Yeah. I've tried coupons, virtually all of them are for 'dinner-in-a-box' or something else high-priced, something you wouldn't eat anyway, like some brand-new convenience item they're knocking a few cents off of to get you to try, or a brand-name item that's twice as high as the generic sitting next to it. Once you cull out only what you would have bought anyway, you save four or five bucks. And you spent 30 minutes. And you drove to three stores. Oh, and the savings circulars...been there, done that. Sometimes there are loss leaders, sure. More often, it's stuff they bought too much of, that's been sitting on the shelf for weeks, tough cuts of meat that nobody was buying, stuff that expires tomorrow, ect. I've bought rancid butter, soured milk (with the date still current) and a pot roast that sat in the crock pot for 10 hours and still wasn't edible...we threw it out.

I'm always struck by how much time these folks seem to have on their hands. They don't seem to have jobs to be at, or kids to corral, or even housework to get done. What do you ladies do for a living that you can take coupon-clipping-classes? Oh, yeah...Slate journalists!