Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Couponing as an extreme sport?!

Did anyone catch Extreme Couponing on TLC last night? Did it scare the shit out of you too? First, may I state that I applaud any person that can manage to get anything for free. Legally free that is. Stealing doesn't count. Unless we are talking cookies, but we already covered that yesterday. Extreme Couponing is where these people go to great lengths to get coupons and basically go shopping for free. Great idea huh?! Except that these people are buying things like 400 boxes of pasta, 500 candy bars and 762 toothbrushes. The bill before their coupons is something like $600-$1200 and they end up paying something like $20 when it's all said and done. Who the hell needs 400 boxes of pasta? Who the hell can eat 400 boxes of pasta in enough time before it becomes old stale pasta? And if it takes you more than 2 years to eat 500 full sized candy bars then you have more issues than your shopping addiction. Seriously, it was like Extreme Hoarding, Coupon Edition. This one woman actually had her hoard of free shit insured for $35K. What pissed me off (Yes, I was yelling at the tv. You have problem with that?) was that these people would never in their lifetime use everything they acquired. Never. And yet there are people out there where a bottle of shampoo and a toothbrush is considered a luxury. Never once did these coupon hoarders ever state that they donate what they get to the less fortunate. A safe house, homeless shelter or food gathers would shit a ton of bricks to get these items and give them to people who really need it. This is what totally disgusted me about this show. I could only watch maybe 10 minutes of it before I had to turn it off. I was afraid I might wake up the kids with all the obscenities I was yelling at these people. (What, me swear?! Never!)

5 comments:

  1. Craziness! If I put that much effort into acquiring 500 tubes of toothpaste, I sure would give it to people who could use it. Heck, I do that with the two for ones at the drug store. I know people who need vitamins too.

    I never realized it was a sport. I guess I'm pretty minor league.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Interesting! I wonder how the suppliers can afford so much waste. Coupons down here might give you a small discount but thats about it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I coupon a lot but not like those people. That was some crazy shit. Although you might think I was nuts if I told you I got twenty boxes of cereal for free at the grocery store this week. So I just won't tell you.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wow! I never thought about what they were buying (didn't see the show either), and wonder if at the end they showed them giving their stuff to a homeless shelter or something. Now that's a concept to get the teens behind, at church. Go shopping with coupons, in an extreme manner like on this show, and then give everything to a food pantry or shelter, so it doesn't go to waste.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Now -here is my problem with coupons....it means I have to buys stuff that I don't normally eat.

    Sure, it might be nice to get 20 boxes of Pasta-in-a-box for free, but if I am trying to feed my family really Healthy food and change our eating habits then this just SCREWS me. Sometimes, the money saved is NOT worth the crap I'm feeding to my family and putting in my body. - Give me coupons for apples and oranges. Then, I'll start using them.

    ReplyDelete