Cable TV and the Extreme Couponing Diversion

About three weeks ago, we cut the cord to cable TV.  I've desperately wanted to do this for years.  I do not watch TV.  Ever.  I limit the amount of TV that Jack watches during the day to just a couple of shows after we do our morning lessons, and Justice really doesn't have time to watch TV at all.  He gets home from football practice between 5:30-6:00 PM and after homework and dinner, it's time to get ready for bed.  Shandi is either at work or asleep.  That leaves only one TV watcher in the house.  Yep, you guessed it.  The Coach.

The Coach watches sports or sports news on TV all the time.  Even when he's doing something else, he's watching sports.  If he's not watching sports, he's listening to a podcast of some sort.  Don't get me wrong, I couldn't possibly care less what he watches on TV or how much of it.  He gets his honey-do list done without too much complaining, and if he chooses to listen to endless sports banter on his headphones while he's doing it then so be it.  But in the end, the rest of us won.  For a minute, anyway.  After The Coach retired, he wasn't sure whether he was going to go back to work or not.  But if he wasn't, we knew we would have to cut some corners.  While both of our retirements are ample income for our family and we can live off of them fairly easily, we both like to shop.  I like to buy stuff.  All sorts of stuff.  Joe likes his gadgets, and we all like to take trips.  We also have three boys to raise, and in order for them to continue the lifestyle they are used to, we were going to need to do a little more budgeting in other areas.  The cable TV bill was the top thing on the chopping block.  So we canceled.  And then the drama began.

We signed up for Netflix, and that has turned out to be a great decision.  We watch family movies together all the time, and it's been a lot of fun.  We've watched some classics like Ferris Bueller and The  Goonies and Jack has watched Nacho Libre at least 25 times.  I don't like to go to the movie theater and I hardly ever go, so this has been a great opportunity for me to catch up on 15 years worth of stuff I missed.  It's a win, right?

Wrong.

The Coach went through withdrawals.  He rigged the TV in the living room so he could get the local channels and some NFL games this season.  He spent hours on the computer trying to figure out a random way to get ESPN.  He wouldn't let it go, it was tragic.  He was miserable.  And he was still watching TV, just really bad TV now. 

While desperate to find something to watch on TV, he started watching a show called "Extreme Couponing".    Ugggghhhhhh.  And suddenly, a lightbulb flickered in his head.  We were going to start eating for free, just like the coupon savvy ladies on the show.  

The Coach:  "Look... see how they do it!  They get everything for freeeeeeee!"

Me:    "OK, simmer down.  Nothing is free.  Reality shows are always a farce, this one included.  Groceries are NOT free."

Too late.  The seed was planted.  He was going to be an extreme couponing genius.  One lady said she spends six hours a day on this task of couponing.  

I'm not doing it.

When I retired from the Navy, our grocery budget was at a whopping 1,300 dollars per month.  I didn't have time to budget shop.  We ate a lot of convenience foods, ate out more often than we should have out of necessity, and just bought what we needed when we needed it.  But once I stopped working, I worked really hard to get that down to 700 dollars a month.  I went to extreme measures to figure out what I was spending money on and how to cut corners.  I went from store to store, checking out the best prices so I could determine what place to do most of my shopping.  Over the course of three months, I put together a spreadsheet with what I purchased most often and comparison prices from three stores.  After the three months was up, I tallied the sheet and the CLEAR winner was Walmart.  Not my favorite place to buy groceries.  I much preferred the other local store, but with the bottom lines as they were, it was the clear winner.  I clipped coupons for the first six months, bargain shopped, did all of that.  And then I added another column to my spreadsheet for a different price point.  The "store brand".  At Walmart that's Equate, Great Value, or Parent's Choice.  And let me tell you, it is not only cheaper, but A LOT cheaper.  Even with coupons it's hands down the cheaper choice.  And contrary to popular assumption, it tastes just as good.  In some cases, it's the exact same thing prepared at the exact same plant, just packaged differently.  I have some friends that refuse to shop at Walmart for groceries, and I say to each his own.

Over time I have gotten our grocery budget down to 75-100 dollars per week without clipping any coupons at all.  And that's freaking amazing.  That's breakfast, lunch, dinner, lots of snacks and lots of home-baked goods for five people, soon to be six when Bo starts on solid food.  And we eat really well.  Anyhow, when The Coach decided he was going to trim our grocery budget by turning himself into an extreme couponer, I got nervous and a little peeved at him for thinking I was a renegade food shopper.  Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there is plenty of validity in what these ladies are doing.  One lady was really excited she had 65 boxes of cereal in her storage.  And I saw the shelves loaded with Fruity Pebbles and Cocoa Pebbles and thought how lucky her kids were that they got to eat the same freaking thing for breakfast every morning for the next year.  How exciting and healthy.  And the other lady, who drove to four different stores in her giant gas-guzzling suburban to get the best deals... she spends five hours per day shopping.  That sounds like a blast when you have Jack and a baby with you.  Fun times.  

So The Coach hopped on the internet and signed up for a bunch of coupon places.  He did his research, we got the local fliers, and set out to see what we could do.  It was a catch 22 for me.  I didn't want to be wrong, I knew it couldn't get any lower, right?  But at the same time, who wouldn't want to save some money?  It didn't take more than a week to figure out that "we" were shopping as smartly as possible.  Even compared with 10 for 10 name brand sales coupled with coupons, Walmart store brands won every time except for one item.  The biggest money saver of all for me is meat.  I hit the stores in the morning when the butcher yellow-tags everything, and then put it all in the deep freeze when I get home.  I showed Joe the yellow tags in the freezer.  Today alone I saved 40% buying yellow-tag meat.  I also buy bulk meat from Zaycon.  The Coach has mocked my bulk meat buying sprees, until he realized how much cheaper it is.  That meat is much cheaper, he says.   

Yes, dear.

So, woefully and sadly, The Coach gave up on his quest to shave the grocery budget.  And that left only one thing left to do to get his precious cable TV back.

He got a job.  

I'd like to say it was peaceful while it lasted, but it wasn't.  Be carfeful what you wish for is the moral of this story.  If given the choice to have a cable bill or a stay-at-home-extreme-couponing-husband, I'd take the cable bill a thousand times over.

Have a nice day at work, dear.  Enjoy your lunch, made especially for you with love from Walmart.