It’s being discussed again on hcw and it’s a comment I hear quite a bit. The “I’d love to save money with coupons like you do, but we don’t eat Hamburger Helper.”

Guess what? Neither do we.

Or the “well, we don’t really eat processed foods.”

Ha ha. Yes you do. Find me something, anything, that is in today’s supermarkets that isn’t processed in some way. You can’t. I suppose you could drive up to Lancaster county and get yourself some raw milk. Barftastic.I’m not really a fan of diarrhea, so I’ll take mine pasteurized thankyouverymuch.

But I get what you’re saying. You don’t want to eat or feed your kids foods that have a lot of sodium and other preservatives in them. Neither do I. I try to strike a balance. Not going to lie, my kids eat (probably too many) spaghettios. But they also eat tons of fresh produce from the growers market too.

The Today show did a segment on what they called “Schizophrenic Shopping” this morning. I didn’t watch all of it, but the gist of it was–there’s a new trend (not new to me!) to save money on the things that aren’t important to you, so that you have extra money to splurge. Hmmm, that sounds familiar!

That’s what I try to do. These are the things, that literally, I have not paid for, in years: breakfast cereal, diapers, wipes, printer ink, paper, pens, pencils, tape, deodorant, shampoo & conditioner, hair spray & other products, razors, batteries, tampons & pads, most office supplies and crayons, baggies & ziplocs, soft drinks (Snapple, Gold Peak, Fuze, Sobe), spaghetti sauce, macaroni & cheese, lotions, body wash, facial cleansers, any home cleaning product you can think of, paper towels, napkins, toilet paper, most of my greeting cards, photo prints & photo books, granola bars, kids juice boxes, laundry detergent, fabric softener, dish detergent, dishwasher detergent, movie passes, makeup, ice cream, frozen veggies, canned soup……..and I’m sure my couponing friends will think of more items that we get for free.

So while I certainly do bargain my way to free macaroni & cheese and spaghettios, as you can see, it’s not all about the Hamburger Helper. Yes, it is very easy to find deals on the processed foods. I could build a house out of all the free Poptarts I could get this week if I wanted to. But I also scored free whole wheat bread and skim milk too. I get lots of very cheap or free yogurt.

It is possible to eat healthy and save money. Because I’m not spending $5 on a box of Cheerios, I don’t bat an eye at the fresh mozzarella at $8 per lb. I don’t want to pay $4 for a stick of deodorant, because I don’t have to. I’d rather spend that $4 on fresh cantaloupe at the growers’ market.

I’ve even gotten FREE organic vodka.

According to this article from the  Wall Street Journal, your average extreme-couponer “tend to be females under the age of 54 with college degrees and household incomes above $70,000.”

Unfortunately, the people who need to be doing this activity are not. Those folks are eating Hamburger Helper. Because sadly, that’s all they can afford.