4 Reasons I Stopped Extreme Couponing

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Extreme couponing was something I did for years, but I stopped cold turkey. Here are four reasons why. 

For a few years, I was an extreme couponer. While I never went on the TLC TV show of the same name, I easily could have qualified, as I was regularly walking out of stores with carts full of stuff after charging just $1 or $2 on my credit cards.

Extreme couponing undoubtedly helped me get tons of stuff for free, so I was able to keep more cash in my bank account instead of spending it on personal care items or groceries. But I ultimately stopped cold turkey and now I rarely use coupons for most purchases.

Here are four reasons why I gave up my extreme couponing habit.

1. I was getting too many unnecessary items

One of the key features of extreme couponing is that you put together deals based on what promotions stores are running. For example, you might need to buy $25 worth of items to qualify for a $5 gift card, so the goal would be to get $25 worth of stuff that you could get close to free by using coupons — even if you didn’t necessarily need that stuff.

In order to be able to qualify for promotions and deals, I bought a ton of stuff I didn’t need, including diabetes monitors, lots of shampoo and toothpaste and razors and cough syrup, and food I wouldn’t really eat.

I didn’t want to just waste these things so I had to try to find homes for the items or try to resell them at garage sales and flea markets. This didn’t always work, so stuff ended up getting tossed out.

2. It was taking up too much time

Extreme couponing requires doing deals at whichever stores happen to have specific promotions going on at a particular time. This could mean going to multiple stores each week, like CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, and more.

Also, I would sometimes get ExtraBucks or other promotional deals that had to be used within a certain timeframe. So if I didn’t do a deal, I would end up wasting the ExtraBucks or other promotion.

I ended up spending tons of time going to all of these stores as well as managing my big collection of coupons and searching online for the deals of the week. This was taking several hours every week.

3. I was collecting a lot of clutter

Remember above how I mentioned I had to buy a ton of stuff to take advantage of deals? All of this stuff had to be stored somewhere. Many extreme couponers talk about their “stockpile,” or collection of items, and I had one that was taking up a big portion of a spare room. In fact, my guest bedroom looked like a drugstore because there was so much personal care stuff in it.

4. The stores started making things harder

Finally, some of the stores started catching on to the fact that extreme couponers were getting lots of stuff for free. They began making it harder by limiting how many coupons you could use or how many transactions you could do in a day or how many of a particular item you could purchase.

For all of these reasons, I decided there were better ways to reduce my spending and I gave up extreme couponing for good.

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The Ascent does not cover all offers on the market. Editorial content from The Ascent is separate from The Motley Fool editorial content and is created by a different analyst team.Christy Bieber has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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