Good article about Couponing in Recession

[Trishagirl]

Doing The Math On Coupons

This article is part of a series related to being Financially Fit
They're back in fashion, with good reason: An hour spent cutting and clipping can yield about $100 in savings.
Clipping coupons hardly sounds like the subject of high finance -- or even medium finance.
Save a dollar on cat food, some detergent or a couple of boxes of cereal. Who can be bothered? Who has the time?
A growing number of people, it turns out. And they're shrewder than it may at first appear.
The Great American Coupon is making a big comeback -- thanks to the Great American Recession.
We redeemed some 3.3 billion coupons last year -- a remarkable 27 percent leap from 2008, and the first year-on-year increase in 17 years, according to a report issued at the end of January by Inmar, a coupon-processing agent. (Online coupon use skyrocketed -- companies issued twice as many as in 2008, but redemptions rose 360 percent.) The big upturn took off in October 2008, just after Lehman went belly up.
At first blush you can see why coupons fell out of fashion for so long -- and why so many consumers still ignore them.
You have to make time to visit a coupon Web site or collect the flyers from your mailbox, the supermarket or newspaper inserts. You need to sort through to find the ones you want, cut them out, stick them in your purse or wallet -- and remember to use them when you are at the cash register and you are trying to remember whether you bought everything on your shopping list and where you parked the car.
Average saving per coupon: Just $1.44, according to the Inmar report.
But let's treat this low finance topic for a moment the way we treat high finance. Let's subject it to the same math.
How long does it actually take to clip and use a coupon? Certainly the more you use, the less overall time you will spend per coupon, because so many of the costs -- getting flyers, sorting coupons and so on -- are generalized. Let's assume you spend a minute per coupon.
Saving $1.44 for a minute's effort is the equivalent of saving $14.40 for 10 minutes'.
Hourly rate: $86.40.
Maybe this would be as good a time as any to point out that the typical American working stiff -- those lucky enough to have jobs right now -- climbs out of bed each morning, goes through the miseries of commuting and endures the daily grind at the workplace for about $20 an hour.
Furthermore, money saved comes with an additional benefit. Unlike the money you earn at work, it is tax free. No payroll taxes. No federal or state income tax.
If your marginal tax rate were, say, 20 percent, you would have to earn $108 before tax to take home $86.40. If your marginal tax rate were 30 percent, you'd have to earn $123.
Very few of us ever do this kind of math, because we tend to treat low finance differently from high finance, and small sums differently from big ones. No wonder, even today, 99 percent of coupons are thrown away unused.
Yet finance isn't a separate topic from the rest of our personal lives. For all of us, our scarcest resource is time. Putting the right value on it, and putting it to the most productive use, is a financial challenge, as well as a personal one.
And the individual amounts of money may seem small, but they prove the old adage about tiny acorns and mighty oaks. Someone who saves $25 a week will save $100 a month, and $1,200 a year. Over a lifetime that can easily grow to $100,000 or more -- even after accounting for inflation.
If motivation is an issue, the next time you find yourself facing a stack of coupon booklets and flyers don't ask yourself if you can be bothered. Try asking yourself if you'd like to earn more than $100 an hour for a job you can do, at home, while sitting on the sofa watching TV.
Write to Brett Arends at brett.arends@wsj.com
__________________

[ladytoysdream]

Nice article, thanks
Not so sure if his math is right...but coupons do add up.
And they are worth doing.

[lisaflex]

i could save more if i remembered to use them all the time! lol

i bought a paper today for the coupons....NONE in it! what a waste. although, i did start both crossword puzzles...little frustrating no coupons though. guess i should have looked before paying for it!

couponing can really pay off if there are coupons on goods that you use regularly.

i for one wich there were more coupons for PAM, athenos feta cheese, clorox wipes, cetaphil (although i have found a few in meagazines lately)...

[lparker]

Holiday weekends generally don't have coupons. We buy two different papers on Sunday mostly out of habit, but if there is a good coupon section, we'll buy a couple of each paper.

[lisaflex]

wish i would have realized that ahead of time...oh well. lesson learned

[ladytoysdream]

To my knowledge, there was supposed to be one insert in sunday's paper. We don't get the sunday one. My regular paper has it in on fridays...none this week. I am going to ask the newspaper when I get to town this week, if there was one, and how come we did not get it, if there was. We get rural delivery but have to go down to the road next to ours at the intersection, 1/2 mile away to pick it up. Beats going to town though.

February
7 – Smart Source & Red Plum
14 – Red Plum
21 – (2) Smart Source & Red Plum & Procter and Gamble
28 – Smart Source

[druthb00]

I was a little put off this morning also, but because I only had 1 insert lol, RedPlum. There's actually a website that has the 2010 weekly insert schedule listed, though the site I found was called "southern savers." So I'm sure this is a regional type thing. Regardless, searching google with the words "2010 weekly coupon insert schedule" yeilds multiple results if anyone is curious which ones come out which weeks in their area.

[khaski]

If you wish to know the upcoming coupons for the week, check at sundaycouponpreiview (dot) com. Seems to work well enough in my area- not sure it matches up nationwide though. I try to always take a peek before Sunday to evaluate if I will bother getting a paper that weekend, and how many I want to buy based on the coupons!

[frugalwarrior2]

There was only 1 this time because there were 4 the week before. ( super bowl) It rotates. P&G is 1x per month. Diff papers buy diff. inserts.

[Trishagirl]

I wish we would get 2 or 3 inserts each weekend in the paper but I got some coupons that I use so it does help!

[NikoSan999]

You mean coupons aren't a way of life? Dang...

[Imarachne]

I'm a senior citizen and I'm not gonna get anymore money than my SS check. So I coupon and look for ways to add a few dollars here and there and couponing is one of most successful ways.

[frugalwarrior2]

Coupons. I love coupons. I trade them and look at videos on couponing. I bother my family w/ discussion about them. I give them to others in store. I don't have a problem though. I can quit any time I like...............lol.

[rebecca]

I go to swap savers.com on Saturday night and they let you know what coupon inserts will be in the Sunday paper.

[sinopa27]

2010 Sunday Coupon Insert Schedule

January
1/3: 2 Smart Source & 2 Red Plum & General Mill
1/10: Smart Source & Red Plum
1/17: Smart Source & Proctor & Gamble
1/24: Smart Source & Red Plum
1/31: Smart Source & Red Plum

February
2/7: Smart Source & General Mills & Procter and Gamble
2/14: Red Plum
2/21: Smart Source & Red Plum
2/28: Smart Source & Red Plum

March
3/7: Smart Source, Red Plum & Procter and Gamble
3/14: Smart Source& Red Plum
3/21: Smart Source& Red Plum
3/28:2 Smart Source & Red Plum & Procter and Gamble

April
4/4: No Inserts
4/11: Smart Source & Red Plum
4/18: Smart Source & Red Plum
4/25: Smart Source & Red Plum

May
5/2: Smart Source & Red Plum & P&G
5/9: Smart Source & Red Plum
5/16: 2 Smart Source & Red Plum
5/23: Smart Source & Red Plum
5/30: No Inserts

June
6/6: Smart Source & Red Plum & Procter and Gamble
6/13: Smart Source
6/20: Smart Source & Red Plum
6/27: Smart Source & Red Plum

July
7/4: No Inserts
7/11: Smart Source & Red Plum
7/18: Smart Source
7/25: Smart Source & Red Plum

August
8/1: Smart Source & Red Plum & Procter and Gamble
8/8: Smart Source & Red Plum
8/15: Smart Source & Red Plum
8/22: Smart Source & Red Plum
8/29: Smart Source & Red Plum & P&G Insert

September
9/5: No Inserts
9/12: Smart Source & 2 Red Plum
9/19: Smart Source & Red Plum
9/26: Smart Source & Red Plum

October
10/3: Smart Source & Red Plum & Procter and Gamble
10/10: Smart Source & Red Plum
10/17: Smart Source & Red Plum
10/24: Smart Source & Red Plum
10/31: Smart Source & Red Plum

November
11/7: Smart Source & Red Plum & Procter and Gamble
11/14: Smart Source & Red Plum
11/21: Smart Source & Red Plum
11/28: No Inserts

December
12/5: Smart Source & Red Plum & Procter and Gamble
12/12: Smart Source & Red Plum
12/19: No Inserts
12/26: No Inserts