I'm a couponer, this is not realistic
I am what you would call a couponer but there’s so much fake and fraud on these shows it makes my head spin. Most stores do not double coupon, I can think of one grocery store that does it twice a year where I live and Kmart does double coupons (up to $2) once a month.
To get all those coupons they’d have to either know a ton of people willing to give them away or buy the papers, you can usually buy old papers at a big discount if available. Most of the time it’s first come first serve on buying old papers with ads, so its’ always a hit and miss. Some steal papers or ads which is wrong. It is true that most people don’t care about them, but that doesn’t mean you can just take them which unfortunately some do.
A lot of coupons expire quickly, so you have to either use them or they go bad. If you’re lucky you can find a sale on that item in the span that it’s good, there’s usually a six week rollover between sales on certain items.
Very rarely will you find an item for free. This has happened to me on just a couple occasions and once the item was marked on clearance. Most stores don’t allow overages although some do, to find it is very rare.
When you watch these shows they are normally only buying 2-5 different items, this is not reality when shopping for groceries.
Most of the time if you don’t get to a store early the item may be wiped out by other people looking to get a good deal, meaning the store’s sale price even if they don’t have coupons. This has happened to me many many times. You can go in there with 20 coupons but if they only have 1 item left, and none in back then that’s it unless you want to go looking at other stores. Some places will offer rain checks, which can really benefit the couponer since they are normally good for 3 months and you can wait around till a good coupon comes up and use it, but its usually only good for one item per rain check.
Most couponers will get 6 month stock of items, so yes I have a couple extra tubes of toothpaste but not 100 like you see some of them do. I do make some exceptions if I know from experience that some items only go on sale or at a specific price once a year.
I don’t buy stuff I don’t need. When I watch the shows I see them buying things they don’t use, don’t want or like. This has always confused me. Yes you may be getting muffin mix for a quarter but if you don’t make muffins why bother? That’s a quarter I could save.
Some people get 50+ of the same item. This means they have to find 50 of the same coupon, cut it out, plan it all, find a store that’s willing to take that many and at a good price. Some stores limit the amount of items you can buy at a sale price, so even then if you got 50 coupons only 1-2 will be used unless you go through the line 25x, and yes I’ve seen people do that. You can find coupons online now which is great, but they normally only allow you to print out once per computer.
People have gone to jail for fraud and theft on these shows. The stores they feature are bending rules so they can be on TV, I’m sure they are very pressured to do it too. Most of the stuff they get is stuff you don’t really need in the first place.
It’s a lot of work. Trying to keep your pile of coupons organized and current can take hours, plus looking at the ads to find what the best deal is. I don’t go out every week, and sometimes the store brand can be a lot cheaper even with a coupon for a name brand. Basically yes you can save money, but not nearly as much as you think or they show. It doesn’t show buying other staples and fruit, milk, breads etc. as well as the other things you normally get for your family.