The Miami Herald
You don't have to be supersmart. says Susan J. Samtur, who obviously is, to cut down on the bankroll you hand out for groceries every week. All you have to do is train yourself to become an alert shopper. Susan became alert in 1973 and has been riding a gravy train ever since. First she learned to cut her food budget by 50 percent and more by lining her pocket book with coupons. Then she established a monthly bulletin called Refundle Bundle to alert other shoppers to the ways and means of doing the same. Finally, she co-authored a book (with Tad Tuleja) called Cashing in at the Checkout (Grosset & Dunlap, $6.95). PROMOTING THE book, she recently was carting coupons and labels cross-country to demonstrate her methods talking and going on shopping trips with food editors and radio and TV personalities, and bemusing all (including the checkers) from New York to San Francisco with her astonishing savings. Her shopping system is based on a study of market techniques used by supermarkets and manufacturers which techniques in turn support her system. In other words, she's a sales watcher, coupon clipper, label saver and refund mailer par excellence. Stores and companies make the offers, and Susan takes them up on as many of them as she can use. What she can't, she swaps with other alert shoppers for what she can. To her, tossing out those slips of paper ringed in cutout dots is a major sin. THESE ARE THE basics to making the system work: Start a file system. You might suppose that Susan's files by this time would be smart red cabinets filled with crisp manila folders. Not so. She still uses shoe boxes and small cartons, lots of envelopes, and lots and lots of rubber bands. Start clipping coupons from newspapers, flyers, magazines, home mailers, product packages. File them alphabetically by product. Somewhere make a note of expiration dates. Start using them regularly. Start saving labels, box tops, ;roof of purchase seals, back and front panels. You never know what part of the box a manufacturer may want for a refund or premium. Susan folds the labels for cashing, fastening them with rubber bands. If it's plastic lids she's saving, she cuts off the rims so they will lie flat, again rubber-banded. And the rubber bands go around flattened boxes or the cut-outs from them. START WATCHING for refund forms in the stores, magazines, newspapers, and on the packages. Here, again, your file of labels and boxes and lids and proofs of purchase comes in handy. Start comparing prices and weights in the supermarkets. Read all the packages carefully. Sometimes it will pay you to buy In bulk or in large sizes; sometimes, surprisingly, with coupons, buying smaller sizes is smarter. Carry your coupon file with you when you go to the store. Put your immediate coupons on top so that you can get to them quickly at the checkout. But you also may see products on sale for which you have coupons, perhaps from a magazine. These can get you even more off the sale price. SWAP COUPONS with friends. If you don't need or want an item, but need qualifiers of some type or other for another, make a trade. Someone may need baby products, for example; you don't, but have some coupons. Trade with them for something they have. Try not to let any coupons go to waste. Susan points out that although about 80 per cent of the shoppers use coupons from time to time, few regularly cash in on them. Fewer than one in 10 are redeemed. She also notes that now there are swapping clubs and even conventions around the country. Be systematic about your cash refunds. Susan aims at about 25 refunds going and coming in per week. She warns that you should keep any money or checks you receive in a separate fund. Don't just let it dribble away. She keeps hers in a separate bank account, where it draws interest. The interest, she figures, pays for the postage she uses. One year, the family went to Florida on the savings; another year the furnace got fixed. Subscribe to a refunding bulletin if you really want in on the coupon train. They usually list more offers and refunds than any one person could spot on their own. Also, shoppers place swapping ads in many of the publications, offering coupons and qualifiers of all kinds. Susan's bulletin also prints helpful letters from readers as well as bits of neighborly gossip and comments about companies that were nice and not so nice to deal with. In her book she lists a couple of pages of such publications, last you think her pushy about her own. If you would like to join the coupon clippers of the world, you can subscribe to Susan's information by sending your name, address, zip code, and $9 (for a year's subscription, don't know what one copy costs) to Refundle Bundle, P.O. Box 141, Centuck Station, Yonkers, N.Y. 10710.
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