There are times in life where I feel like I'm winning.
- That moment when I'm filling my gas tank for $.80/gallon thanks to the reward points at the grocery store.
- Those days when Giant is selling four Pepsi 6-packs for $10 AND I have a coupon.
- The one time every two years I can get my haircut for free at Supercuts!
- The 2 or 3 times/year I can buy something completely frivolous (like an indoor basketball hoop that hangs over a door) and feel like it's "free" because I have all these reward points.
I LOVE feeling like I'm beating the system. I say to myself: "Sure they HAVE the reward points, and coupons and buy-one get one frees but they didn't factor ME into the equation!" I like to think they'd be out of business if every shopper was such an adept accumulator of loss leaders and reward points!
They're laughing at me of course. Walgreens. Giant, Weis Markets, and every company that puts out coupons. I'm the idiot they make the most off of.
Crap I don't need:
I have a "thing" for rewards points. My drugstore of choice is Walgreens - but all the main chains do it in some form. On Sundays - when the new sales start - I stroll into Walgreens like a kid in the candy store...Looking for those blue tags that promote how many points you'll get if you but a certain product.
Those blue tags are almost ALWAYS on shower gel products - and more often than not, Axe products are sporting the blue tags as well. 5,000 points when I spend $15 on participating Axe products..."HEY WOW!!!" I say to myself..."So that's like getting the products for $10! AND I have a coupon - it will be insane not to participate in this deal!?" And I laugh at the stupidity of Walgreens and Axe management - "how can they stay in business when they are practically giving this stuff away."
So my linen closet has no less than a dozen Axe-related products. Shower gel, body spray, deodorant, hair gel (?). For good measure there are four bottles of Dove body wash, 3 Old-Spice body sprays, God knows how many Gillette gel deodorants and enough razors to last me the rest of my life (and I don't screw around when it comes to razors, if there aren't at least four blades I don't consider it worthy of touching my face!)
In my pantry there is an odd assortment of products I don't think anybody is ever going to eat unless we are forced to live in our basement for over a month. I got drawn into some sort of promotion where I could mix and match any seven products on the list and save $.30 on gas!!! I figured "there's really no such thing as too much canned ravioli and WOW the savings on gas!"
For the record - I drive less than 9,000 miles/year.
The highlight, the grand enchilada of my existence is when I have accumulated 300 coupons, diligently gone through all of the Sunday ads and announce to myself (because strangely, nobody else in my life gets excited about this stuff!) that I'm going to do a "coupon sweep!" What I do there is go through the store and buy ONLY things that are buy one get one free OR that I have a coupon for. The buy one get one deals are almost always the same...If you need some Arm and Hammer laundry detergent, a boatload of philly chip-steaks, or if you are having some sort of special war where frozen meatballs are being used as ammunition - feel free to reach out. I have all of those things in droves.
My stupidity isn't fully entrenched in these cases. At least I'm SORT of getting a deal.
Coupons are where I lose it.
Here's the ugly truth that I don't like to admit as I proudly look at my receipt after a coupon sweep... The store brands are cheaper - even with coupons. So yeah - I get that momentary rush when the coupon scans and I get $.40 cents off because I bought two huge-ass jars of Hellmans Mayo which would be enough to run a deli for a week...Meanwhile - I could have stocked the same deli for a month if I bought the store brand...And I don't care who you are: NOBODY's palate can distinguish mayo!
I guess I have a problem. A savings "addiction" maybe?
Is it just me?!
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