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Image courtesy of TLC.
Did you catch last night’s double dose of Extreme Couponing™? First was the premiere, followed by a tug-at-your-heartstrings, 30-minute episode. People’s lives were seriously impacted. A marriage stood the test of time, a family bonded over dinner, at-risk youth learned the value of a dollar and an overweight woman lost more than 100 pounds! Our only criticism is we thought they buried the lead by not putting Julie and Faatima first, but more on that later. Let’s talk Rudy and Gia.
The episode begins with 25-year-old wife and mother-of-two Rudy. She lives in Georgia with her husband Chase and loves couponing so much; she creates scrapbooks of her hauls. Seriously, All You™ magazine needs to give this woman a job as a photo stylist. We’ve never seen canned food look so beautiful! Rudy’s life seems picture perfect until she’s faced with a challenge: can she throw a five-year vow renewal reception for 200 guests for only $20? The savings veteran recruits Chase to cut coupons and shop. While he admits he’s no doctor, he tells the camera that she might have OCD (she has a system for organizing products in her shopping cart), but Chase is no dummy. His motto? “Know your role, shut your hole.” That’s worked out well for him for their five years of wedding bliss! They end up spending $19.20 ($776.52 total) on groceries, and every guest gets to take home his/her own jar of barbecue sauce complete with a personalized tag that would make any wedding blog swoon.
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Image courtesy of TLC.
Next comes Gia, the self-proclaimed Long Island Coupon Queen. She spends 50 hours a week searching for bargains but impressively manages to carve out beach time with the help of her husband and two kids. It’s comical to watch as they dig out a trench in the sand for Gia to sit in and cull through supermarket circulars as they play in the surf! More family fun continues as we’re introduced to her mother, brother and sister who bet Gia that she can’t cook a family-style, Italian meal using coupons. As Barney Stinson (shout-out to HIMYM) would say, “Challenge accepted!” She shops at Key Food™ and gathers all her ingredients for $118.67 ($758.79 total), which to her mother (and us) is a success, but Gia’s left heartbroken. Her goal was to spend less than $100. But the plot thickens when she finds $28 worth of coupons had fallen into the bottom of her grocery cart! Don’t you hate it when that happens? The family goes home, eats dinner and guess what? It’s just like mama used to make—only cheaper. The best line from Miss Gia, “If I didn’t start couponing, we would still be in debt and that’s not how anyone is supposed to live.” We couldn’t agree more.
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Image courtesy of TLC.
That concluded the season premiere, and as we alluded to earlier, the folks at TLC saved the best for last. In Boulder, Colorado we meet Julie. The 44-year-old answers a newspaper ad for Fire Mountain Sober Home, a place for at-risk boys. Yes, you can see where this is going. Julie gets to live the dream. She is paid to coupon. But it’s not without hardships. Aaron, the home’s leader, tells Julie that she has to buy all organic food and significantly cut their $3,000 per month grocery bill. Does she succeed? You betcha! Not only does she handle some unruly teenage boys, she stacks coupons for a total of $107.82 (out of $732.54)! That prompts Aaron to give her a full-time position and this compliment, “When they (the boys) take something like couponing seriously, it means they’re thinking about their future for the first time.”
Finally, we were sent off to bed with something inspirational to dream about. Remember Faatima from past seasons? She’s back and 100 lbs slimmer! Her weight shakedown began when she realized she was stockpiling junk food and hired a trainer. But this couponer doesn’t pay him in cash. She trades gym goods for his time. What a bargain! We loved meeting Quincy, the trainer. He’s not shy with his opinions and makes Faatima toss sugar-filled, carb-laden products—not in the trash, mind you. Last night, Coupon Alert confirmed with Faatima over Twitter that all that pasta and boxes of cake mix were donated to food pantries.
Image may be NSFW.
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But that still left Faatima with a barren stockpile, so they head to the supermarket to restock her shelves with healthy food. If you watched last night, you know that the highlight of the show was watching Quincy order Faatima to do lunges as she shopped. Now that’s what we call multitasking! She may have looked funny to others, but in the end, she made out with $466.99 worth of groceries for only $46.74 (not to mention burned calories). And we bet she’ll reach her goal weight of 200 lbs. by next season!
That concludes our recap of this week’s episode. If you didn’t catch our tweets last night (@Coupon_Alert), we still want to hear from you! Are you excited to see more of Extreme Couponing™ ? Or did you change the channel? Did you pick up any budgeting tips? Or do you have any advice of your own? Let us know in the comments section below and be sure to check out Coupon Alert for more great savings—that’s something that we can all agree on!
