coupons anyone?

The American Values reading we did earlier this week related to my family so well it was ridiculous especially when it came to the part about the grocery store. When my mom takes her weekly grocery shopping trips, the first thing she makes sure she has is her coupon binder. Thats right, binder. She has this little accordian folder that she has sectioned off into categories for each group of her coupons. Rather than paying attention to how much she spent on her trips, I think my mom looks at how much she saved from her coupons. There have been times she brought home food my family doesn't eat, but it was such a a bargain she couldn't pass it up. It sometimes makes me wonder exactly if coupons are benefitting us. The coupons say we're saving money, but when we're buying two to get one free or buying something solely because its 50% off what it was two days ago, aren't we defeating the purpose of holding onto our money?

My second cousin came in from Denmark a couple of months ago to stay with my family. On Sunday when the dozens of adds came with the newspaper stuffed with coupons, she laughed. My mom looked at her while she was cutting some out and asked her what happened. She told us she was sorry but she had heard of the ridiculous shopping tactics Americans had but didn't believe they were true until she saw how many coupons we had laying out on our table. I still didn't realize after she had said that that Americans had such a distorted view on spending money than the rest of the world. After discussing all of this in class, it got me thinking about whether or not our country would learn to spend money wisely especially since we're having such economical problems. I think its far fetched to say we will get better.