Um, pardon me, I have a coupon...

For Christmas, my mother treated my father and my boyfriend each to a version of the "Entertainment Book." Remember it? Celebrated years ago as THE way to wine & dine a significant other, get sports equipment for the kids, or get an oil change at great prices? My mother swore by hers while I was growing up - and good for her, too. I'm sure there were many things we could not have afforded at regular prices, but were lucky enough to experience because of the coupons.

My mother is a bit dejected by this year's offering, however. She says that the conditions under which you can use the coupons have changed quite a bit. Where before you could simply "Buy one entree, and get one of equal or lesser value for half price", you now can only "Receive $5 off of your meal when spending $60 or more." I suppose this is more worrisome because my parents are no longer taking kids in tow when they go to a restaurant, and my boyfriend and I are just two people, so a $60 meal, even with a discount, is often more than we'd spend. This renders many coupons useless.

What about the ones in the book that you can't use? You pay for them all, and you get them all - even if you don't have a car that needs an oil change, or pets that need grooming, or carpeted floors that would require carpet cleaning. If coupons you don't need make up a significant portion of the book, how useful is the book to you?

Additionally, if you can look through the book beforehand, be mindful of expiry dates. A year-long book is great, but if most of the coupons expire before June of the given year, how great a deal is the book, really?

Once I get back home, I'm going to take a good hour at least to sit down with our coupon book and see how much of it we can use. After all these years of watching my family at work, I'm sure I've perfected the signature phrase of, "Um, pardon me, I have a coupon..."

The Coupon Question

This morning, a few classmates and I were discussing coupons.

"Jordan gave me a whole bunch of free cookie coupons [from Subway]," said one. "I thought, 'Don't you want these?'"

Just as inflation can end up decreasing the value of money (was it Argentina where this happened a few years ago, and $1000 bills were worthless?), so an overabundance of coupons lead us to feel that they are of no value. Those DOMO coupons that everyone gets about 10 of in the mail every week come in handy, but what do you do with those Domino's Pizza coupons, or drycleaning coupons? Sure, a coupon is nice to have when you're already a loyal customer and were intending to pay full price anyway, but does the coupon really convince you to buy something you weren't interested in otherwise?

For myself, the answer is often "no." Especially where the 'clip & save' flyers that arrive on Saturday mornings are concerned. Saving $1 off the price of salad dressing means nothing to me when I can't remember what the current price of salad dressing is. If that makes the salad dressing bottle cost $9 instead of $10, I'm still going to look for the $5 bottle. Forget the coupon.

Or better yet, I'll trade it to you for one of those cookie coupons.