Wednesday, March 25, 2009

My time is just too valuable for that

This is the response that I get from many people when I tell them about the bargains that I get from using coupons and shopping the sales. My thought is that by spending a little time shopping sales and using coupons I am able to spend less money and therefore have to spend less time earning money. The way I look at it the time that I spend working on this is very well spent. Take today's shopping trip for example. I stopped at Walgreen's and bought 13 cans of tomato sauce, it cost me $5.07 but I will submit for a $5 rebate and since I will take the rebate as a gift card that I can turn around and use on other good deals like this I will actually get $5.50 back. So in essence I have a net PROFIT of 43 cents. My next stop was Fry's and I did two transactions there. First transaction 2 4 packs of TP, 3 boxes of Oatmeal Squares, 1 box of granola bars, 4 cadbury cream eggs, 4 pb eggs, and 1 Vitamin water (not pictured). The balance actually came up negative 29 cents so they PAID me (they will usually not let this happen). Next transaction 4 boxes of granola bars 12 cents. So again I had a net PROFIT of 17 cents. I have more coupons and will stop by tomorrow and pick up more granolla bars. Total time at the store was under an hour (I left work at 3:30 and was at the daycare to pick up the kids by 4:45). I do spend time online looking at the sale blogs and such, but I have also gotten pretty efficient at skimming and just reading what is relevant to me.

If you added up the dollar amount of what I bought it would easily equal my hourly wage. So there you have it, my time is worth too much to not save money where I can.

1 comment:

SuzyQSparkles said...

All great argument/defenses for sale/coupon/rebate shopping!

After writing up your thriftiest family submission with you, AND seeing your amazing stash of HYPER-discounted items, I'm more committed to making a go of your approach. Now, I'll have to schedule the time each week and poke around on your site for your instructional blog post.

Do you have a list of your favorite blogs to go look at for this time of thing? If not, would you post one?

:D