Friday Follow Topic: To Coupon or Not To Coupon

When I go to grocery store shopping, I notice two distinct groups of people: those who use coupons and those who do not.

For a long time, I was one of those people who never gave a second thought to using coupons.

Now, I RARELY go shopping without them.

FYI...coupons=money!

Let me share my reason why I have to have those little pieces of papers:

Ok, so Harris Teeter is a fairly large grocery store chain in NC (and VA, I think).  This week, they are having this huge triple coupon event, where they triple the face value of coupons up to $0.99. So essentially you can save up to $2.97 with a coupon, although I never seen a $0.99 coupon. Anyway, this means you can rack up on a lot of free and cheap stuff.  Check out Southern Savers for an extensive list of free and cheap products you can get with coupons.

So I made my third trip to Harris Teeter today (because they only triple up to 20 coupons per day) and got some 2 packages of butter, mustard, relish, 4-pack of Dannon yogurt, 4 packs of rice, barbeque sauce, and two packs of gum. My total would have been around $25 before coupons. After my coupons were scanned, the receipt showed that Harris Teeter owed me $0.12! HA HA.

This was a first and the cashier and I looked at each other with confused looks. She did not know what to do but I knew that I could not get cash back. The manager had to come over and override something and told me to have a nice day after giving me my receipt. I didn't think my total would come out to be free. I thought I at least had to pay taxes. I am still confused how this played out but of course, I am not complaining.

I walked right on out with my free items.

I heart coupons. So much better than monopoly money! :)

If you want to hop on the couponing bandwagon, check out deals around your area at Hot Coupon World. You will be amazed how much money you are spending on your favorite items when you really do not need to do so.

Zakiah got her first balloon today. Harris Teeter gives away free balloons for the children.  She had a good time playing with it.

So my question is do you use coupons or not?

If you do, what influenced you to start using them?

If you do not, why not?

Do you think it is worth the time and effort of clipping and sorting and being called the crazy coupon lady by the long line of customers behind you waiting for the cashier to scan your pile of coupons? LOL

Happy Friday Follow!