‘Extreme Couponing’ can inspire people to save money

A new show on TLC, “Extreme Couponing,” has inspired my wife, Jenny, and me to do something we do too little of – couponing.


The show focuses on two “extreme” couponers each week, showing how they greatly reduce their grocery bills through the creative use of coupons.

They are called “extreme” because many of these people dedicate 40 or more hours per week to couponing, allowing them to save thousands of dollars and to stockpile groceries as though it were 1961 and the threat of Communists invading this country was imminent.

Some examples of these extreme couponers featured in the show:

One lady said she spends 60 hours or more per week finding coupons, organizing them and then making shopping plans to get the best bang for her buck. On a trip to the store in the show, she got approximately $1,000 worth of groceries for $6. She spent more than two hours in the check-out lane with her haul and her coupons. I wouldn’t want to get behind her in that lane.

One man brought a trailer attached to his vehicle to the store to bring everything he bought back to his house, which is more of a warehouse since he basically has a grocery store in every room to store stuff. Fortunately, he is also of the giving sort, as he donates much of what he buys to the local food bank.

A couple with six kids is able to put away thousands of dollars for their kids’ education with the money they save through extreme couponing. Their house is also more like a warehouse, too, as they even store food under their children’s beds. It would make for an easy midnight snack, I bet.

In each case, these people save between 90 and 98 percent of their grocery bill through extreme couponing.

It’s hard work, though. One lady dumpster dives for newspapers to get more coupons, while another has a map of the store to plan her trips. All spend hours at the store during trips, and some often abandon plans to go to the store for limited-time sales.

They also keep updated on stores’ coupon policies, as double-coupon specials are what allow them to often get the really good deals.

Personally, I hate the grocery store, so I could never do what they do. But, watching the show made me realize we should at least do a little couponing, as leaving the store with only a handful of groceries for $100 or more seems awfully expensive when compared to what these people could do with that amount of money.

To get started, we bought a couple of Sunday newspapers for the coupons, and also picked up local store fliers for the week to see what the best deals are. Jenny has also been scouring the Internet for online coupons.

While we haven’t been to the grocery store, yet, I’m keeping my fingers crossed it’ll save us a good amount of money.

And since we’re not doing it “extreme” style, people do not need to fear getting behind us in line.
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Originally published in The Portage County Gazette on Friday, April 8, 2011.