When I was a little coupons almost seemed like magic. At first, I thought that the prices in the store were etched in stone and there wasn’t a single thing that could be done about them.

Then as I got older, I began to realize that the idea of saving a dollar or two here and there might not seem like much, then I remembered something someone told me once that made a lot of sense.

“If you have a hole in your bucket, it does not matter how much water flows. You will never have a full bucket. If you make sure there was no hole in your bucket, then you don’t have to worry about how slow the flow of water will be”

Now those words hit me like a ton of bricks, but they made a lot of sense. You have to always make sure that you have enough set aside for when the unexpected thing happens. Which is why when people giggle at the people who do what they call “extreme couponing” I almost get upset because the people that are being mocked are the folks that always seem to have enough to spare when someone bad happens and resources are slim.

They’re also folks that are the best insulated against changes in the economic climate. I guess my mom was an extreme couponer. She could smell a deal from a mile away. One time, and this was in the 1990s, she was in a grocery store and heard the manager talk about an unadvertised sale they were doing where they were selling ground beef for fifty cents a pound the first hour the store was open. She got to the store two minutes after they opened and proceeded to buy 100 pounds of ground beef. It was immediately put in the freezer when she got home and we lived off of that for what seemed like forever.

This woman you’re about to read about is the type of person that takes the situation I just described to the next level.

From Business Insider:

After watching a TV show about extreme couponing in 2013, I felt this urge to test out the tactics people were using to see if they could actually save me money. I went online, found a coupon for a loofah, and took it to Walmart to see if it worked. They actually paid me a few cents to buy the item. After that, I was hooked.

At first, it was a hobby. I’d spend a couple of hours on Sundays searching for coupons online or in newspapers, then I’d head to stores to stockpile the best deals I could find.

For me, couponing grew from a hobby to something I couldn’t stop doing

In 2019, I made a coupon website, mostly for friends and family, who would ask me to post the best deals that I could find. After that, I made a TikTok account and posted videos about how people could save money on everything, from everyday items like soap to getting steep discounts at their favorite retail store.

Courtesy of Kayla Burk

These videos blew up, and I continued to post regularly. Today, I have more than 2 million followers on the account.

In 2020, between the brand deals I was getting from coupon apps to the affiliate money I was making from my website, I was making enough income to do this full-time.

I have stockpiles of certain items that will last me for years

While I don’t know how much much money extreme couponing has saved me over the years, I do have an entire drawer of just toothpaste and another of toothbrushes.

Now that I do this as a job, I make videos showing deals that I personally used coupons for, to prove what I’m showing is true. I end up with a lot of stuff I don’t need or won’t use, so I donate items to local shelters or let my friends and family grab what they need.

Even during inflation, you can save money in so many different ways when you shop

There’s never a shortage of good offers out there, and you can find them with preparation.

For example, download apps from the stores you shop at the most (ex: Target, Dollar General, etc.). That’s where you’ll find the specific coupons for that retailer. You can also search the brand’s website or a general website like Coupons.com.

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