Why I (Generally) Don’t Coupon

It seems to be that time of year when I attempt to recommit myself to couponing. I won’t bother with food coupons because I don’t buy Totino’s pizza rolls, Pillsbury muffins, or boxes of cereal, and that seems to be all they have for coupons. I will try to nab some good deals on shampoo & conditioner, razors, soap, laundry detergent, etc.

After spending an inordinate amount of time this morning searching the various coupon sites, Googling the manufacturers to see if I can sign up to get my inbox spammed for a crappy coupon, and not-so-meticulously cutting all of the crap I printed, I headed out to the stores. My first stop was Walmart, or the Store-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, in the department where I work at my university.

This is where the trouble started.

I had a coupon for $6 off of two packages of disposable razors from Schick. It turns out that Walmart’s cheapest packages of Schick razors cost $6. They had two options at that price point- the Quattro razors that look like a disposable version of the nice Venus-type razors, and the cheapo razors that are so Stone Age, they only have two blades and a “moisture strip” that will surely fall off the first time you use it. I went for the crappier razors because I got 12 of them per package instead of just 3. They even throw in three extra for free, just in case I haven’t sufficiently sliced the shit out of myself with the first 12. These razors had coupons from Schick on the package for an additional $3 off when you buy 2. I was psyched that I would pay $6 for four 15 packs of leg slicers. Fast forward to the checkout, the manager refuses to take the $3 off coupon, but offers to give it back to me so I can use it on a future purpose. GMAFB, lady. The only reason I’m buying these hand held skin removers is because I have a coupon that essentially makes them BOGO. I won’t pay any more for the damn things and I doubt I’ll be a repeat customer.

Check out my haul.

Yes, I bought the men’s razors. They had that $3 coupon. The one I wasn’t allowed to use.

And this is why I don’t really use coupons. All I could think in the store was, “60 disposable razors for $12. That will last me a year, easy.” But, because I end up trying to be cheaper than usual, I buy shit that seems like a good idea, but would otherwise never buy. And now because I’ve spent $12 on the stupid razors, I will feel obligated to tough it out with the cheap ones instead of biting the bullet and buying nice refills for my Venus.

In what could be called buyers remorse, I’m looking for some online info on these things I bought. According to Schick’s website, their slogan is “Free Your Skin.” From what? My fucking legs? Are they kidding? They don’t even have the razors I bought on their website under the deceptive heading “Our Complete Line of Products.” Are they that embarrassed of these bottom-shelfers? Without the product I purchased listed on their site, it’s reasonable to assume that I’ll never get my legs so cleanly shaven that I can have as much carefree fun as these douchebags:

Check out these assholes.

In an attempt to protect my legs, I might even consider buying shaving cream- a product I generally to consider completely useless and unnecessary.

Also, does anyone know if there are coupons for Band-Aids? You know, for the inevitable moment when I get too confident with my new death cutters and take a little skin off my kneecap.

And I’m suddenly reminded why it seemed infinitely preferable to use one of my Venus razors for a year without trying to put a disposable to my leg.

I’m Back and I’ve Been Shopping

I am finally back in Oregon after about 3 weeks of “vacation”. I put that in quotes because on my second day in San Diego, I was out for a run (I was training to run the Portland Marathon). A douchebag riding his bike on the sidewalk scared the shit out of me and I fell directly on my kneecap. I can’t believe I didn’t shatter it. Two weeks later, it’s still swollen, and I’m still sidelined from workouts, so no marathon for me. I wrote an email to the Portland Marathon organizers, because even though their policy is that they don’t do refunds or transfers, I suspected that maybe I was special enough to get one. They sent me an email that essentially said, “No fucking way. Read the rules, you’re not special.”

But it also said this: “We do encourage you to either consider running as much as you can of the full or if you need to run the half, to register for one of the remaining charity entries.”

What? I told you I’m injured and cannot run at all (I still limp a little walking) and a doctor told me that I risk blowing out my knee if I run. And you want me to run and use my race entry as a charitable donation and get a tax deduction? Fuck you, Portland Marathon. What if I ran on your advice and did hurt myself? Also, I don’t even come close to spending enough during the year to even touch the standard deduction. That was not helpful. They won’t even roll my money into an entry for next year.

Anyway, here’s a picture of my knee the day I hurt it:

Ouch!

Needless to say, I didn’t do much but sit on the couch while I was in San Diego. No hiking, no swimming, no fun. But I did have lots of beer. So I guess that was OK.

I went shopping last week when I got home. Between a quick trip to Costco for dog food and coffee and a Winco trip, I managed to spend $200. To be fair, I don’t think I’ve ever seen my fridge so bare, but I did not feel like I got $200 worth of food. I noticed that eggs were up to $2.11 for 18, which is a $0.34 increase.  One thing that really pissed me off. I went to buy a pint of ricotta cheese to make some baked ziti-like concoction. I came home with 15 ounces of cheese. I guess they’re phasing out pints of cheese now.

Moving forward, I’m watching for a slight pullback in prices which would match a recent drop in commodities futures, including those for food. Coffee, cotton, and corn saw some of the bigger non-precious metal drops. However, like the gas and oil connection, it’s much stickier on the way up than on the way down, so we might not see this reflected at the store for some time, if at all.

One reason I see cited for the recent drop in commodities is the “strength” of the dollar. I would argue that it’s not so much that the dollar is “strong”, but that we are the least smelly turd in the pile of international currencies. The Euro is on the verge of complete collapse on the heels of a Greek default (which now seems imminent). As a result, many people ‘flock to safety’, which has traditionally been the dollar. We are given a relative bump in strength, but the fundamentals that are weakening the dollar are still the same, so we can look at this as a road bump on the way down. At this point, watching the Euro leaders bicker over who’s paying what and when in the Greek bailout is kind of like watching a couple drunks fight over a bar tab on the Titanic.

And now for some positive thoughts, I’ll leave you with a few highlights from our trip.

Ouch!

A Seal in San Diego- or as I like to call them, Sea Cats

We saw Ron Paul speak in LA. It was awesome.

Chris asking a few Perry supporters, “Why???”

Mt. Shasta

My car is COVERED in bugs. Gross.

We stopped at Crater Lake on the drive back.

US credit downgraded, oil prices down, US debt skyrockets- What does it all mean?

This has been a hell of a week. Thursday saw the biggest decline in global and US stocks since Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008. Friday night (conveniently after the markets closed) S&P reported they downgraded US credit from AAA to AA+ for the first time in US history. Two days after we passed the new debt ceiling increase, which is to be implemented in two stages, we used almost all of our allotted increase in the debt ceiling. Oil prices are at the lowest numbers in a long time- currently hovering around $85 a barrel for light sweet crude.

What will this mean for food prices? Honestly, I have no fucking clue. But I’m going to take a stab at putting it all together.

Let’s start with the credit downgrade. Two out of the three big credit rating agencies kept us at AAA. It was just S&P who downgraded us. The downgrade essentially means that they think it’s riskier now to purchase our US Treasuries (bonds) than it was a month ago, and that our outlook moving forward is pretty negative. S&P wanted to see $4T in actual cuts, not the $2T in nominal cuts that were included in the debt deal. Many politicians were quick to claim victory in their $2T in cuts, but in reality, none of those cuts are slated to happen over the next 3 years, and in fact our budget deficit will increase every year over the next ten years, it will just increase a tiny fraction less. That’s not a cut.

In theory, the credit downgrade should push the cost of buying a US bond higher because there’s more risk involved. In practice however, because of the Fed’s policy of buying our own bonds, bond prices have been kept artificially low and are likely to remain that way. My guess on the net effect of the downgrade is that it will give a lot of people an icky feeling about the economy in general and the markets will be pretty volatile for a little while. We’ll hear a lot of political grandstanding from the White House about how this is so totally unfair, and people will be out for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s head (rightfully so). Mainly because of statements like this:

Whatadouche. I’d like to see Geithner gone for many reasons, but if this is what makes him leave I’m pretty happy with that. For the love of God- I hope they don’t replace him with Jon Corzine (as many are speculating), former NJ governer, former Goldman Sachs prez, current asshole.

With lower oil prices, I know people will expect some drop in food prices because delivery will cost less. I think this is a small part of increased food prices, however when oil prices change, gas does not follow as quickly on the way down as it does on the way up.

It’s possible that traders will look to commodities (like food) as a safe haven or that they’ll expect food prices to go up because of global uncertainty (remember the issues with the Euro and the Yen right now), and that all of this will drive commodities futures up.

Early next week, the Federal Reserve has it’s FOMC meeting. The Fed people set policy at these meetings based on numbers. They have been holding press conferences after these meetings, and those have been watched very closely by the markets for any hint of despair in Bernanke’s voice. They’re not holding a press conference this time. This makes me think that they’re talking about a lot of bad news and they don’t want to send the markets into a tailspin with a public statement. Also, the end of the month is the annual Fed getaway to Jackson Hole, Wyoming (must be nice). It was after this vacation last year that Bernanke announced QE2. The market indicators that he cited last year as the reason for implementing QE2 (jobs/unemployment, inflation target, weak sales, etc.) are at the same levels or worse than last year. Either Bernanke has an actual prescription for when to implement stimulus- when factors X, Y, and Z reach these levels, we intervene- or he used those market indicators as an excuse last time around. It just isn’t out of the question that he might start talking a third (and possibly bigger) round of stimulus in the coming months. Especially since Thursday’s drop in the stock market wiped out all gains made after QE2.

If we get another stimulus, as I’ve said before, prepare for higher food prices. Stimulus is inflationary in nature. It injects more dollars into the economy, which in effect makes goods cost more. I think we may see some transitory drops in prices depending on seasonal crop yields or brief moments of market ecstasy, but I suspect things are going to be going up from here on out as a general trend.

Stock up while shit is cheap.

In the event of a third round of stimulus, I am going to have Chris help me turn our garage into a Mormon pantry.

Redefining Healthy Food: Refuting the Lipid Hypothesis

I have mentioned a couple times so far that I like to buy and cook healthy meals for me and Chris. But what, exactly, does that mean? It means that we eat a lot of protein- animal protein from good sources, limited grains, cereals, and sugars, and I try to eat veggies. I really don’t like many vegetables, so I disguise them within dishes and I’ve finally accepted the idea that sauteing onions for a steak does not count as eating veggies. We have an awesome veggie garden- we bought a house in February and decided to make about a quarter of the back yard a garden. We don’t think that saturated fats are the root of all dietary evil.

Our Garden

The Lipid Hypothesis was an idea proposed in the 1950s that was based on fallacious evidence from one study that found that people who ate more fat had more heart attacks. This junk-science was presented to congress, and from there the Food Pyramid was born. The idea that fat is bad still persists in government recommendations today, despite being repeatedly refuted. It may seem fairly innocuous, however, this has led to a major industry surrounding the packaging of food- the American Heart Association “Heart Check” symbol and claims regarding the healthy nature of food are extremely tightly regulated by the FDA, and extremely loosely based in any available scientific evidenced that processed sugar cereal (Cheerios) lowers your cholesterol.

This post is certified low in saturated bull-shit.

Growing up, I remember learning about the USDA food pyramid in elementary school. What a crock of shit that thing is. Now they’re trying out something called My Plate (www.choosemyplate.gov). Chris and I watched a movie called Fat Head yesterday (available on Hulu). It was excellent. The guy lost weight by eating at McDonald’s for a month, a direct challenge to Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize Me. They consulted a few scientists and doctors and one of them referred to the Lipid Hypothesis and the ensuing governmental Food Pyramid recommendations as one of the most damaging health related scams in modern human history.

No wonder we're fat.

This thing recommends 6-11 daily servings of whole grains (read: carbs). One serving is a slice of bread. A dinner portion of pasta will have about 2 servings. That is a shitload of carbs. A lot of the foods recommended are also high glycemic index carbs, meaning they spike your blood sugar rapidly. This causes a corresponding rise in insulin and storage of fat, and over time the over-worked beta cells of your pancreas (the insulin producers) can wear out or your body can become desensitized to insulin. This process over time leads to obesity and Type II diabetes, two of the most common chronic diseases in the US today and two of the biggest risk factors for cardio vascular disease.

An awesome read regarding food choices and government recommendations

The idea that eating fat makes you fat is ludicrous. For a great detailed explanation of this, read Good Calories Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. The take home message is that fats provide essential nutrients needed in your brain, muscles, and other cells in your body, while sugars are stored as fats. Your body needs fats to function properly. Fats are extremely crucial in early childhood growth and development. A low to no fat diet is not anything that has ever existed in human evolutionary history until the last 50-60 years. One important note: not all fats are created equal. Your body needs a higher ratio of omega-3 fat to omega-6. Too much omega-6 can initiate inflammatory response.

So what do we eat and how do I buy the healthy foods? We shop from the perimeter of the food store. This is where they sell the stuff that’s closest to its original state- less processed. We don’t buy pre-made meals or things that come in boxes because they’re usually loaded with sugar and preservatives. When I buy beef, I like to buy from a local butcher who gets locally raised grass-fed beef. Grass fed beef has higher amounts of omega-3 fats and tastes a hell of a lot better. We are lucky to get a nice supply of wild-caught salmon and Steelhead from Chris’s dad. Fish are rich in omega-3s. Protein takes up about a third of the dinner plate, and sides the rest. I rarely make pasta, so it’s usually rice with a veggie. I also cook a huge dinner so we can have leftovers for lunch. Breakfast is usually a plate of incredible edible eggs, cooked in a generous dab of butter.

One more thing- Michelle Obama, who will henceforth be known on this blog as the Hamburglar, and her “Let’s Move” campaign can suck it. That bitch wants to tell families to eat low-fat foods and healthy snacks, but she hasn’t met a hamburger and plate of fries she doesn’t devour. The new food guidelines are completely asinine and won’t do a thing about the obesity epidemic, childhood or otherwise.

Damn, the Hamburglar has some sweet moves!

Shrinking Packages

Growing up, I used to go to the grocery store with my mom a lot. She is a great bargain shopper and she taught me to always know my prices. She has a mind like a steel trap about grocery shopping. I told her about the blog and that I wanted to do a post about Incredible Shrinking Grocery Items. Here are a few of the things she could think of off the top of her head, and a few I found from a cursory Google search. One of my aims over the next year will be to keep track of packages as well as prices, so I can try to calculate price per ounce differences.

Maybe our groceries have been for a swim.

Ice Cream: Half gallon down to 1.5 quarts

Coffee (Folgers): 13 down to 11 ounces

Helman’s (Best Foods) Mayo: 32 down to 28 ounces

Tuna: 6 to 5 ounces

Orange Juice: 64 to 59 oz

Canned Vegetables: 16 to 15 ounces

Skippy Peanut butter: 16 to 14 ounces

Kraft American Cheese Singles: 24 slices to 22 slices

Now it's 25% more difficult to leave a few bites of ice cream behind to pretend like I didn't eat the whole container.

Manufacturers used to put food in package sizes that were nice, round numbers. Odds are, if you see something that has 10.5 ounces, it probably used to be 12. It seems that packages have shrunk about 10% over the last few years on average. Even your toilet paper rolls are shorter!

More Monetary Easing = Bad News for Food Prices, Good for My Blog

Breaking News: After today’s House Financial Services Committee meeting, I have decided to make it a goal to track food prices for one full year, and of course to blog about it. Lucky you!

Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, admitted today that he plans to issue a third round of monetary easing. Predictably, gold and silver are up on this news. Food prices won’t be far behind. The Fed essentially creates money out of thin air in an effort to provide liquidity to financial markets (read: they put money in the hands of the rich and connected). There is now more money chasing the same amount of goods, which leads to a rise in prices. We see this across the commodity market- cotton, oil, gold, silver, coffee, sugar, etc. Don’t even get me started on food subsidies. But the extra money is not evenly distributed in the markets. Chris and I don’t magically make more money during stimulus periods, so now we have to pay higher food prices on our salaries which remain the same. Awesome.

The value of the dollar is rapidly declining. I’m 26 years old. Since I was born, the dollar has lost more than half of its purchasing power. This makes it very difficult for most of us average folk to generate any appreciable long-term savings. It just isn’t worth anything at the end of the saving period. Couple that with the artificially depressed interest rates, and savings are looking worse now than just about any other time in US history.

Whenever I hear talk of monetary easing, I imagine the government is taking laxatives. I guess you could say our government is taking a huge dump on us.

Gotta get things moving in there again...

Federal Reserve Stimulus- available by prescription only.

Indications: Constipated economy.

Active Ingredient: Dollars.

Directions: Administer 1-20 times per year directly to Wall Street to achieve greatest easing.

Side Effects: Poor schmucks can’t afford food and gas anymore.

Welcome

As the inaugural post on my blog, I’ll start with a little background. In my house, I handle the food shopping and the cooking for me and my husband. We’re not rich by any means, but we live relatively comfortable. It helps that we live in a pretty low cost of living area. I have been noticing a sharp upward trend in grocery prices recently. I don’t have a strict food budget, but I know I’m paying more and more for the same products and that prices are going up just about every week or two.

I’m also relatively well read on politics, economics, and current events. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics, in its latest calculations, states that overall food prices have risen 3.4% over the last year, and 4.4% for food in home (as opposed to restaurant prices). According to their website, they compile these numbers based on surveys about spending from a representative sample of households across the country. I wish they’d include my household because the trends I’m seeing suggest a rise much steeper than 4.4% for the year. I kind of think the BLS numbers are a crock of shit. (I think it’s an even bigger crock of shit that the so-called “core” inflation numbers exclude food an energy, especially since those are taking up more and more of average American budgets, but that’s a can of worms for another time.)

Coming full circle, I went food shopping yesterday. Living in the Pacific Northwest and being somewhat budget-conscious, I shop at retailers like Winco (allows me to buy many items by the pound), Costco, and occasionally Safeway if they have a good sale. I don’t coupon because most of the food we buy does not have coupons and I found the time it took to actually cut the damn things out or find them on the internet was taking too much time away from me being otherwise productive around the house or with my work I should be doing for grad school. In other words, a cost/benefit analysis I briefly conducted in my head told me that there’s no fucking way I’ll ever have the patience to coupon effectively. That being said, I am price conscious. I remember prices. I compare price per ounce on different sized items.

I have been noticing an alarming trend. Products are shedding actual product while cost is increasing. This is something that is not captured in the BLS inflation statistics. One can of tuna may have risen from $0.46 to $0.68 in the last year (for the store-brand crap), but the cans have at least 2 fewer ounces than they did about 2 years ago. The BLS only captures the cost of a can of tuna, a bag of chips, a container of orange juice. I can’t really blame manufacturers, afterall, costs are up across the board. That gets passed to us. But if you’re going through food a little faster than this time last year, the smaller packages are probably contributing to that. I will say one thing, manufacturers are really sneaky about the smaller sizes. The packages might say something like, “New look, same great taste”, which in FDA terms absolves them of potential lawsuits because they’ve alerted consumers that something is different, but they don’t really tell you what. Start looking for shallower bottoms on cans, deeper dimples on the bottom of 2-liter bottles of soda, smaller OJ cartons, etc.

During my shopping trip to Winco yesterday, I picked out a flavor of coffee that I wanted, conscious not to fill the entire two pound bag like I used to now that the coffee costs $7.88/lb up from $5.97 last summer. I grabbed American cheese, skipped over eggs that are roughly double last summer’s price- we get fresh eggs from Chris’s parents, and went to grab my favorite burger topper- Claussen sandwich stackers. I had recently paid $2.18 for a jar of them, but was running low. We make a lot of burgers in the summer. Also, I fucking love pickles. A jar of Claussen pickles was up to $3.20. $3.20!! No. Fucking. Way. My panties sufficiently bunched, I decided that I will be taking pictures of products and prices and keeping receipts so I can make giant, nerdy spreadsheets to track price increases in my favorite products. And I decided to keep a blog of my shopping experiences. I also decided that there will be no more willy-nilly pickle usage now that they want to charge me $3.20 for a jar of those suckers.

I cut a pickle in half for my burger tonight. I should have made a frowny face with the mustard.

Welcome to “I paid WHAT?”.