Dear Crabby,
I have never been one to clip coupons, but lately I have been thinking that it might be worth it. Do you clip coupons in order to save on your purchases?
Sincerely, Spencer Spendthrift
Dear Mr. Spendthrift,
I must tell you that I am not a big coupon clipper. I just don’t seem to have the patience or the time to sit down and clip those coupons every week. I certainly look for the low prices and have often been accused of being cheap, but I have not taken the time to clip the coupons. I did have some friends who lived their life around coupons though. I remember one time in particular. These friends of ours had some coupons for 99-cent Whoppers at Burger King. The only catch was that they had to drive to the next city in order to claim them, because the Burger King in their town did not accept them. So that is exactly what they did. Every time they wanted a burger, they loaded up the family car and drove to
the next town over. Hardly seemed worth the gas money, much less the hassle, to me. Another complaint I have is that I just don’t understand some of the coupons out there today. For example, if a coupon says, “Buy three for ten dollars,” I’ll ask how much they are a piece and they’ll tell me, “$3.50!” So for an opportunity to save 40 cents, we buy some third item that we may never even use – but we are saving money! Or we’ll stop our life long enough to drive to the next town to eat a Whopper that we may not even want, just because we found it on sale. Now, like I said earlier, I tend to be cheap, but that is partly because of my upbringing. My mother and father were victims of the Great Depression in 1929 and that formed a lot of my early notions about money. My mother must have told me the story at least ten million times about how she got her first paycheck on October 25, 1929, and how she put it into the bank like she was told. Then four days later on October 29, 1929 (which we now refer to as Black Tuesday), the banks all folded and she was told she could not get her money back. My mother was known to stuff money inside coffee cans, under her mattress, and just about anywhere, except a bank, for the next 70 years or so. She never trusted financial institutions after that day, and I can’t say that I blame her. But her life lesson of not knowing if the world economy would be stable or not formed her spending habits for life – she always looked for the deals. Those habits rubbed off on me. But even though, I am all about saving money, I just don’t get caught up in the coupon cutting rituals. So good luck and watch for those deals!
Sincerely, Dear Crabby
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