Card carrying member!

[Greatwhite]

Got my fancy schmancy OVAS card in the mail today!  Bring on the discounts, sponsors!!!   My wife's all about discounts and coupons, so now I won't have to fight so hard to get to go fish shopping.

[magnosis]

Shhweeeet !

Keeping our eyes peeled to see your faces on the Extreme Couponing show on TLC 

[Greatwhite]

Shhweeeet !

Keeping our eyes peeled to see your faces on the Extreme Couponing show on TLC 

Seriously - wifey watches that show A LOT.  She's an accountant, and actually started couponing as much as she can in Canada...  Coupons are not as "good" as they are in the states, but  I've seen a couple receipts for $80 of stuff for $15 recently.

[magnosis]

Yes, the one big difference here is that most coupon cannot be combined with any other special offer...  At least this is my understanding.  In the show they often seem to combine two or more coupons on top of a store special and end up with ridiculous savings.

Beside, I have yet to see ONE episode where the featured 'couponner' is NOT massively overweight.... sigh !  Don't skinny people use coupons too ? 

[Greatwhite]

I don't think you burn many  calories clipping coupons.  Also, in order to get the good deals, you have to buy stuff that's bad for you.  I saw a lady with a garage FULL of fruit loops and 6 freezers of hot pockets.  She could live for YEARS on that stuff.

That same  lady got 2 truck loads of Gatorade virtually free after all her coupons and such.  The thing with Gatorade is - it's horrible for you unless you are actually exercising and burning off the stuff that you ingest by drinking it.  This family CLEARLY didn't *need* Gatorade.

In the states, the big grocery stores have membership cards that you can swipe and it applies all the available coupons automatically - in addition to in-store sales, and then they apply manufacturer coupons on top of that.  The trick is to apply so many coupons to things that are on sale that the store essentially GIVES you money to take the item. That money is then applied to the overall bill...  Then, the back of receipts have MORE coupons for they next shopping trip, and with a 30 foot long receipt - that's a lot of coupons.

My wife found a special where if you buy 5 Gillette products, you got $5 back.  Well, it's funny how cheap travel sized shaving cream is.  5 of those cost $3, and she got $5 back onto her bill -- and I'm set for travel sized shaving cream for life now.

Oh, most stores in canada will not take a coupon that rebates more than the value of the item...

[bt]

I saw one of episode where the people donated the overwhelming majority of their "purchase" (rang up free) to charity.

They were the only ones on that show that I ever saw that were in good shape.

[Greatwhite]

I saw one where a lady had previously killed the cash register because of the number of purchases and coupons overloading it -- so THIS TIME, she had everything spread across 4 cash registers perfectly organized with an envelope per register.  That was mildly impressive, but what I appreciated most was after she got her $2000 of groceries for $30, she had a cart for her 95 year old grandmother that rang up to EXACTLY $0.

[robt18]

Congrats on the card! If you're not shopping you're not saving! :p

My contact lens solution used to have a coupon for a free bottle inside the box on every bottle. So you just went home and opened the box, took the coupon and went back the next day and got a free one. Repeat about 20 times and I was set forever! Then I got laser surgery and it's now useless haha.