Damn you, cursed Val-Pak!

I like the idea of coupons. (Or "kewpons," as my Grandma W. calls them.) I'm drawn to the concept of cutting a few cents here and there from the overall grocery bill until BAM!—all those ten-cents-off and fifteen-cents-off have added up and added up and your total bill is ten bucks cheaper. Voila! And you can waltz happily out of Ralph's or Vons or Price Chopper or what have you, warm with the glow of triumphant penny-pinching.

However, there's a catch. Coupon cutters must be meticulously organized and sufficiently self-disciplined, two qualities of which I am utterly devoid. Let's begin with the organization part. After clipping the coupons, it's a bad idea to, for example, shove them into a remote kitchen drawer that's already choked with old mail, dead batteries, wrinkled take-out menus, and three-year-old birthday cards. Because if you do that, you'll forget all about them until your hand accidently grabs one the next time you're rummaging around that drawer for a battery. (Although, don't bother, because, like I said, only dead batteries are stored there.) By that time, the coupons will have expired, and you'll be left blinking at the expiration date trying to calculate what age you were when the coupon was still valid. (Twenty-six? Nineteen?) I can write all of this with authority because I am that unorganized person stuffing coupons into already overstuffed drawers. What you're supposed to do, I've gleaned from Grandma G. and a few everything-in-its-place–type friends over the years, is keep the coupons in a coupon organizer, which is like a narrow little accordian file folder. It's small enough to take up temporary, if not permanent, residence in a handbag, so that it may be quickly and easily retrieved the next time you're shopping. The contents of the organizer can be filed by expiration date, product type, whatever, so long as they're categorized somehow. Sadly, this type of coupon storage is, to me, admirable yet improbable. I just tend not to place a high priority on filing, or categorizing, or weeding out old documents to make room for the new. (You should see the wad of old Baja Fresh receipts in my purse. Shameful!) The coupon organizer ain't happenin' chez moi.

...and neither is the self-discipline required to cut out and save only the coupons that discount products you actually buy. Obviously, you're not saving money if you're using coupons to buy extra products you don't normally use. Duh. A simple enough concept to grasp, one would think. Not for me, though. I rip open the Val-Pak Coupons envelope (always the familar pale blue with the purple stripe), and (after frantically rummaging through to see if I've won "one of 500 hundred-dollar checks placed randomly in the envelopes") the next thing I know, I'm hoarding coupons for things like Mystic Tan, maid service, and brake jobs. I tend not to see the coupons as opportunities to save on things I need, but as reasons to give something new a try. Or, illogically, as chances to save a few bucks on something I might, someday, sometime, somewhere find myself wanting or needing, like said brake job. Of course, the coupon for the maid service, for instance, will expire long before I'm wealthy enough to afford a maid. So you see, I'm doing exactly what the merchants giving out the coupons WANT me to do! I'm viewing the coupons as opportunities to spend money rather than to save it. They've got me right where they want me, those clever local merchants! I'm their helpless little bitch! Unless, of course, I overcome the lure of the coupon next time the pale blue envelope arrives in the mail, if such a thing is possible. I'll show them! (Maybe.)

We shall see.