So, over the last week, we were snowed/iced in and I was doing a little research . . . well, just aimlessly surfing the internet. Well, that isn't entirely true. I had "Liked" this Krazy Coupon Lady on Facebook and so I was checking out her stuff.
I've always been curious how coupons were worth it. I mean, if it takes me an hour to cut out some coupons from Sunday's paper and I save a couple (and I do mean only a couple) of dollars, is it worth all the time and energy?
I have done couponing and just been excited to see how much money I saved, but extreme couponers are extremely good at the game of couponing.
So,
The Krazy Coupon Lady does this for a living. I'm sure she gets paid by advertisers on her website and TLC just did a pilot show with her in it called "Extreme Couponing". There was a lady on there who bought 125 jars of spaghetti sauce for pennies!! Anyway, it works like this:
* The Krazy Lady researches deals and coupons and she puts them on her website like this from today:
She tells you different scenarios and gives you where to find the coupon, etc. So, it got me thinking . . . what if:
* I get people to give me their coupons. People get the Sunday paper and just throw those things away. I have for a long time!
* I paid attention to the Krazy Coupon Lady's website and when I saw something that was a stock up deal, I took advantage of it. She does most of the work. I just need to kind of know my stores' (or even just 1 store) prices because prices will be different all over the US.
* Then, I can operate a food pantry based solely on couponing! Yes, it might take a little while to stock up on stuff, but I think if I got serious about it (or found someone who was), we could be stocked up in a few months / a year.
* Then, I'm able to give the food away for free or close to free. I think it would even be cheaper than shopping at the food bank!
* Then today, I was thinking, what if this gets to be so awesome and it's working and I can take people in poverty (who are wanting to transition out) and teach them how to coupon. Or even let them come in and pay a little something for the food. Or what if they just paid me what I paid for the item? Then, if they brought a coupon in for the item, I take that amount off.
Make sense? My mind is really going full speed with this thing just wondering if it could work.
Anyway, if you would like to give me those coupons that you would normally throw away, I would love to take them to practice with. I'm going to start trying to play the coupon game with every intention of starting a food pantry this way.
