Penny For Your Thoughts
By: Nancy Whitaker
I am always looking for some kind of a good deal. Maybe I am a penny pincher, but to me there is nothing better than getting a discount or having a coupon for an item. It seems as if Sunday newspapers usually have the fliers with coupons in them and we can either clip them out or better yet, sometimes you can find them on your mobile telephone and not have to worry about forgetting them when going shopping. In fact more than 55.7 Americans are now using online coupons which represents 25 percent of the U.S. population.
I like using online discounts and coupons, especially in a department store. One evening last week, my daughter and I were shopping and we were both out of luck. There were no online coupons, plus she had forgotten her ones from the paper. Being the shoppers we are, we were both disappointed that we just were not going to get a discount that day.
However, lo and behold, a lady behind us had a whole paper of coupons. I really think she must have been the “coupon angel” because she gave us coupons for $20 off of our purchases. It was indeed a good day.
It seemed as if my late husband and I always got into an argument whenever we went to the grocery store together. I had “name brand” coupons which I thought were good deals, but he always disagreed and said, ” The store brand is cheaper, why waste money on a name brand? I would reply, “Because I got a coupon!” I was also guilty of clipping coupons for items I didn’t even need, because it was a “good deal.”
Do you know what company created and promoted the first coupon? It was in 1886 when a pharmacist, John Pemberton, created the syrup for Coca-Cola. He sold it for a nickle a glass at an Atlanta pharmacy. Pemberton and his bookkeeper decided to pass out free drink cards to people on the street, because in it’s first year, Pemberton only sold nine glasses of Coke a day.
Two years later, Asa Chandler bought the rights to the Coca-Cola formula for $2300. He took the free voucher idea and took it a step further by inserting them into magazines and mailing them across the country. His plan worked. Today Coca-Cola sells more than 1.7 billion servings in a day.
In 1909, Post Grape Nuts cereal put a penny coupon in their boxes of cereal and it must have worked, because, if you go to Coupons.com, there is supposedly a coupon on the site for a dollar off. Just think, coupons have worked for that company for over 100 years.
The other day, I was shopping again and had a fist full of discounts and coupons for a clothing store that I frequent. However, some had expired, others just worked with a credit card and it seemed as if I was not going to get a discount. Then I remembered that I had a text message on my phone from that store which told me if I spent an X amount of money, I could get $40 off.
When the cashier rang up my items, I was just $10.01 short of spending what I had to in order to get that money off. She told me to go back and pick out an item for $10.01, so I found something for $9.99. But, I was still like two cents off. So I said, “You have nothing in here for two cents!” I was not about to lose that $40 discount. The cashier said, “Oh here. Just buy this bottle of water for a dollar.” So, I did, because I just had to get that discount. I had to spend extra money to get my savings, but I did it.
It is always fun to be in a store when they announce a sale or a “blue light special.” I try and run as fast as I can and push as hard as I can to get over to see what the item is that is causing all the excitement.
Black Friday is a good day for sales, coupons and discounts. In fact, a lot of Thanksgiving afternoons are spent pouring over the sale ads and deciding where to shop at 5 a.m the next day.
Everyone has some kind of sale, coupon or discount and I like to be in on all of them, whether I need the item or not. I am not a coupon queen, but I am like everyone else and like bargains and discounts. Years ago, I remember when a company put dish towels or towels into boxes of soap detergent. In fact I collected a whole set of towels from those boxes of soap.
I do believe they may still put a toy in Cracker Jack. Does anyone know if they still do and what it is?
