My little guy Landon comes up to me the other day and says, "Mom, can I be an extreme couponer?" Apparently he had caught an episode of "Extreme Couponing" on TV, where a 9 year old boy was featured. A mothers dream.... "Of course you can coupon honey!"
I think that Landon has this deep desire to be featured on TV, and make money from his fame. Last summer all he could talk about was how he was going to get on "America's Got Talent" and how he would win $1,000,000.00 by doing his break dancing. This summer it looks like TV spurred couponing interest.
In true Landon fashion, he wanted to start right that second, and nothing was going to change his mind. Being a Sunday night, I sat down and taught him what I know and we began planning a list from the ads, and cutting the coupons. Monday morning, he got up anxious for school, not for learning, but because the sooner he went, the sooner he could come home and do his first coupon shop. I have to admit, it was pretty cute him walking around the store with little black composition book in hand, finding the products on his list, matching them to his coupons, and double checking that everything was just so. While shopping he ran into a fantastic deal on Poptarts (a non list item). I had given him the cash to purchase the items on his list, and he figured out that he could afford to buy 3 boxes of Poptarts and still get his coupon list. He was so excited with his find. He was my little "hunter" chest all puffed out, head high as he walked to check out all by himself. He loaded all the items on the conveyor belt, and began to panic, when he realized he didn't have a fresh values card. "Mom, please tell me you have a fresh values card I can borrow, or my coupon trip will be ruined." Mom to the rescue, I pulled out my purple fresh values card, and he took care of the rest, handing over the coupons, watching the totals and paying the cashier. He just could not stop talking about his savings of over 68%, and "just look at all the items I purchased with coupons, and all for under $20!" Time spent preparing for coupon trip- four hours, price of grocery items after coupons -less than twenty dollars. Total savings- $68%. Seeing the excitement on his face after accomplishing what he set out to do, start to finish on his own, while saving money. PRICELESS!
