You May be Right, I May be Crazy!

Remember the old Billy Joel song that said, "You may be right, I may be crazy!"? Tonight as I was sorting through this tremendous stack of coupons that I've collected over the past two days I had this song ringing through my head. No kidding, it took me about 2 hours to get them all sorted and organized into my coupon box. I think I've become a maniac trying to clip coupons and save as much money as possible from them.

This week I had coupons from four newspaper inserts, 3 magazines, and a bunch I'd printed online. The pile was tremendous and it just seemed to keep growing. I don't usually have coupons from magazines, but I'd seen another post about "All You" having coupons that matched some of the May CVS deals. I think I made money on the magazine purchases in the ECBs I got back at CVS. But, as I sorted this huge stack tonight I really began to wonder - was it really worth it??

Maybe it's because I've only started collecting them in earnest over the last few months. For a while I had given it up completely because I just didn't have the time. But, this winter our budget became very tight and I realized I had to cut some costs. Coupon clipping seemed the most logical place to start. After doing some reading on MoneySavingMom.com I decided to start clipping basically everything. In just a few short months I've gotten to where I collect hundreds of coupons each week, and yet, I think I only use about 10-15 in a given week. So, now I'm wondering, Have I gotten out of control? How do other people keep their coupon clipping beneficial and not let it take over their lives?