You Gotta Spend Money to Save Money

The Captain is often exasperated by my insistance that you have to spend money to save money.  This little bit of wisdom usually comes up when I've come across a really great sale and purchased a ridiculous amount of stuff that I probably don't really need.  I walk in the door, triumphant about my shopping prowess, and call out to him:

You won't believe how much money I saved!!

He inevitably cocks his head at me and asks what kind of logic spells savings when I just spent $200.  Of course, I excuse his inability to understand the basic math of shopping.  He is, after all, a Man.  The intricacies of the shopping transactions are clearly beyond his ken.  I actually feel kind of bad for him, knowing he'll never fully experience the exultant feelings generated by  a 50% off rack with an additional discount for red dot items.  I try my best to share the jubilation with him, but, again, his shopping math deficiencies hold back his enthusiasm.  Poor man.

I wonder how he'd react if I started buying coupons on eBay.  Did you know you could do that?  I had no idea, but when I stumbled (and by stumbled, I mean actually meandered my way there as opposed to being led there by Stumbleupon.com.) across the ads today, I was at first perplexed.  It never occurred to me that people would actually buy coupons in an online auction.  How do they authenticate them?  Is that even legal?  It must be.  It still seemed a little wrong to me, until I remembered shopping math.  You gotta spend money to save money, and apparently, sometimes that means buying coupons.  Now, I just have to figure out how to explain it to the Captain.