Giving up on Coupons

So it’s time for another “Giving up on Good” post with Naptime Diaries and the Tiny Twig. 

As the name of my blog points out, I am the envelope keeper in our family.  I’m the one who spends the money.  As a stay at home mommy who doesn’t contribute to the budget financially, I put tremendous pressure on myself to handle the money I am entrusted with well.  I work hard to stretch every dollar and to treat each one with honor.

I like coupons.  I love to look through newspaper ads and collect those colorful slips of paper.  My husband calls me the “coupon queen” which is very generous, because I am nothing like those couponers on TV.  The ones who spend $0.31 on six buggies of groceries and head home with 97 bottles of mustard, 31 tubes of toothpaste and nothing they can actually eat for dinner. 

As much as I like them, I’ve recently reworked my relationship with coupons for two reasons.  First, I was starting to feel like a coupon failure.  I will never be the girl at Harris Teeter with the three ring binder full of coupons I collected when I stole all the Sunday papers in the neighborhood and climbed into eight dumpsters.  Secondly, I was starting to buy things just so I could use a coupon.  I was spending more money on things I wouldn’t normally buy or I was buying name brand instead of store brand just because I had a coupon.  I was getting carried away with the game of it and it wasn’t really benefiting our budget. 

Yes, I still use coupons but I gave up on stressing about it.