I am looking at a 6.4 ounce container of Colgate Whitening Toothpaste that I plan to donate to our local food pantry. I got it for FREE today at Shop-Rite, by combining a sale with a coupon.
I just started using couponmom.com, a site I wrote about on my Yahoo!Finance column last week. (Site is free but you have to register; beware the many advertised offers that pop up in the registration process.) Yahoo featured my column on its home page (which gets a bazillion hits), so the article got a lot of comments, some of them surprisingly bitter.
Hey folks, lighten up, I’m just trying to help you save a little money. My favorite comment: “This woman probably don’t even buy her own groceries.” Actually, I do buy my own groceries, cook my own meals, mow my own lawn and do my own dishes and laundry too. I’m a regular person, married 16 years, with three kids and a mortgage. I like saving money on dumb things, like toothpaste, because it means you have more money for fun things, like going to the beach.
Anyway, I wanted to respond to some of the basic objections to the article:
1. “This is a full-time task…” The whole point of the article is that the websites do the work for you. I swear I spent about five minutes looking at couponmom.com this morning and thought, well I don’t have much time, I’ll just get the free stuff. Couponmom showed that Colgate toothpaste was on sale for $1.50 and that the June 1 “Smart Source” insert had a toothpaste coupon for $1.50. Since I now date and save those inserts in a drawer in the dining room, it took about three seconds to find the coupon.
2. “The biggest problem is that most of the specials and coupons are for junky pre-packaged foods.” Well toothpaste usually costs money, and I got mine for free.
3. “I don’t believe for a minute that the typical family of four can eat a truly balanced, nutritious diet free from a ton of processed foods for under $100 a week.” Why not try it? When you get toothpaste for free you have more money to spend on fresh produce.
4. “Give me an article on how I can save money on fruits and vegetables.” Sign up for your store’s loyalty card. Shop-Rite mails me coupons for produce (just paid 69 cents a pound for nectarines when the store price was $1.49). Grow stuff in the back yard – google “grow your own vegetables” and you’ll get more than 300,000 results. (My neighbor has a cherry tomato plant that’s going gangbusters – but New Jersey is the Garden State, after all).
5. “It’s worth the extra money to eat what I want not what’s on sale that week.” Well then why did you read the story?
Some people said they had tried clipping coupons and couldn’t find any that were useful. I have experienced this too, because my regular read — the Sunday New York Times — has the worst coupons on the planet. However, the New Jersey Star Ledger is chock full of them, so I decided to subscribe to the Thursday and Sunday edition for $1.25 a week. I’m better informed (and my free toothpaste paid for this week’s subscription).
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on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 at 1:46 pm and is filed under Money & Happiness, budgeting, deals and discounts, food/groceries.
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June 11th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Hello laura,
I really appreciate your lively response of the bitter comments that were made. Your article is very timely as we could always use tips on saving money.
In fact, your article inspired me to quote you on my blog. Go by and check it out at your leisure (http://www.GroceryShoppingGuru.com) and tell me what you think.
Danette Moss,LMC
Your Grocery Shopping Guru
August 3rd, 2009 at 9:24 am
I guess many people are really quite hard pressed or really running dry maybe and they think that you as a famous author would not understand, but it is good that you explain and make them see that they are not alone and that actually a lot of people would welcome help of one way or another to save on anything during this low economy.
LR: Hey, thanks Sharon, you made my day. I really do write this stuff to help other people, because I think if you can get a handle on your money, life is a whole lot less stressful. (And I don’t put myself in the “famous author” category, but if I ever get a big head, I have three kids to remind me I’m just a mom who drives a “Loser Cruiser” — my 12-year-old’s name for our minivan.)