Cashing In on Coupons

One index of how financially pressed Americans feel is the popularity of grocery coupons, those little pieces of paper snipped from product labels or newspaper ads that housewives have long used to save nickels and dimes at the check-out counter. By the Agriculture Department's reckoning, coupons are used at least occasionally in 80% of American households, up from 58% in 1971. Nonetheless, only one coupon in ten is ever redeemed at a store, and there is at least one determined bargain hunter who believes that consumers do not realize the full potential of these freebies. She is Susan Samtur, 34, a mother of two and former school teacher in Yonkers, N.Y., who has published her ideas on how to be a supershopper in a new book called Cashing In at the Checkout.

Samtur says that by making the most of coupons she is able to snip 40% to 60% off her food bill every time she shops, for an average savings of $40 or more a week. Moreover, she claims that by taking maximum advantage of refunds, in which manufacturers promise cash rebates to consumers for trying their products, she reaps an additional $1,500 annually.

Stores like coupons, which can be offered for any item but are most commonly used to promote cleaning aids, health and beauty products, and processed foods. After a coupon is redeemed by a customer, the manufacturer of the product pays the store not only the coupon's face value, usually 5-c- or 10-c-, but also a handling fee that may be as high as 5-c- and is mostly profit for the store. Most shoppers would probably find the supershopping routine very exhausting. Samtur spends five hours a week clipping coupons, filing cents-off labels and mailing out refund requests, which average 100 a month. She tears labels while watching TV; when she takes her children to the doctor, she cuts coupons from the magazines in the waiting room.

Samtur buys only nationally advertised brands, since they are the only ones that offer coupons and rebates, buys in bulk and seeks out bargains. Example: when Crest toothpaste came out with a 9-oz. tube at an introductory price of 89-c-, she laid in 20 tubes. She paid only 79-c- for ten of the tubes, because she was able to use ten 10-c- Crest coupons that she had filed away. When the price rose to the regular $1.49 a tube a week later, she had saved $13.

Samtur insists that she never buys something she will not use just to get a coupon or a rebate. Says she: "That would defeat the whole purpose of the system, which is to save money." She takes pride in the fact that when her son goes to the beach, he is outfitted with slippers, beach bag, towel and hat, all free from the makers of Glad bags, a T shirt from Campbell Soup, a Raggedy Andy toy from Crest and a wagon from Viva paper towels. Only his bathing suit was paid for, and it, of course, was on sale.

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