It’s with heavy hearts that we wave goodbye to another season of Extreme Couponing™. Seriously, what are we going to do with our Tuesdays now? But we couldn’t have asked for a better finale than seeing a fellow saver’s boyfriend drop to one knee and pull out a ring at the checkout counter! More on that later.
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Let’s start with Amanda, a Georgia peach whose mother is a tad bit controlling. OK, so she calls herself “El Presidente” and expects Amanda to do all her couponing for her. While that would drive us up the wall, Amanda seems to take her parents’ (yes, dad’s in on this too) 7am Sunday wakeup calls in stride—until her mom Ann creates and hands out business cards advertising her daughter’s couponing services to others. Who has the time?! Amanda eventually puts her foot down, demanding that her parents learn how to save at the grocery store.
As you know, behind every good couponer is a very patient husband. Luckily, Amanda has Matt who convinces his in-laws to see how self-sufficient they can be without their daughter’s help. And like many Extreme Couponing™ participants before them, they head to the Piggly Wiggly™.
“Stay behind me,” Ann warns as the doors slide open. “I always enter first!”
We should also add that her mom is wearing a shirt emblazoned with the words “El Presidente” as she does this. Ann makes for great TV and cruises through the aisles in a handicapped shopping cart, not because she can’t walk, but because she can get to the sales faster than on foot. First are the noodles, which end up costing 9 cents after a Piggly Wiggly™ sale and doubled coupons. Amanda suffers quietly as her parents move on to the muffin mix, which comes in two types, the packaged and the boxed kind, and only one is on sale.
“Even though I want time off, it doesn’t change the fact that I’m a control freak,” Amanda admits.
Luckily, Dad picks the right one, and they continue to gather a few more items before checking out. Their total amounts to $328.79 and after coupons, it whittles down to $66.34—not what Amanda had expected. But El Presidente assures her that they did everything right, and their daughter concedes that the error must’ve been in her math. Don’t you hate it when your parents are right? But we consider this a smashing success! Amanda proves that you can teach an old dog new tricks, and she gets one sleep-in Sunday per month.
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Up next is Jess, another Georgia native, who admits that she has traded her shopping addiction to become a couponaholic. Husband Josh attests that she used to spend $1,000 a month on clothes until she switched her ambitions to saving money at the grocery store. Today, she still buys a lot (20 rolls of paper towels monthly), and her stockpile has overtaken their living room, so Josh demands that they donate everything to a local shelter on their next shopping trip. Jess will still get the thrill of shopping without adding to their overflow at home. It’s a win-win, right?
Things start going south quickly as they enter the Piggly Wiggly™. Jess wants the red kind of sports drink, and when Josh reminds her that they’re not for her, she immediately pouts. Then they move on to chips that they score for free after stacking discounts. Finally (we saw this coming), Jess cries when the store is fresh out of wipes because she “really wanted those,” and it’s $120 worth of coupons wasted. No one ever said breaking addiction was easy, but Jess finds solace in her savings. Her grocery bill is only $25.30 (down from $804.27) for a savings of 96.85 percent. And all of her haul goes to their local shelter. We love a good karma-fueled shopping trip!
During the last 30 minutes of Season Four, we meet Zadia (AKA: Ms. Couponista) from Maryland. Her boyfriend Richard says she’s the queen bee of the coupon hive, and sure enough, we meet her worker bees Alexandra and Tara who have followed Zadia’s every couponing move since day one.
“I love my coupon clique!” Zadia admits.
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But she reveals a dark secret to her friends at a couponing swap party: she has thrown out her coupon binder! Now, for those of you who are budget beginners, this is like leaving one’s political affiliation for the other side. It just boggles the mind. But, but, but, but! Zadia promises her friends that there is a method to her madness, one that involves sticky notes and paper clips. Uh huh. Prove it, they say. So, she heads off to the store with the goal of getting $700 worth of groceries for mere pennies.
What follows is a typical Extreme Couponing™ shopping trip of stacked coupons and bulk buying, except this one is interspersed with doubtful comments from the peanut gallery like “I hope you’re not missing any deals because you don’t have your binder.” But with a self-given title like Ms. Couponista, you’ve got to have confidence, and Zadia has it in spades. She asks the cashier to ring up nine transactions, so she can get $5 off each one with her customer loyalty discount and ends up with one of the best hauls we’ve seen: $926.05 for 73 cents! Lesson learned: you don’t have to be organized to save. Just do whatever works for you. Preach on, Ms. Couponista!
And, as promised, Extreme Couponing™ saved its best for last: a checkout marriage proposal. Briana, from Plano, Texas, dates Jose, a very understanding boyfriend.
“Regular couponing is like riding a pony, but extreme couponing is like you’re at the rodeo,” Briana explains.
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Image courtesy of Discovery Communications, LLC.
So it’s no surprise when this budget maven wants to save on her engagement ring. She tells Jose that they’ll only spend $2,000 and will pay for it in cash. They’ve need to save $500 on their next supermarket trip to buy her dream ring, but what Briana doesn’t know though is that Jose has already purchased it and is carrying it in his pocket as they walk down the grocery aisles.
The drama immediately unfolds as Briana fills their cart with Jergens moisturizer, Colgate toothpaste, disposable razors, etc., causing Jose to tear up because he’s so nervous. The ring is burning a hole in his pocket, and all his girlfriend can think about is frugality! We should also add that he’s walking around the store in a shirt that reads, “My girlfriend coupons better than yours,” and she’s wearing one that says, “Don’t hate me because I coupon.” But their final total matches the T-shirt hype because their $587.41 bill is slashed to $57.41, and the cashier surprises Briana an extra coupon thanking her for her patronage. But the bigger surprise is that the piece of paper is actually a proposal, and Jose drops to one knee with her dream ring in hand. He even made a coupon binder listing all the reasons why he loves her. Awww!
“That coupon was the best deal I ever got,” Briana exclaims.
We couldn’t agree more and will forgive Extreme Couponing™ for going on hiatus for awhile. Until then, you can relive each episode right here on the Budget Bugle™ or follow us on Twitter for hot deals throughout the day. Happy couponing!
