Extreme Coupon-ing

I've watched a couple of episodes of a show on TLC that glorifies the extreme coupon-er.  The first couple of episodes weren't too awful and obnoxious.  Tonight's episode had me quite disturbed.  One of the now famed extreme coupon-ers went digging through dumpsters to find coupons that were thrown away, another would steal Sunday newspapers from her neighborhood to maximize her number of coupons.  REALLY!

I'm all for saving money.  In my family we often boast about the best "sale" we got for an item.  Especially around Christmas time.  Just a week or so ago, my husband went shopping at Macy's.  He purchased two "Izod" button down oxford like shirts for a whole whopping $0.49.  Each shirt retailed at $50 each and between a store "sale" that brought the price of each shirt down to $10 and $12, and a bonus gift card received from the purchase of our Dyson vacuum cleaner a week earlier - the price was only $0.49 total including sales taxes.  The difference between this transaction and the grocery store transactions are that my husband went to the store with the intent of purchasing one shirt with the bonus gift card of $25 and some odd cents and paying the difference.  He never dreamt that he'd get two for less than $0.50.  These extreme coupon-ers - they purchase an enormous amount of the same item (like say 20) and purchase them knowing they don't really need them.  They literally have to find storage space in their homes to put all their "very extra" items.   For instance one woman had purchased 20 bottles of Maalox - unless she's consuming them like water - there is no way this person needs that many bottles.  And most likely, the effectiveness of the product will be lost by the time she consumes the last bottle anyway - as the expiration date will have come and gone by then.

Its gluttony, or at least greediness at its extreme level.  Isn't that one of the 7 deadly sins?  I have yet to see a "thin" extreme coupon-er too.  Maybe if they didn't purchase 30 bottles of soft drinks and dozens of packages of candy.....

I'm sort of repulsed by this extreme coupon-ing behavior.  I feel like TLC is glorifying people who are ripping manufacturers and grocery stores off.  I believe in saving for the right reason, but when you have to dumpster dive or steal coupons from people's Sunday newspapers - to me that's way over the top just to save.

I would rather starve, not purchase unnecessary items or work 3 jobs before I would lower myself to the level these extreme coupon-ers did to save money on groceries.