Dead in the water

So I read up on coupon strategy (as shared in my previous post), and despite my remaining skepticism, was committed and excited to clip the applicable deals from the Sunday paper. We visited my parents this weekend and, lo and behold, not only did they have the local paper (my views on which I will spare you right now) but the NY Times and the Boston Globe. I thought it was going to be veritable jackpot of money saving bliss. Instead, not only was it basically the same book of coupons in each paper, the only really good coupon I found was for Dunkin' Donuts. And there was only one copy of that one. My dad (also a big Dunkin' Donuts fan) started circling like a vulture when I pulled that one out. Since he is a pretty generous guy to begin with AND it was his paper after all, I felt guilted in to giving him that one. So then I was stuck with $1 off any three boxes of General Mills Cereal, some toothbrush deal that wasn't particularly exciting, and a hair color discount that may or may not be of use to me. Insult to injury, I then forgot those when we left for home. So, I have pretty much failed in my endeavor this week.

The path already taken

When I began to look into "coupon strategies" this week, I realized quickly that this is a well trodden topic on the intertubes. When I sifted through a great number of "how to coupon" sites, one strategy jumped out at me as a good way to start: a blog called The Simple Dollar originally posted the idea that you should find coupons in the Sunday paper and then wait a month to use them. This is because manufacturers use coupons first in their product marketing cycle as a way to boost sales, and then move on to discounting. So, if you wait to use the coupon you increase your savings because you are using a coupon for a product already on sale. The popular blog Boing Boing picked up the story and it drummed up a lot of comments. Some common themes were:

1) It's not worth the time to clip coupons unless you view at as a hobby in addition to a way to save money.

2) Coupons are usually for "bad" food-- that is processed, non-fresh, unhealthy products.

3) Related to the above--when couponing, you have to be careful not to get derailed into buying things you wouldn't normally buy because "it was such a great deal."

4) Many Sunday-paper coupons expire before the promoted items go on sale.

These ideas are fueling my belief that big companies with giant marketing budgets aren't dumb and coupons are an effective tool to get consumers to spend MORE on high-margin products like processed/prepared foods. But, I'm not giving up hope yet. Next I think I'll look into coupons for healthy items/organic brands and try not to use this California Pizza Kitchen coupon I found on my Hannaford receipt.