Last week, fellow bloggers Debbie at Motivating Mum, Kate at Curb Your Consumerism, Miss Thrifty, TotallyMoney contributor A Thrifty Mrs and myself were approached by a journalist to share our thoughts about ‘extreme couponing’.

To the uninitiated, ‘extreme couponing’ is an American phenomenon the Daily Mail would have you believe is rumbling across the Atlantic as we speak. The craze involves snipping coupons out of newspapers, leaflets and magazines to run up some serious discounts on your shopping bills. Doesn’t sound too extreme to you? Look what happens when our American friends get a little trigger happy with their coupon clipping…

Channel Four producers must be wringing their hands with glee at the prospect of airing a ‘human interest story’ starring the British answer to these poor hoarders. Whilst sensible couponing is, well, sensible, extreme couponing is exactly that. It’s extreme. It’s highly addictive and a horrible waste of time and money.

Here’s why.

A deal is only a deal when you save on a purchase you already planned to make. Say you have found a £50 dress in Warehouse that’s absolutely perfect for your office Christmas party. You then find a voucher offering you 25% off purchases at Warehouse. You buy the dress with the voucher. Congratulations! You’ve just saved £12.50! Now imagine that you’re busy clipping coupons and you find a voucher offering 25% off purchases at Warehouse. That seems like a good offer, so you go shopping in Warehouse. You find a £50 dress. Hey you weren’t planning on buying a dress, but you have a voucher, so it’s a bargain, right? You buy the dress. Congratulations you’ve just wasted £37.50.

Remember: a deal is only a deal when you save on a purchase you already planned to make.

And here’s where extreme couponers fall down. They find a coupon for a brand of cereal. A box normally costs £2.50, but with this coupon a box costs £1.50. Great. So the extreme couponer will stock up on twenty boxes (and that’s a conservative estimate for an extreme couponer). Never mind that nobody in their household actually likes the stuff. It’s still a bargain, right? Wrong. The family don’t eat the cereal, so it sits there getting progressively soggier. The extreme couponer won’t have saved £20, they’ll have wasted £30.

Here’s where coupon fans point their scissors at me and make the case for stockpiling their family’s favourite products. Excuse me while I look pityingly on at the newspaper clippings on the floor. Say the extreme couponer’s family loves avocadoes. They come across a coupon for avocadoes and buy thirty of them. The extreme couponer is now faced with the dilemma of eating avocadoes solidly for several weeks or a mountain of sludgy green mould forming in their kitchen. Now no family loves avocadoes THAT much.

‘But what about non-perishable goods?’ I hear you coupon-lovers cry. Here’s where the US and the UK distinction is important. The UK can fit into the USA 31 times, but there are only five times more people in the US than in the UK. What does that mean? It means that in comparison to our American counterparts, us Brits are packed into this country like sardines in a can. As such our houses on average are much tinier. Americans may be able to store seven years’ of toilet roll in their large basements but us Brits just don’t have the space in our pokey homes to stockpile products. So what happens? British extreme couponers are forced to stash their hoards in the most bizarre places; under the bed, behind the sofa, in the washing basket. Soon enough they lose track of their inventory. It’s hard to remember that you’ve bought thirty kitchen rolls when you’ve put fifteen in the loft, eight under the kitchen sink and the final seven in that weird space between the wall and the fridge. Having forgotten about the loft stash, the extreme couponer will go out and buy a whole new load of kitchen roll.

Comprising your ability to make money at the expense of saving it seems unbelievably counter-intuitive.

Most alarming for me is the amount of time extreme couponers invest in clipping coupons. Extreme couponing is highly addictive and lends itself to debilitating obsessive compulsive tendencies. In the US, it’s not unknown for extreme couponers to quit their jobs to pursue their scissor snipping. For others, their obsession creeps into their working lives, and their performance at work suffers. Comprising your ability to make money at the expense of saving it seems unbelievably counterintuitive to me.

The (non) extreme couponing guide

If hoarding ten years’ worth of dog food isn’t your thing, here’s the non-Channel Four freak show style guide to couponing:

1. Once you have decided what you are going to buy, THEN you should look for coupons or vouchers. Remember the deal is only worth it if you were going to buy the item in the first place. Bear in mind if you realistically won’t be able to consume the product before its expiry date or if storing it is going to be difficult, it’s not worth it.

2. Don’t be taken in by daily deals sites, unless there’s something specific you’re looking for.  Groupon have yet to convince me that I need a fish foot spa treatment. But as my hair looks increasingly straggly and my roots are peeping out, if a decent haircut and colour deal comes up, then I might take advantage of the offer.

3. Remember that every week, bargain-hunter Penny runs down the best deals, discounts and vouchers online and in-store. Once you know what product you want, have a quick look through Penny’s listings to see if she can help you out.

4. Scouring newspapers with scissors in hand is a waste of time. If there’s an offer in a newspaper or magazine to be had, there’s a blogger, bargain hunter or contributor on the Money Saving Expert forum who will know about it. Once you know what you want, briefly check online for a discount.

5. Keeping register of paper coupons can be a nightmare. Make your life easier by getting vouchers sent to your smart phone. The Vouchercloud app is free and it finds deals tailored to your interests based on your geographical location. The RedLaser app is another free app which scans barcodes to compare prices of your desired product in a variety of different places to make sure you’re getting the best deal.

More (non) extreme shopping tips

Looking for other ways to save on your shopping? Look no further than these past TotallyMoney gems.

Sian asks when is a bargain not a bargain?

A Thrifty Mrs reveals 6 ways to reduce the cost of your supermarket shop.

Jo shares ways to make big savings at the supermarket and at home.

Sian uncovers the sneaky tactics supermarkets use to make you spend more.

Penny divulges her secret tricks for finding bargains online.

Britney wonders if buying wholesale is really worthwhile.

Do you think extreme couponing is a waste of time and money? Do you reckon it’s coming to the UK?

{Photo: Bran Van Damme}