Don't bother with coupons. They actually make you spend money you weren't going to otherwise. And they waste other resources like time, effort, etc. I was wondering if we need a thread for pithy advice. Just wisdom you'd like to share perhaps.
Jane and I do exactly the same, as well as stocking up on products we use all the time when they are reduced. Both our local Tesco and M&S food stores, reduce dozens of items at 8pm by 75%, before they go out of date. We save a fortune. We also buy some sandwiches for the following days lunches. When they are reduced by that amount, the cost is no more than making them ourselves. We did have one that made us laugh, when we bought a jar of sea salt. When we got home and read the label, the salt was more than 200 million years old. When I mentioned it to the Tesco buyer we know, a few months later, he certainly put me in my place. It was the plastic jar that was going out of date, since as the plasticisers degrade particles can flake off. How much do we REALLY know about the risks of modern living. Those particles would probably pass straight trough our digestive system. But when the millions of plastic particle floating around in the atmosphere end up in our lungs, they will have to wait for up to 100 years for the next stage of degradation.
There is a recent report out about plastic nano particles in the environment. It appears they are everywhere: The particles enter the blood stream and can cause miscarriages, obesity, cardiovascular disease and cancer. Plastic is everywhere, including in our food and bottled water I think it's just a natural form of evolution making us into Plastic Fantastic Lovers.
We are certainly starting young. Health and safety have banned glass baby bottles in the UK. I can sort of understand that one, remembering the time when our son broke the bottom out of his and started swinging it around over his head by the teat. All we would have needed was a movie camera and a few bottles of tomato ketchup to make a horror movie.