually 3 in a home would suit a family's needs. Why not put your energies into finding an "actual job," make some money, and buy what you want? Well, the short answer is because Jamie, like all people on this series, has a borderline obsessive personality manifested in clipping coupons. The whole process has taken on a life of its own.
4:27 - Time to get pretty! Jamie's most important step in shopping is to slather make-up all over herself because her "image is very important." I applaud this. She's also wearing leather, high-heel boots. Most of the people you see today in grocery stores are disheveled creeps that look like they've just rolled out of bed. Related, here is my assessment of grocery store shopping demographics based on time of day.
5:09 - The narrator tells us that Jamie's coupon plan has to be flawless. She's got a list of 1,300 items and only $100 to spend. Oh the stakes! To prepare, Jamie freshens her lip gloss in the car mirror. Today, she's dragging her poor husband along on the trip. Oh sorry, she "invited him." Right.
5:56 - Time to put mustard on that hot dog... literally! Jamie's buying 62 bottles of French's mustard for just $.39 each. Mustard doesn't spoil, so it can be stored forever. Here's the funny thing, her husband doesn't even like mustard. Why bother buying it!?
6:47 - Jamie's ready to check out, but first she has to reapply her eyeshadow. The show cuts to a commercial as she peers nervously at her balance ringing up to over $1,200. Jamie says she's never been this nervous at the register before. What a cliffhanger.
7:45 - One of the annoying things about this program is the false stakes the writers/producers create. The narrator keeps telling me that Jamie only has $100 to spend and over 2,500 coupons to use. "She's gone over her all time high of $1,000... and starts to feel the pressure." Well it's not like she's going to die if she miscalculated. She just has to put back her groceries and try again. The manager doesn't walk over and cut off a finger for every dollar she goes over her budget. The remaining money won't come out of her children's college fund. Get a grip.
10:02 - Jamie's grand total for four carts of utter crap is worth $1,900. She gets that total down to $103 with coupons. It's just a bit over her budget, but she's okay with that. The narrator calls the check-out "grueling." Yeah, for the poor cashier and all the saps stuck behind Jamie in line. And I guess for Jamie's family, who are going to have to eat 90 packages of cold cuts washed down with 62 bottles of mustard. I hope you like sandwiches kids, that's all you'll be eating for years.
Jamie does a victory jig. Then in the car, she reapplies lip gloss. Always a diva.
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Check back again for Part 2 where we'll meet Tiffany Ivanovsky, an extreme couponer from Texas with seven kids. She has a rack in her bedroom for overflow items. Of course she does.
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| Really not worth the time. |
Well, the memory of the cashier reaching under the counter, literally blowing dust off of the stack of rain checks, and then trying to figure out how to fill one out is forever burned in my brain. But this woman has nothing on the coupon-clipping, money-saving women of TLC's Extreme Couponing. Yes, they are all women on this show – save for the depressed husbands that get dragged on 5-hour shopping trips.
In case you are unfamiliar, Extreme Couponers go to any means possible – even potentially illegal ones – to save money at the grocery store. They clip coupons from their papers and their neighbor's papers, download coupons off websites, plan weeks in advance for shopping trips, and generally devote full-time job hours to saving massive amounts of money on groceries.
But is it worth it to spend 40 hours a week in order to stockpile 72 packages of Excedrin? I wanted to find out, so here is my running diary of Episode 2 of Extreme Couponing.
-----
00:54 - The narrator tells us we're about to witness some of the most "dramatic check outs you've ever seen." Well, I've never seen a single dramatic check out ever, so this show will be the first. Television has brought us a lot of dramatic things over the years: dramatic story arcs, dramatic characters, and dramatic cliffhangers. But television for the most part has devolved. Now the bar is so low that we're compelled to watch dramatic check outs.
1:25 - We're only a minute in and we've already had our first blasphemy. The narrator informs us that collecting coupons is a religious experience, followed by our first coupon-cutter stating about her stacks of coupons, "I would say this is about a hundred Holy Bibles." Her 11th Commandment is "Thou Shalt Not Pay Retail."
 |
| One of Jesus' Disciples. Of course I mean Jesus Hernandez of Ft. Lauderdale, an extreme couponer. |
1:36 - Our first Extreme Couponer/blasphemer is named J'amie Kirlew, who bills herself as "The Diva for Coupons." She's also a big fan of the color purple, as she's wearing a purple blouse, sweater, nail polish and has a heavy lacquering of purple eye shadow. Her hair, make-up and features make her seem very bird like, she's got quite the beak on her. She claims to dedicate 100% of her time and her "talents" to couponing. It's true, I've seen her scissor work and it's phenomenal.
Side note: I'm not adding any further apostrophes to her name out of principle. From here on out she will be known as Jamie. Anyone that spells their name with an apostrophe and is not an All-Pro wide receiver or a Grammy winning singer is taking the diva thing too damn far.
2:35 - Apparently a shower filled with 450 rolls of toilet paper is only the beginning to Jamie's stockpiling. Her storage room has 60 boxes of cereal, 70 bottles of laundry detergent, 100 containers of cleaning wipes, and 200 hand soap dispensers. Did I accidentally click over to an episode of Hoarders?
 |
| J'amie's St'ockpile |
3:10 - Jamie started hoarding/couponing when her husband lost his job. She was worried she'd never get to go out with her friends again for a glass of wine. Oh, the humanity! Jamie was determined to live the lifestyle her family had become accustomed to, so she started couponing – spending up to six hours a day clipping coupons and planning for one of 4 weekly shopping trips. She's makes spreadsheets, does online research, and meticulously plans her strategy. She even has an alphabetical list of every item in her local grocery store.
All of this makes me think... Jamie is obviously smart and extremely organized. She basically spends 40 hours a week at this "job" to scrimp and save on items she doesn't exactly need. You don't need 200 hand soap dispensers, usually 3 in a home would suit a family's needs. Why not put your energies into finding an "actual job," make some money, and buy what you want? Well, the short answer is because Jamie, like all people on this series, has a borderline obsessive personality manifested in clipping coupons. The whole process has taken on a life of its own.
4:27 - Time to get pretty! Jamie's most important step in shopping is to slather make-up all over herself because her "image is very important." I applaud this. She's also wearing leather, high-heel boots. Most of the people you see today in grocery stores are disheveled creeps that look like they've just rolled out of bed. Related, here is my assessment of grocery store shopping demographics based on time of day.
- 8:30 am - Women, post-dropping their kids off to school. They usually are wearing pajamas and slippers and are buying Frito's snack packs for lunches. Lost the will to care how they look, will go back to bed once finished.
- 10:00 am - Prime senior citizen shopping time. They've already been up for five hours. These creatures wander the aisles slowly, buying boxes of pasta and feeling every single grapefruit in the produce section. Senior citizens love grapefruit.
- 12:30 pm - The lunch crowd, hovering around the deli counter. Primarily men – ranging from construction workers on break to businessmen in suits (sans jackets). You'll see lots of fountain sodas and guys eating their chips while waiting for their sandwich to be made.
- 3:30 pm - The overachieving moms who have just dropped off their kids at their afternoon activity. These moms are buying Kashi bars and fresh vegetables for dinner tonight. Very impatient with a set schedule. They will berate the cashier if necessary.
- 6:00 pm - Single men buying dinner items. No more than 4 or 5 items maximum, including a bottle of whiskey or wine, one potato, and a bag of nuts.
- 10:00 pm - Stoners buying junk food, fat people looking for a midnight snack (often in frozen food section), and single women crying in front of the ice cream display.
5:09 - The narrator tells us that Jamie's coupon plan has to be flawless. She's got a list of 1,300 items and only $100 to spend. Oh the stakes! To prepare, Jamie freshens her lip gloss in the car mirror. Today, she's dragging her poor husband along on the trip. Oh sorry, she "invited him." Right.
5:56 - Time to put mustard on that hot dog... literally! Jamie's buying 62 bottles of French's mustard for just $.39 each. Mustard doesn't spoil, so it can be stored forever. Here's the funny thing, her husband doesn't even like mustard. Why bother buying it!?
6:47 - Jamie's ready to check out, but first she has to reapply her eyeshadow. The show cuts to a commercial as she peers nervously at her balance ringing up to over $1,200. Jamie says she's never been this nervous at the register before. What a cliffhanger.
 |
| Cheese slices really start to add up. |
7:45 - One of the annoying things about this program is the false stakes the writers/producers create. The narrator keeps telling me that Jamie only has $100 to spend and over 2,500 coupons to use. "She's gone over her all time high of $1,000... and starts to feel the pressure." Well it's not like she's going to die if she miscalculated. She just has to put back her groceries and try again. The manager doesn't walk over and cut off a finger for every dollar she goes over her budget. The remaining money won't come out of her children's college fund. Get a grip.
10:02 - Jamie's grand total for four carts of utter crap is worth $1,900. She gets that total down to $103 with coupons. It's just a bit over her budget, but she's okay with that. The narrator calls the check-out "grueling." Yeah, for the poor cashier and all the saps stuck behind Jamie in line. And I guess for Jamie's family, who are going to have to eat 90 packages of cold cuts washed down with 62 bottles of mustard. I hope you like sandwiches kids, that's all you'll be eating for years.
Jamie does a victory jig. Then in the car, she reapplies lip gloss. Always a diva.
 |
| Flap those wings. |
-----
Check back again for Part 2 where we'll meet Tiffany Ivanovsky, an extreme couponer from Texas with seven kids. She has a rack in her bedroom for overflow items. Of course she does.
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