Extreme Couponing

div class=”separator” style=”clear: both; text-align: center;”/divdiv class=”separator” style=”clear: both; text-align: center;”a href=”http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mlhoCOYAp6I/TaHgPwVGd5I/AAAAAAAAAYo/2swvBBF57W8/s1600/coupons.jpeg” imageanchor=”1″ style=”margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;”img border=”0″ src=”http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mlhoCOYAp6I/TaHgPwVGd5I/AAAAAAAAAYo/2swvBBF57W8/s1600/coupons.jpeg” //a/divdiv class=”separator” style=”clear: both; text-align: center;”br //divThe blogsphere is buzzing with posts from a href=”http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/tv/extreme-couponing”TLC’s Extreme Couponing/a. nbsp;As a family becoming financially free, I sat down the other night and watched the episodes to see what I can learn from it. It definitely was not what I expected. nbsp;Here are some thoughts.br /br /First, I found it interesting that the first episode that was recorded on my DVR came after the TLC show Hoarders.nbsp;i{Was that anbsp;coincidencenbsp;or a foreshadow?}/ibr /ibr //ibr /Second, I realized that the first few women I saw have some deep-rooted issues. nbsp;The words I kept hearing were, “I need to be in control.” nbsp;Now, I’m not a psychologist, but I do know that when people feel the need to control something in their life, that means they feel out-of-control somehow. nbsp;The irony is that they are in control of how much money they spend but out of control on how much they accumulate.nbsp;i{There’s a head-scratcher for you.}/ibr /br /Third, I must admit that it was pretty amazing that people can spend over $1000 retail and end up paying less than $50 – but at what cost. nbsp;One woman claims she spends over 70 hours couponing bon top/b of a full time job.nbsp;Add to that that she will spend over 6 hours doing her shoppingnbsp;i{the shopping and 2+ hour checkout}.nbsp;/inbsp;Plus, she has every space in her home filled when she only feeds her and her boyfriend. nbsp;That begs the question, “Why do you need ALL that stuff?”br /br /What I found ironic is that this woman will spend $70 for coupons from a clipping service. i{Hello?!?}/i If your goal is to save money using coupons and then you go and spend $70 to get them to save a boatload of money on stuff you won’t use are you really saving money? Or do you have a shopping addiction?br /br /There was the rare mom who somehow managed to do extreme couponing while maintaining some sanity on the volume of product and limited it to what her family actually consumed. But that was the exception, not the norm for the show.br /br /Ultimately, it is all about self-control. nbsp;If you are going to stockpile, stockpile what your family needs and uses i{80 sticks ofnbsp;deodorant? 50+ bottles of mustard? Really?}.nbsp;/ibr /ibr //ibr /If you are able to get excess for free, consider donating it to the local food bank or women’s shelter? Can you say bTAX DEDUCTION/b? nbsp;i{Mr. Coupon did this and boy was I relieved when he did!}/ibr /ibr //ibr /Remember to keep first things first. If you are couponing, stockpiling, and digging for deals be sure you’re doing it AFTER you’ve done a written budget, are bon the same page with your spouse/b, have adequate term life insurance, and other primary necessities to a sound financial plan. This is all outlined in Dave Ramsey’snbsp;a href=”http://www.daveramsey.com/fpu/community/”FPU/anbsp;class or his booknbsp;a href=”http://www.amazon.com/Financial-Peace-Revisited-Dave-Ramsey/dp/0670032085?ie=UTF8amp;tag=debtfree2010-20amp;link_code=btlamp;camp=213689amp;creative=392969″ target=”_blank”Financial Peace Revisited/aimg alt=”” border=”0″ height=”1″ src=”http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=debtfree2010-20amp;l=btlamp;camp=213689amp;creative=392969amp;o=1amp;a=0670032085″ style=”border: none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important;” width=”1″ /.br /br /divbr //divbr /div class=”separator” style=”clear: both; text-align: center;”/diva href=”http://www.aghdesigns.com/images/blogs/siggy4.png” target=”_blank”img alt=”Anna” border=”0″ src=”http://www.aghdesigns.com/images/blogs/siggy4.png” //a