First, let me just say - she did it! C slept through the night! And I think she may have been waking up because I've been starting to wean her and in the process probably not giving her enough milk in her bottle at night/using a newborn bottle nipple rather than the more advanced (faster flow) one. A found our little baggie of higher-level nipples last night so she was able to drink faster, and gulped it down. She went to bed at 10:30, which is still late, BUT is still sleeping at 8:45 this morning. YESSSS ....
Okay, now onto my reading find of the day. This morning, I found this article on Yahoo! Finance and can I just say ... I'm pretty sure I called this. As soon as I saw that TLC was making a whole series out of this extreme couponing, I started to wonder if coupons were going to become obsolete ... I mean, companies don't just make all these products for free. SOMEONE has to pay for them and if it's not the consumer ... the manufacturer is going to pick up the tab? Or the grocery stores? Uh, I don't think so. My original thought was that manufacturers are going to stop making coupons altogether. Or that stores would stop accepting them. Thankfully, this hasn't happened ... yet.
Honestly, I don't use coupons that often. A lot of times, coupons are not put out for products that I buy (I'd be ecstatic if they started printing coupons for produce/meat! :) and a lot of times, even with the coupon and sale, I can find a cheaper version of the same thing at Aldi. All in all, I'm really just happy to keep my family fed and our house running within my relatively-low grocery budget ($250-300/month).* If I can get something for free, great! But I'm not going to spend 4-6 hours/day scrounging for coupons or driving to 10 different stores in order to get it. And if I don't even like/want/need it, I'm not going to get it! Let someone else who actually WANTS that product, get it.
So the thing that makes me sad about this is that greedy, hoarding, "extreme" couponers are ruining it for the rest of us. Even though I don't use coupons very often, I do get things like shampoo, conditioner, hair products, toothpaste, etc. for free or really cheap when I can, by stacking coupons and whatnot. (Note: Usually buying only enough to stock our small cabinet shelf - at the most 4-5 bottles, but usually only 1-2.) While I completely understand the need to save money, especially in situations where the main bread-winner has lost his/her job, I really don't understand the, "I don't even like this product, but I have 50 bottles of it!" Well, great. That's 50 bottles you're TAKING from someone else who COULD use it. What a waste!
What grocery shoppers really need is a show on "extreme" saving - where people learn how to get healthy food within a reasonable budget consistently, leaving room for that emergency trip to the corner store for some Parmesan cheese (last night for us) or whatever else you may have forgotten. Got that, TLC? I am giving you that idea free of charge. :) Take it and run with it. Please.
*I do realize that there are some families who do not have this much to spend on groceries each month and I certainly don't have anything against them using the "extreme couponing" method. Most of the people on the show, however, are/were not in that situation and certainly do not need to be hoarding all of these products to themselves. Just my opinion. :)
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