So I think I am so smart to be cutting coupons, but I have realized something. It is not saving me money if I am buying something I didn’t need in the first place, even if it was 50% off! I am such a sucker for those places that send out regular coupons, like Bath and Body Works, Bed Bath and Beyond, and Lane Bryant. They are smart with their marketing, explaining that this is the deal of the year, and I would be crazy to miss it. When I read that everything in the store is 40% off, or that I can get $20 off of my $40 purchase, I figure I NEED to take advantage of this, because it is free money, right? But the truth is that I really don’t need any of what they are selling, I am just enticed by the great deal.
My husband jokes with me whenever I come home from shopping, because as soon as he asks what I found, I blurt out “I saved $50!” He laughs and says he doesn’t want to know what I saved, but what I spent. So when I tell him I spent $120, but saved $50, he says “you could have saved $120 by not buying anything!” Alas, he is right again.
So the moral of this story? It defeats the purpose of coupons if I use them to buy things I don’t need! 
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This blog asks a simple question: "What are you saving for?" Its goal is to help people set savings goals, develop a disciplined and/or systematic savings habit, and build a corresponding community of like-minded people as a support network. By laughing, crying, and discussing how we each approach this topic together, we should find it much easier to save together. So what are you saving for?
Another good one is when you convince yourself to spend a certain amount on something and then find a cheaper alternative and think that you can use the money you saved to spend on other things. I recently bought a portable air conditioner (which, by the way, I charged to a credit card knowing I could not pay it off right away) for my bedroom since I sleep best when it’s cold. I rationalized that this would pay for itself as I would not have to pay to cool my entire townhouse to a good sleeping temperature at night. So I spent over $300 for the portable air conditioner only to find that it was noisy and was unable to cool the room as I envisioned. I returned it and bought a ceiling fan instead, “saving” over $200. Though I had not saved the $300 that I initially spent, now I was thinking I could afford trail running shoes with some of the money I saved. Thankfully common sense won out and my impulsiveness passed and I am holding off on buying the running shoes until I save for them.