Can Extreme Couponing Become an Obsession?

Most hobbies have two things in coming: they take up both your spare time and your spare money.  But if you’re looking for a hobby that doesn’t require you to spend any of your disposable income, and in fact saves you money (or even shows a return), then you may be interested in the time-consuming activity of extreme couponing.  You’ve probably seen the TLC show Extreme Couponing, which follows people who spend dozens of hours each week clipping coupons (from the Albertson’s circular, the Publix weekly ad, or any other grocery store flyers), scouring coupon websites (like Coupon Mom), and trying to match up multiple deals so that they can save extreme amounts of money at the checkout line.

These people not only treat their coupon searching, organizing, planning, and shopping like a full-time job (filling filing cabinets with coupon portfolios); many of them also stockpile food and other goods in their homes so that they sometimes have to build in shelving units in the garage, attic, or basement to hold what amounts to enough products to keep them comfortable, clean, and well fed for a year or more.  Some may even turn it into a sort of occupation by which they get items for free or nearly free and then sell them to friends and family at a discounted price, resulting in earnings every time they buy (although this practice is technically illegal).

In short, their hobby becomes a way of life.  But how can you tell when an otherwise fulfilling activity turns into a harmful obsession?  It’s easy enough to look at these men and women and say that they are obsessively couponing, but how can you really tell if they suffer from a psychological disorder that causes them to obsessively clip and save?  In truth, there is a fine line between hobby and obsession, and you can’t definitively say that spending this many hours or that many days engaged in extreme couponing denotes an obsessive behavior.

What does relate to obsession is anxiety.  If you find that you become nervous, agitated, or even panicky when it comes to couponing, for any reason (your coupons expire before you can use them, you don’t get the right amount off at the register, or your internet temporarily goes out and you can’t access coupon sites, for example), then you may be crossing the line with your “hobby”.  You should also be aware of whether or not your couponing is taking time away from other pursuits that used to make you happy.  If you’d rather hit up a big sale at the supermarket rather than going to your child’s recital or attending a family gathering, you might want to reevaluate just how much you’re letting your extreme couponing control your life.

But for most people, extreme couponing won’t get to the point of obsession.  And when you consider that some stay-at-home parents can use it to contribute to the household in lieu of a job, it seems reasonable that they should spend a few hours a day in the pursuit of savings through the use of coupons.  Just be mindful of whether it’s affecting your life in a positive way or turning you into a coupon-clipping basket case.