A deal you didn't need is not a saving

No, and the accounts are clear that this is the first thing to understand. The era those shows captured — roughly the early 2010s, when stacking coupons and loopholes could fill a trolley for almost nothing — is over, and five separate conversations say why: retailers and manufacturers watched the same shows, saw the losses, and closed the loopholes, capped the cash back, limited how many identical coupons you could redeem, and tightened the rules. Two conversations add that the shows themselves hurt the practice, because they exposed the fraud and the loopholes and triggered exactly the crackdown that ended them, and one account says the shows were largely faked, with producers supplying the coupons and arranging the trips. What replaced it, five conversations say, is digital: your supermarket's own app, loyalty card and personalised email codes, which are far easier than clipping paper but give smaller discounts. So the honest picture is real savings, modest ones, on the things you already buy — not a lifestyle that turns groceries free. Chasing the television version now is chasing something that no longer exists, and the one account here that tried describes waste, financial strain and resentment as what it got from it.

One test, and it is the most important line in these conversations: would you have bought this thing anyway, at its normal price, if there were no deal? If yes, a coupon or a sale on it is a genuine saving. If no, then buying it is not saving money at all — it is spending money you would otherwise have kept, and the discount is the bait that got you to spend it. Six separate conversations make this point, because extreme couponing so often ends in the opposite of thrift: cupboards and garages full of processed food, toiletries and cleaning products bought because they were cheap, much of it never used, some of it going off before it can be. A saving that leaves you with a closet of things you did not want is a loss with a receipt that looks like a win. So the discount is the last thing to look at, not the first: decide what you actually need and use, and then let coupons and sales lower the price of those — never let the coupon decide the need. That one question is the habit these conversations keep coming back to.

Often not, and the accounts who did it seriously are the ones who say so. Four separate conversations point out that the hours spent finding, clipping, sorting and driving to redeem coupons are themselves a cost, and that once the easy loopholes closed, that time stopped paying for itself — many experienced couponers describe giving up the complex strategies for simple ones precisely because the return no longer justified the effort. Put your own time into the sum, in other words, not just the money: an afternoon spent chasing a few pounds off is an afternoon, and the accounts are honest that it is rarely a good trade once the savings are ordinary rather than extreme. The fork below carries the sharper version of this, where the accounts disagree about whether the pursuit is sensible frugality or something closer to a compulsion — a habit that keeps going after the savings have stopped making sense, for the feeling of the hunt rather than the money. Neither side is wrong for everyone; the useful question is whether the time and the stockpile are serving you, or you are serving them.

What saves money now is small, digital and boring, and it works: use your regular shop's own app, loyalty scheme and emailed codes, and apply them to the things on your normal list, timed to when those things are on sale. That is the modern remainder of couponing, and the accounts say it is worth doing precisely because it costs almost no time and touches only what you were buying anyway. A few more honest notes from these conversations. If you do end up with a surplus of cheap or free goods — it happens, especially with a good multi-buy — two conversations say to give the extra to a food bank or shelter rather than let it sit and expire; surplus you will never use is not wealth. And one myth to drop: leaving your spare or expiring coupons beside the product, the well-meant 'coupon fairy' idea, does not help the next person — store staff say they are told to bin them within minutes, and they cause more trouble at the till than they save, from expired dates to wrong-size mismatches. If you want to pass a coupon on, hand it to someone who will use it. One aside the accounts raise: a 'best before' or 'sell by' date is about peak quality, not safety, though a 'use by' date is the one to respect. Which label carries legal weight differs by country; that hedge is this page's, so check your own.