Motley Savings...for my Coupon Loving Friends!!

Over on The Consumerist they are discussing the book called Secrets of a Stingy Scoundrel: 100 Dirty Little Money-Grubbing Secrets. It's cracking me up, seriously. Some of you girls (you shall remain nameless) really like doing the coupon thing. I like it, and use coupons, but certainly not on your level.

Here is a little excerpt about price matching:

Nearly every supermarket nowadays runs a price-matching program meant to satisfy customers' nagging suspicion that they're charging more than the competition for a lot of their stuff. The policy is present more as a security blanket than anything else, set in place by corporate bigwigs who figure not enough customers will actually go through the labor-intensive process to save a few cents off their pinto beans and slash into their stores' profit margins.


This way of thinking makes a lot of sense. To make sure you're saving the maximum amount, you need to jot down an ironclad shopping list, obsessively scan every newspaper ad, and then set up a spreadsheet that helps you annotate the ads with the pertinent low prices at each store. Do all that, and you're rewarded with the opportunity to make everyone standing in line behind you want to shoot you in the back of the head because you're holding things up by making the cashier verify each price.

But, there is another way: a way that skips several of the steps and saves you more money than even the most anal-retentive, price-match maven.


Here's what you'll need: a stack of sticky notes, a pen, and an armful of glossy grocery store ads. Lug all that into the shopping cart and you're in business. Affix one of your Post-its to every non-store-brand item you come across, then name your own price, making sure to deduct a substantial but not-quite-insane amount from the price tag. You use the pen to jot down the "price-matched" figure you're willing to pay for each item, and you can even go the extra mile for feigned authenticity by adding in a random competing store name to each sticky note.

As you approach the front of the checkout line, the checkout lady will immediately attempt to head out on break. But she'll warm to you once she sees how organized you are, and will happily tap your savings into the register. In most cases, the checkout clerk will be so confounded with the hassle she'll approve of all your prices just to keep the line moving.


Only the most bored or crazy checkout folk will sort through that unwieldy stack of ads to verify your sales notations are accurate, or compare your prices with their online database of competitors' sales, but it's still wise to avoid shopping during off-hours in order to avoid empty lines. The busier the store is, the better.

I don't think I would have the nerve to do it, but I do think it's funny! Go ahead and laugh.

Do you do anything really embarrassingly cheap?

My husband would probably say most everything I do is embarrassingly cheap. Me, I don't necessarily think so. My grandma re-gives us greeting cards that we have given her. Yes, they are signed and all. But, I give her a pass because she is old. Or maybe too sentimental to throw them out. Yes, that sounds better. At least she doesn't worry about her dishes having hurt feelings. Of course, maybe she does and that's where I got it from!