Beware the false economies

Sometimes, ever so occasionally, I think that a university education was wasted on me.  I can't blame things on 'baby brain' any more.  Maybe it is having children?  Sleep deprivation?  Whatever it is, I wish it would stop as I seem to be making some poor judgements lately, particularly when it comes to shopping and spending money.

Currently, we are trying not to spend money. That is the big plan, to try and spend less, save more, pay off debts and boring things like that.  I do try, honestly I do, but sometimes things conspire against me.

Take this week at the supermarket as a good case in point.  My father in law gave me a five pound money off coupon to spend in a well-known supermarket this week.  'Great', I thought, it's coming up to the end of the month, that will come in really handy.  In order to redeem the coupon, you had to spend forty pounds.  So, even though I didn't want to spend that much, I put a few extra things in the trolley and ended up spending well over fifty pounds.  I got to the checkout to discover that the coupon wasn't valid yet.  Great.

Two days later, hubby was down with man flu, so I went to the same supermarket to pick up some medicine for him and a few other bits.  Suddenly, I remember that I have this five pound coupon burning a hole in my purse, so I start putting a few more extras in the trolley.  Again.  This time the coupon is valid, but I still managed to spend thirty six pounds.  So there you have it, over the course of three days I spent ninety pounds as opposed to the probable twenty that I would have spent, just so as I could save pounds!  That's a whopping great saving of minus seventy pounds. 

I can see that you are impressed.  And so you should be, but not with me as I am a prize numpty, but with the marketing genius that lies behind such offers as these.  These days food shopping is so expensive, that when we get money off coupons, we rush off to spend them and in the end spend even more.

The same sort of thing happened a few days before with the money off petrol coupon.  Again, there is a limit you have to reach before you qualify for the coupon.  I did some shopping and I was about three pounds off the limit.  The cashier jumped up and down excitedly on her chair and exclaimed that I should buy something else to get my coupon.  For that moment, I lost all sense of reason and heady with excitement grabbed the first thing I could find and felt triumphant when the till printed out my little ticket.  Only to have my bubble well and truly burst when I realised that I only saved four pounds at the petrol pump anyway, so it hadn't really been worth buying something I didn't need after all.

Supermarkets are very clever.  A lot cleverer than me, that's for sure.