Coupon Cuts

I cut another coupon.

I don’t know how much I’ve saved this year. How much I’ve saved my entire life.

If I had to guess, it would probably be in the six figures. Maybe more. I suppose the one regret I have is that I didn’t take stock how much I saved cutting coupons. I should have started in my twenties. I should have started when I was a teenager. I should have started when my mom asked if I wanted to go to the store with her in grade school and handed me the coupon book filled with page after page of coupons from a wide array of newspaper clippings.

Oh well. Life isn’t a sale on spoiled milk.

There’s quite a few things on sale this week. The key, though, is to find the sales that directly apply to me. If I were to just cut every coupon willy-nilly and buy everything in the coupon book, then I would be wasting more than I was saving. That’s one of those lessons I had to learn the hard way.

Too many years spent never passing on a “deal”. But I was the sucker. I became the product, and it felt like the coupons were cutting me more than I them.

When I finished cutting my coupons for the week, I carefully go over them as if they are a religious artifact that could change form at any minute. I etch out a carefully laid plan of attack. It details everything I will cook and eat for the week, with a few modifications just in case things don’t go to plan. Then I compose a grocery list that chronicles the path I will take when I arrive at the store.

Every aisle, every corner, every department, chosen and predetermined to make my grocery run as efficient and painless as possible.

When I finish shopping and stand before the gatekeeper of groceries, aka, the cashier, I will present to them my carefully manicured clippings of astroparchment savings stacked neatly in my wallet. And I will watch, bask, as the price of my wares steadily tumbles. And I will be satisfied.