Doing the math on, "Doing the Math on Coupons"

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This doesn't add up for me...
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Clipping coupons hardly sounds like the subject of high finance–or even medium finance.

Save a dollar on cat food, some detergent or a couple of boxes of cereal. Who can be bothered? Who has the time?

A growing number of people, it turns out. And they're shrewder than it may at first appear.

The Great American Coupon is making a big comeback–thanks to the Great American Recession.

We redeemed some 3.3 billion coupons last year–a remarkable 27 percent leap from 2008, and the first year-on-year increase in 17 years, according to a report issued at the end of January by Inmar, a coupon-processing agent. (Online coupon use skyrocketed–companies issued twice as many as in 2008, but redemptions rose 360 percent.) The big upturn took off in October 2008, just after Lehman went belly up.

At first blush you can see why coupons fell out of fashion for so long–and why so many consumers still ignore them.

You have to make time to visit a coupon Web site or collect the flyers from your mailbox, the supermarket or newspaper inserts. You need to sort through to find the ones you want, cut them out, stick them in your purse or wallet–and remember to use them when you are at the cash register and you are trying to remember whether you bought everything on your shopping list and where you parked the car.

Average saving per coupon: Just $1.44, according to the Inmar report.

But let's treat this low finance topic for a moment the way we treat high finance. Let's subject it to the same math.

How long does it actually take to clip and use a coupon? Certainly the more you use, the less overall time you will spend per coupon, because so many of the costs–getting flyers, sorting coupons and so on–are generalized. Let's assume you spend a minute per coupon.

Saving $1.44 for a minute's effort is the equivalent of saving $14.40 for 10 minutes'.

Hourly rate: $86.40.
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The article goes on to say that in order to NET that $86, you have to GROSS $123 in wages. But, is this math sound? Not to me.
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Because I have the most free time, I do the cooking and shopping at my house. Truly, Mrs. Schteveo is NOT a food person. She'd eat PB & J and microwave popcorn if it wasn't for me. Not because she can't cook, but because she doesn't care. The running joke in our family is that dying and going to hell for me, would be coming back as one of her taste buds!
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But, having said that, I know how to shop and do it cheaply. I generally buy name brands, but I rarely find coupons for the stuff I buy. Mostly I see coupons for specialty or prepared foods or frozen pizzas, etc., it's stuff I just don't buy. I use my store scanner cards EVERY TIME I go to the store though. With that, I save about 15% to 20%, and I don't have to clip or scan the newspaper. I also stock up, when stuff is on sale with said cards. I also shop at Sam's and BJ's, where again, buying in bulk saves me money. Recently, I started shopping at Aldi too, again, to save money. Overall, I save about 25% on groceries doing these things, I've tracked, I know.
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But the point of this was to point out "errors" in math, I just needed to state MY system first.
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I love the "math" here. It's like the Wal-Mart commercials that say shopping at their store saves $1000 per year on breakfast alone!! Well yeah, but their math is based on 4 people combined, eating ALL 20 breakfasts out, every week, of the entire year. Who does that?
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Likewise, when I've tried the coupons a few times over the years, I've NEVER found $100 worth of coupons that I could use, never found coupons to be worth $33, that translated to that $100 on Triple Coupon Day, or found a need to buy Green Giant pre-made green bean casserole, Tombstone pizza, or Mrs Paul's Cheddar Crusted Fillets to use the coupons in the Sunday newspaper. Guess why? If I buy stuff with a coupon, that I WOULDN'T NORMALLY BUY, I'm not SAVING money, I'm SPENDING money. In other words, this is very fuzzy math, IMHO.
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But, tell me what you think.
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Schteveo