You’ve seen them. They come in a variety of forms and sizes: from the big cardboard mailers Bed Bath & Beyond sends out to the credit card like design used by Office Depot to the standard old thin-stock magazines that come in the weekend paper. I’m talking about coupons, which are seen as a way to save money on anything from grocery items to restaurant meals, office supplies, clothing and personal services. Some people have even made a side hustle of collecting and selling coupons on the web, while a few have even developed methods of using coupons to get stores to actually pay them and still others have made small fortunes teaching people how to be an “extreme coupon” clipper. You do, however, need to be careful, as sometimes coupons can cost you both time and money rather than saving you.
Coupons can be a tremendous help in reducing household expenses if used properly. Unfortunately, they can also trap you into a false sense of saving. You can make coupons work for you and maximize the benefits received by incorporating them into your shopping routines and paying close attention to the drawbacks:
Buying more than you need
There are plenty of coupons for grocery items online and in print; they’ve never been really difficult to find. Now, however, there seems to be a new method of issuing coupons by the manufacturers as opposed to the old time standard of requiring only one item to be purchased: multiples of the same or group of items on a singular coupon. What that means is that instead of purchasing only the amount of an item you actually need, you will now be forced to spend extra money on these extra quantities in order to use the coupon. It is fine, so long as you normally need more than one of a particular item, but in many cases, the result will be wasting money and possibly having the additional products Lashify promo code going to waste. On the other hand, if you don’t need them, the cost of purchasing and wasting those items may very well any savings achieved by using the coupon.
Spending unnecessarily to reach coupon limits
The marketing departments know that many people will spend money just to save money. That is why when you receive a coupon for “dollars off” of a purchase, it generally accompanied by a minimum spending amount. They know that many people will spend whatever it takes to be able to use a coupon, not wanting to let it go to waste, and still feel good about the purchase because they “saved money”. In cases like this, the idea of saving money supplants the idea of spending more than they would normally have. In some instances, you can spend even more than just the minimum purchase price to use the coupon. Very often, the additional money spent will exceed the coupon savings which would make the store very happy indeed.
Negating other offers
Lots of online stores offer free shipping once yo reach a specified limit. Many of the office supply stores will give you free delivery when you spend $50. Every store has its own limit. But, what happens if you have a coupon code that would bring your purchase to below the free-shipping cut-off? If you said that you have to pay for shipping you are absolutely correct. What ends up happening is you may have added just enough to your card to receive your order with this free shipping offer, figuring that your actual order is enough and then the coupon/discount will be applied as a form of payment. Unfortunately, what the stores do is adjust the prices of what you purchased when applying the code entered, and subsequently it takes you below the free shipping limit. So, in order to avoid having to pay to have your order shipped, you either remove the coupon, or the more likely scenario, shop for more items which may cost more than the actual shipping charges.
Time is money
Sometimes people get so obsessed with saving money that they will disregard to time factor when it comes to searching for ways to save even the smallest amount of money. Searching the internet for any coupon to use in your grocery shopping for the week may only yield a savings of $1 or less. If it will take you an hour to compete your search, you need to decide whether or not that one hour of your time is worth the total saving you may find. Sometimes it’s not easy to predict, or something that is even considered beforehand. What is your time worth to you? That is the trade-off you need to think about in these situations.
