Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Chasing Down Coupons

I've been keeping busy these days with Extreme Couponing. Well, that's what I call it anyways. I collect about 3-4 sets of Sunday paper coupon inserts every week and scour the circulars and ads for the best deals. I then buy the items I find the best deals on en mass. The idea behind it is that you purchase large quantities of items (basically stock pile) at a really cheap price. Later on down the road, you've actually saved money. Anyway, shopping this way has become quite thrilling for me. Hunting down bargains and watching my savings grow has been intoxicating.



I dunno what exactly is more interesting to me: the hunting/gathering aspect; the filling of my cupboards and feeling like I have *enough* aspect; the rush I get when I see my receipt's bottom line of my savings??... all of it, I suppose.


Either in the solitude of wandering the aisles or late at night literally clipping coupons, I've learned a lot about myself and my own personal hangups. One being that, in my world, *stock piling* can teeter on the verge of hoarding. It's very easy for me to get into purchasing things that I most likely would never use, just because it's cheap.

Case in point: I had carried around two coupons for $3 off medicated hemorrhoid butt wipes. This in itself is ridiculously funny. Why was I hanging on to them though? Because they were *high value* coupons! I finally found the *Tucks* for $2.72 each. You can imagine my delight.. Yes! I would get the wipes for free! How thrilling. But did I need them? no. Does anyone in my household need them? no. But I couldn't bring myself to pass up this deal. After 4 weeks of carrying Polident denture adhesive coupons around in my folder, I finally gave up the fight and threw the coupons out. But it was a hard decision. >>Big fat eyeroll at myself<<.


"Now godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into [this] world, [and] [it is] certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and [into] many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is a root of all [kinds of] evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. But you, O man of God, flee these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, gentleness..."

1 Timothy 6:6-11


So today, I head on over to the store and make my coupon purchase. I came home almost giddy at how little I spent and I reviewed my receipt. I noticed that the total was far less than what I anticipated it to be. Now wonder I was happy...But upon taking a closer look, I found the error. The coupon scanned for higher value to be taken off than what it said in print directly on the coupon. The coupon was only for $4, but it rang in as taking $5.99 off. Yay for me! right?


Wrong.


In all honesty, I don't know if it was a computer glitch, or the clerk making a mistake. I think it was the latter. Regardless, I felt obligated to go back to the store and set things right. If I were to tell you that it didn't cross my mind to keep the overage, I'd be lying. It did. and not only did I not want to go thru the hassle of returning to the store for a measly two bucks, I secretly wanted to *stick it to the man*. I mean, really...how often does the store find and error and come to me to correct it? um.. never!?! Quite the opposite actually. When they make a mistake, I again have to go in and get an adjustment and somehow feel like I'm the bad guy for asking for it to be corrected.


So in the hour or so that I sat on the fence deciding whether or not to go back to the store, this phrase kept popping up in my head:


Pursue Righteousness.


Simple.

P U R S U E R I G H T E O U S N E S S.


Then I wondered.. how far would people go to ACTUALLY pursue righteousness? How far will I go?
I went back to the store with my receipt in hand, not knowing whom I should speak with. I was earnestly worried that if I went to Customer Service, pointing out the error, the clerk would get into trouble for the mistake or her till would be off. I wound up speaking to the clerk directly about the transaction and she said that it was ok. The computer was at fault and that it wouldn't get her into any kind of trouble. Happy accident.

When I came home, I looked into the Bible to see what that phrase means. To me, specifically. And those verses are what I got. Pretty heavy stuff, I'd say.
Much more valuable than the $1.99 I got in error, that's for sure.