I am always amazed when people tell me they don't have time to coupon or chase deals.
My response tends to be, "Yeah, but what's your time worth?"
If you're making a middle of the road income and you make a quick trip in and out of a store and save $100, is your time worth that kind of money? A middle wage earner in the $10-$20 an hour range would love to take a pay raise to $100 an hour. Effectively, that's what couponing does for you. When you plan for and execute a shopping trip that yields $100 in savings, the value of what your time is worth just increased upwards of 10X your current rate of pay.
If you shop 4-5 times a month, try breaking your shopping into smaller trips. Separate out a couponing trip from a regular trip. Set out to save $50 or more on the coupon trip. If in a month you can do this twice with a $100 savings over retail each time on items you would normally buy anyway, you just put $2400 a year of buying power (or debt reduction power) back in your pocket.
What's $2400 buy you? It pays down bills, pays off the balance on your car, it gets invested in a retirement fund. It can be used for household splurges or a fun family vacation. And it only cost a little bit of time.
If you don't have an hour, you can also try incorporating targeted trips as part of your normal routine. Stopping by 3 stores a week for about 10 minutes per trip can save you $100 or more a week.
On a quick trip to Office depot, the loss leader school supplies cost me $1 (after the $3 toner coupon). My savings was nearly $30. The trip took about 8 minutes from start to finish in the store.
A 15 minute trip to Safeway yielded me $81 in merchandise - and the cashier paid ME $1.11 cash for the overage value of the coupons I had presented her.
10 minutes at Rite Aid got me 2 rainchecks for the free school items this week - a $5 value. But that was after I dropped off a prescription that would yield me a $20 giftcard - a $17 value after my co-pay. Value of the 10 minutes - $22. Not many people get paid $22 for 10 minutes of their day.
With kids, a contract consulting job, working on a MBA at full time graduate hours and running a busy grocery coupon site, (and in between all that, doing family support for the Army), I still manage to fit in little mini trips to the store all week and save big bucks in the process. 25 hours of time last month saved me $1600+ over retail, and I only spent about $200 cash.
Time turns into money very quickly when you're doing spot deals or incorporating a little more couponing into your regular grocery routine.
What's your time worth?
What's a little bit of time worth?
July 25th, 2007 at 08:15 am
July 25th, 2007 at 01:58 pm 1185371911
July 25th, 2007 at 07:27 pm 1185391650
July 25th, 2007 at 07:40 pm 1185392418
I just turned some long-time friends onto couponing. They have a family of 5 and they told me that they spend upwards of $1400 a month for everything grocery and household. In two weeks with a little reading at www.Hotcouponworld.com, they have had some very good savings - several hundred dollars in fact in abouta 3-week time period.
Once people try it, and get out of the mindset that a .25c off coupon is worthless, the savings rack up quickly.
I'd challenge you to read up on couponing fundamentals and then try it yourself. Good luck, and happy shopping!!!
July 26th, 2007 at 11:54 am 1185450885
July 30th, 2007 at 07:41 am 1185781267