Extreme Couponing: My Theory

Everyone's been talking about the new show on TLC called "Extreme Couponing." I have watched a couple episodes and I am still amazed by this phenomenon. If you're not familiar, people on this show go to extremes to save coupons and "save" money. Many of these people spend hours out of their day to collect coupons, organize them, create a shopping list, and finally go shopping. When shopping they buy certain quantities and go through more than one transaction to get their desired total. I saw one episode where the subtotal was somewhere around $600 and after coupons was around $100. My first question was, how can this be real? I know some grocery stores limit the amount of same coupons one can use, so then the customer has to do more than one transaction in order to use them. My next question was, who would really need all these groceries? Most people on the show how a whole room dedicated to all the groceries they buy, including 50 boxes of cereal, 100 cans of soup, 20 packages of toilet paper, the list goes on.

This is the first problem I have with extreme couponing. Unless you have a huge family or donate part of your groceries, how could you ever use all of it without some of it going bad? Also, I think many people buy things with a coupon just for the fact there's a coupon, not that they actually need the product. Therefore, are you really saving all that much money? I think using coupons is totally acceptable, but when it comes to extremes like this I have many questions.

I started to think why people started doing something so extreme. What is all the rage about? Is it because they really need to save money or is it the thrill? Most of the people I see on the show do not look like they are in dire straights, not to say they wouldn't need to save money. I think for many of these extreme couponers it is something our society has taught them: the need for more. Our culture is all about want, want, want, more material things. With those material objects comes a higher social status. Also, the feeling of being complete. I think that is what it really is for many of these couponers, the feeling they get after grocery shopping. To me, these characteristics seem very similar to that of a shopoholic. I'm not a psychologist but I would be willing to bet on this. 

I'm just wondering if our culture will ever change their need for the material. I look at peoples of other countries and see how it is much different. The US seems to be envied by many, but in areas like this I really think we should envy them. Thoughts?