You mentioned that you spend about 2 hours on Sunday morning and an hour each night on couponing. So that’s about 7 hours per week. At a rate of $15/hour (about the average hourly rate a middle-class American makes,) that time is worth about about $105 dollars/week.

Would you say all the couponing for the two trips you wrote about in the blog post took 7 hours (or less)? Because in that case, you did still save over $100…and that just might make an extreme couponing believer out of me!

interesting..if we go by that logic.. NOTHING you buy at the grocery store today is beneficial for your health. To eat totally healthy one must buy from an organic farm.

And no, pockets aren’t the best thing for you, but they are also far from the worst. I keep pockets (usually lean) in the freezer at work. When I have one for lunch, which is about once a week, it is accompanied by a small green salad, unsweetened tea, and a fruit cup or yogurt. Admittedly, not the absolutely best thing for me, but certainly not the worst, either. It’s also healthier than some of the home cooked meals I remember having when I was growing up.

My husband and I work full-time, and pockets & breakfast bars are on our list of regular meals. We also exercise (walking, weightlifting, or doing time on the elliptical machine) at least 5 days a week. I usually manage to eat at least 2 servings of fruit and 3 of veggies per day, and a lot of those are home-grown organics-peppers, tomatoes, cukes, & satsumas. My BMI is 21.6%, and my resting heart rate is between 60 & 70. I am 33, can still fit into clothes that I wore in college, and am healthy enough to qualify for the lowest life insurance rate. So, I will go on record as saying that convenience foods can have a place in a balanced diet. Heck, I think you can have ANYTHING in a balanced diet-the key is moderation. Eating the whole box of truffles at once is bad, but eating one every now and then isn’t.

Thanks again for the inspiration, Angie.

Again, it is a matter of personal preference, but I could rather spend 3 hours online searching for healthy recipes to cook for my family than trading coupons for frozen dinners and snacks. I may not save much of money on the basic ingredients that I buy (though I do buy all my meats on sale and certainly won’t turn away a sale item if it is on my list), but I buy fresh foods every 2-3 days and cook healthy (or what I consider healthy) daily, and feel much better knowing that my family eats food made of basic, simple ingredients. There is a place for a few frozen snacks in the freezer, in case of emergency (if I get hit by a car maybe), but to make them a staple is in my opinion a dime smart and a dollar foolish in the long run. Health is not something to be fooled around with. And you may say, yeah, but a hot pocket or two won’t hurt anyone. Maybe it won’t, but be careful of what examples you set for your children.

I will get off my soup box now, thank you for your time.

Seriously, all, the criticism is probably a little much. Sometimes we need a quick snack. It is better to get some Hot Pockets than it is to stop in the drive-thru, I am sure (Especially if they are Lean Pockets, which unlike most “diet” versions of foods aren’t packed with a bunch of sodium).

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And after doing the math I would rather my three children and my husband eat a (I did say “a” not 33) hot pocket when they are in a hurry, (I think their Dr would agree) than eat at any fast food restaurant like so many people do. As for the rest of my well rounded cart, I couldn’t find anything wrong with the fruit, yogurt, eggs, bread, potatoes, milk, 100% fruit juice, pasta, lunch meat, and ice cream. This is real food that you and I buy every week, and as my husband wrote in the post a few up from this one, “real people saving real money”.

Now as for my valuable time, I found it to be therapeutic at times to sit relaxed and have a couple of hours on Sunday morning and an hour at night after the children are asleep, while the house is quite and read the news, cut the coupons, file them away, scan the sales paper, and jump online to print more coupons for stuff that I use, then laugh all the way to the bank. As healthy as it may sound, this is my time and better used rather than sitting in front of the boob tube wasting away like so many other people do, and like so many people they also don’t always take time from their busy lives to sit back and have a few moments to relax. I will also remind you that failure to relax and enjoy the little things is bad for the health too. So if I get one too many grams of fat from eating a hot pocket, I will make up for it in good health points here. I believe someone also said something about space accommodation for all the stuff I buy. I don’t find it to be a problem with 3000 square feet of house and a custom walk in pantry along with top of the line energy saver appliances that cost me about 40% of the regular retail. As a matter of fact everything in my house right down to the light bulbs are energy efficient, talk about healthy living. Hmmmm. How many can say they even try to lower their ozone contribution. I don’t mean to be picking on anyone, but I do pick and chose my battles as carefully as possible and hot pockets are pretty low in the health scheme of the big picture.