I think this is a way to take advantage of the system. I like the idea of sales and coupons, but for every person like this (trying to get everything for free) there are millions paying for things (like its supposed to be) and subsidizing all these people! If you don't have money, adjust to your situation and get what you can afford!

I think that if the manufacturer didn't want us to get these things this cheap or free they wouldn't offer the coupons and sales to begin with. If you follow the sale flyers and coupon inserts, usually great sales follow the same coupons that come out in the newspaper inserts. If they didn't want us to shop this way it would stop. It just takes a little extra work and effort to put the sales and the coupons together. If manufacturers were loosing money on these sales/coupons it wouldn't go on.

If you knew how much the grocery system was already taking advantage of you, you'd see things differently. I have the benefit of being able to compare pricing at Safeway, Raley's, Save-Mart, Wal-Mart and Winco, and it always amazes me how the same product, say Newman's Own Sockarooni Spaghetti sauce, is about $3 and change at Raley's or Safeway and $1.65 at Winco and about the same at Wal-Mart. The same exact sauce, same exact size. Talk about being taken advantage of! The difference in mark-ups in different stores alone should make you want to balance the scales in your favor.

I see no reason to pay a premium on anything and give away my hard-earned money to anyone. Knowing pricing and using coupons are my way of waging financial warfare to keep more of what I earn. Anything less is just subsidizing the food conglomerates. I agree -- when coupons become unprofitable, trust me, you'll see less of them. I've already seen where coupons now require you to buy two or more in order to get a discount that you used to be able to get buying just one item. I've also noticed that the redemption periods for coupons have gotten shorter -- weeks instead of a month or more.

I am a furloughed civil servant and licensed upper middle-class professional who used coupons long before the furloughs. I've always lived within my means. Coupons, combined with putting in the time to study the Wednesday grocery sales papers to use them most advantageously, have given me a financial cushion and kept more of my money in my pocket. It's not about "adjusting to your situation and getting what you can afford" -- it's about being smart with all the resources available to you to maximize what you get for your money so you don't get ripped off. If you think of money as minutes and hours of your life given up in exchange, you'd want to make that money work harder for you, no matter how much you make, because you can never get back the time you spent making the money you need to live on.

Okay, I'm off my soapbox (which I paid for with coupons)!

Pamela, using coupons wisely isn't taking advantage of the system. (IAspire makes excellent points.) A coupon is a form of payment, like cash or a credit card. The store is reimbursed for the face value of every coupon, and also gets a per-coupon handling fee--read the small print on the coupon.

Thanks to coupons, I spend less and often get more groceries and personal care items than I can use, so like most avid couponers, I donate regularly to the local food bank. I don't believe that people who "don't have money" should just adjust to not eating, or eating the cheapest stuff.