Chicago Tribune
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), a how-to about marketing on the cheap 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. For example, there was the shopping trip she took to prove her system to the producer of consumer expert Betty Furness' NBC show. The tab at the checkout that time was $130.18. Susan handed the checker a fistful of coupons that cut her cash outlay to a mere $7.07. Or the tape from a recent grocery sortie for her family that totaled $134.33, of which she owed only $66.44 in cash. Not everyone, perhaps, may be able to shut off the Niagara leak in her budget to that extent. But Susan does maintain that wise and watchful shoppers can realize a 25 to 50 per cent saving. "DO YOU realize that in 1978, $500 million worth of cash-off coupons were issued by manufacturers?" Susan asks. Her book, she adds with a crusader's gleam in her eye, tells the consumer how to take advantage of these coupons, where, to look for them, and when to put them to work 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 cut-out dots is a major sin. Buying only brands that offer coupons of on type or another, she says, not only keeps the checkout totals down but earns, in addition, tax-free income of from $1,000 to $1,500 a year. Not to mention merchandise premiums, from T-shirts to appliances. Once you get the system started, she insists, it doesn't take all that much of your time. She and her husband have two small children and another on the way. This, plus preparing her monthly news bulletin with its 30,000-subscriplion list, not to mention the book, doesn't leave her much time for running around the stores. But, of course, by now she has the wheels smoothly turning. Also going for her is the fact that where she resides in New York State, she can and does trade only at double-coupon stores, which offer twice what a coupon is worth So far there are no double-coupon stores in Chicago. THESE THEN are the basics to making the system work: 1. 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. 2. 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. 3. Start saving labels, box tops, proof of purchase seals, back and front panels. You never know what part of the box a manufacturer may ask for a refund or premium. Susan folds the labels for stashing, 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. "Save everything," is Susan's battle cry. "These things don't take up much room, and it can pay off." She recalled an offer of six tubes of toothpaste free if the consumer purchased six. Ferreting in her files, she found the six boxes and got her six tubes without buying any. It was her brand of toothpaste, purchased, of course, on sale. 4. 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 "Refunds are great," Susan says, "You may get a $1 bill back or a check or a coupon good for purchasing merchandise. For example, I had a Heinz coupon that gave me $1.50 off on ground meat for hamburgers, to eat with their catsup. One time Ragu Spaghetti Sauce netted a refund on green groceries so the consumer could have a salad with a Ragu spaghetti dinner." 5. 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. 6. Carry your coupon file with you in your handbag 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 than the sale price. Susan makes a shopping list of sale items and coupon items, but with her handy little coupon bundle in her purse, alphabetically filed if a little worn from handling, she will deviate from the list as thrift dictates. Needless to say her shelves resemble the day after a rich harvest all the time. 7. Become a package reader as you select your products. Look for giveaway and refund offers. However, she says, a wise buyer never purchases an unneeded or unwanted product merely to collect some qualifiers Which brings us to Susan's basic number . . . 8. 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 percent of the shoppers use coupons from time to time, few regularly cash in on them. Fewer than 1 in 10 are redeemed. She also notes that now there are swapping clubs $id even conventions are being held around the country. 9. 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; one year the furnace got fixed. 10. 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 kind. 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, lest you think her pushy about her own. That's about it, folks. To the question as to if supermarkets and checkers become annoyed at all this coupon higgledy-piggledy, she says, no. Says it benefits the store through sales and handling fees. "And the companies don't mind either. After all, coupon clippers and refunders are buying their products.' We noticed from a copy of Refundle Bundle she kindly left for us that we can earn a free issue by finding a new subscriber who takes the bulletin for a year or longer. We don't need a free issue, but If you'd 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 Refund Bundle, P.O. Box 141, Centuck Station, Yonkers, N.Y. 10710.
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