Grocery Coupon Guide

My half brother has been out of touch with me for several years. Broken families go through confusing relationships, and ours has been no different. But lately he’s been reaching out by email. He doesn’t “get” the whole couponing thing, although he buys in bulk and believes in stockpiling groceries to save money, just not exactly how the serious savings come about. He’s making an effort, though, and has been sending me links to sites and articles he finds on non-couponing ways to save money on groceries.

Some have been interesting, and a few have been um, well, creative approaches. I don’t usually see any major savings to be had, but I think it’s neat he’s trying. He has a huge family, three mortgages on one house, and really needs to get his expenses in check.

He’s also been the victim of identity fraud a few times.

So…I was looking through some links my brother sent, and opened this one advertising a free $250 grocery card. Just fill out a few sponsorship offers, and there you go. Free money, right?

Only, in my experience, these are the horrible offers that take forever to get through, and technically you can’t complete the terms of all the required sponsor offers, usually because you can’t take out that many new credit cards at one time.

This one might be legit. I don’t know, I didn’t try. I’ve been burned too many times on similar “free money” offers. But, I’ve been wondering how to approach my brother about it. My brother has complained that his live-at-home son is constantly taking out credit cards under my brothers name and SSN, and maxing them out. That’s a whole different story. I am wondering, though, if my nephew is chasing down all these “free” offers in my brothers name, getting scammed, and causing many of the problems for my brothers credit. And if so, how to broach the subject with him. My half brother is really sensitive, and I’d hate to muddle up our relationship more than it already is.

Then again, maybe it’s NOT a scam, and I’m just being really hard on him. Sigh. Free groceries sound nice. Especially for only 20 minutes of filling out sponsors offers. Sure, I regularly get free groceries, but it’s by cutting out coupons, reading ads, finding deals, and stockpiling. Alot more work. (On the other hand, my way is ’sustainable’ and I can do it every week if I work at it. But I wouldn’t want to rub that one in!)

I love my brother, but he’s a dreamer. I love that about him. But sometimes, even dreamers need to see the cold hard truth: if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.

Ah, what to do, what to do…has anyone else dealt with this? What would you do?