Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I was at home enjoying a nice meal when this show appears on my TV screen. For those unaware of the show its a program about people who use coupon clippings to get over a thousand dollars worth of items for about one hundred or even fifty dollars. While I do have to admire the thrifty habits some of these people have I noticed that in most of the cases they have a massive stockpile of foodstuffs in their houses already. One of the cases dealt with a family of six who needed a large amount of food, one dealt with a family who had lost sources of income and had to resort to coupon clipping in order to help themselves.

Then there were some things that actually sickened me. One pair was buying 150 candy bars, 100 gatorades, and just obscene amounts of ramen-like noodle packages and pastas. Now the simple fact of buying a lot of stuff doesn't bother me and the fact that they got over a thousand items for about fifty dollars doesn't bother me, what bothers me is the fact that they kept it all for themselves. They had rooms full of food for the two of them and they filled another room with the new items they purchased. Food that would most likely expire or just get wasted, I mean they used two SUVs to take the stuff home. Then another pair of people had to call in five friends just so they could use the coupons they had. These people were buying over fifty tubes of toothpaste and other perishables each.

I was happy to see this one guy who bought over a hundred toothbrushes and a thousand boxes of cereal only to donate most of it to charities.

Besides all that I looked at it in comparison with the hoarding show they also have on TLC. One of the ladies who was in the show(the one who used two SUVs to take food home) said that it feels like she had climbed a mountain and that just paying $50 for $1,500 worth of items, items that it didn't look like they needed. Her husband/boyfriend/whatever said that if she sees a good sale she just goes and has even given up going out with friends or doing other things with people just so she could get to the sale. Another woman had her kids and a friend digging in dumpsters for sales ads and newspaper coupons.

This got me to thinking that they have serious problems, not economic problems but psychological problems much like the hoarders. I don't know if its just me but I really think that these people are on par with the hoarders in terms of psychological disorders but had a different way of carrying it out. I was also wondering how people feel about the people on this show and the show itself. The show doesn't go out of its way to offer money saving tips, it just exhibits people buying stuff for no reason at times.

Personally I would like to see the show canned or at least changed in order to offer explicit tips to the people watching who may actually need to know how to do this kind of thing.

I wasn't even aware there was such a program (What ever happened to M.A.S.H...or Soap...or The Andy Grifith Show..?)

...Personaly,I can understanding an attempt at being "thrifty"...and I suppose manufacture coupons help in tough times...though I freely admit to getting frustrated when I'm stuck in line behind someone who has a stack of coupons...

But the people that apparently are the focus of this program seem (from your description) to have a problem...of course...given programing standards...that means "good tv."

Yeah, I have no issue with the family of six using coupons to save money. I can perfectly understand that, I just can't wrap my head around the people buying a thousand items just so two people could use them.

halonachos wrote:Yeah, I have no issue with the family of six using coupons to save money. I can perfectly understand that, I just can't wrap my head around the people buying a thousand items just so two people could use them.

I suppose it could be a sort of "compulsion",some people have a need to "stockpile"...
I know in my own case,having dealt with Hurricane Katrina, I keep cases of bottled water and canned foods stacked in my pantry and will refill them the moment they even look "low" to me...

It's annoying as hell to have customers thinking they can use coupons even when they don't meet the conditions, ad this show isn't going to make my job even easier. A good example: this morning a lady came up with a cart full of 6-pack cokes and sprites. We had a sale and she had a stack of coupons... for buy 2 coke products, buy 2 mars candy products, save 1.50. She became extremely upset that I made her get candy too (even though they started improperly scanning with her getting only one candy item per 2 coke products) and only bought 12 of the 6 packs instead of god knows how many cart loads she was going to do throughout the day. It's BS. We get many middle-eastern people (one or two Mexicans) that try to do the same thing to buy our entire stock of Gatorade and the like so they can resell it at their gas station shops for double what we would normally while angry customers yell at me to get rain checks which take forever to enter weeks down the road. To top it off, they never want you to bag their cart-load of gatorade and they take "a fair number of bags" to compensate (meaning they try to steal a box of bags to use in their store). This is coming down to the difference between RaW and RaI in real life, but I hate douchebags who feel entitled to everything, even when being douchebags. Maybe it's just me, but I can't stand these people.

halonachos wrote:Yeah, I have no issue with the family of six using coupons to save money. I can perfectly understand that, I just can't wrap my head around the people buying a thousand items just so two people could use them.

Warren Buffett says that this is the single best possible investment for someone under $1000 - buying large quantities of non perishable consumables in bulk at discount. No other thing will give a return as high in terms of investments with such low risk at such low levels. If you have the space and can tolerate the same things for many years, it is prudent.

Nothing new - I remember "news" articles/clips about people that saved thousands of dollars a year using coupons.

What they leave out is how much of that stuff is crap they don't actually need/want.

You can actually save a ton of money by collecting coupons and using them when items go on sale, but the show apparently doesn't have anything to do with that, or show any actual techniques. From what I've read about it, the show is about compulsive shoppers and people with really questionable ethics. They show people who buy things like 75 jars of mustard then leave them lying around the living room, or get stacks and stacks of pasta just sitting in the garage. There's several websites that talk about what's apparently outright fraud on one episode, here's the one I found that got me looking at stuff about it. http://www.jillcataldo.com/node/16170

Seems pretty pointless to save all that money on food, only to hoard it all. At least do what that one guy did and donate whats left over.

ooohhhh.....

Let the dead rest in peace.