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GOBankingRates

Nicholas Morine

5 Ways Grocery Coupons May Cost You More Money Than You’ll Save

Using coupons to save a few bucks (or more than a few dollars, for fans of the practice) has long been held up as an example of simple savings — after all, the idea is that you’re spending less than you otherwise would have, right?

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Perhaps not, as contrary to popular belief, couponing can actually lead to unforeseen expenditures, particularly if the behavior becomes more of a compulsion than a thrifty habit.

Here are just a few of the ways in which an excessive fixation with grocery coupons can actually cost you more money than you think you might be saving.

Stockpiling ‘Good Deals’ Can Lead To Excessive Costs

As Ramsey Solutions pointed out, “extreme” couponing — similar to behavior exhibited on TLC’s now-defunct “Extreme Couponing” TV show — can actually cost you in several ways: time, effort and of course, cash.

“With extreme couponing, people can spend hours upon hours trying to find the best coupons and the best deals and come out of the store with 10 gallons of laundry detergent at a fraction of the original price. But the question is, why do you need that much detergent in the first place?” the Ramsey team wrote.

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“You may have ‘saved’ money on paper, but if you don’t use the products you’re stockpiling, then you’re really just wasting money,” they added.

Even if you’re stockpiling good which do not technically or quickly expire — toiletries and canned goods being among these — the question of use-case remains.

Couponing Taking the Place of Debt Payments (and Recreational Time)

Another take coming from the Broke Teacher blog indicated the pitfall of becoming a habitual couponer, even if many items came free of cost.

The time and effort put into streamlining the checkout process was substantial for the blog’s author, despite a number of stores being within close proximity.

The result: Floor-to-ceiling inventory of products, including an array of “junk” and bags upon bags of products delivered to food banks and visiting friends and family simply to clear more space for the next buy.

In the meantime, per the blog’s author, bills piled up — often unpaid — as well as hours spent on the coupon hunt and tanks of gas burned carting goods back and forth.

“When I was at the height of my couponing glory, I accumulated several years worth of personal hygiene products-shampoos, deodorant, toothpaste. I was stockpiling things that weren’t benefitting me,” the Broke Teacher wrote.

“‘But I give it away, it’s for others.’ That made me feel good, but if I looked at my debt — credit cards, student loan debt — and the places I shortcut my own finances, I was putting myself deeper in a hole,” they added.

Other ways that an excessive focus on couponing can actually cost you money include:

False sales: Oftentimes, retailers may actually inflate the “regular” price of an item to account for the usage of a coupon, meaning that once the coupon is applied, the resulting price is no better than comparable prices throughout the year, or at other vendors.
Forgetting that you have coupons in the first place: Whether you’re holding on to coupons in your physical wallet or storing them in your smartphone, taking the time to accumulate coupons without actually utilizing them amounts to time theft (from yourself, no less).
Impulse buying: Even if a coupon is allowing you access to a once-in-a-lifetime deal, if you have no use for a particular item or service, purchasing it a deep discount is still bad financial practice. You’re spending money which could be applied to debt, or to a profit-driving investment, on a product which you will never use.