Copley News Service
For Susan Samtur it started like any other addiction slowly and intensely. Then, the New York elementary-school teacher went from doing it at home to doing it at school during her lunch breaks. Finally she quit her job and now she does it full time. Samtur is a couponaholic addicted to clipping food coupons and refund offers, to taking advantage of supermarket sales and to telling other people how she does it. Through this preoccupation-turned-occupation, the housewife and mother of two claims to save an average of 50 percent on her grocery bill or $200 a month. And she turns a healthy profit on a monthly newsletter, "Refundle Bundle,'' detailing the latest coupon news to about 25,000 subscribers. Samtur, a purseful of coupons in hand, visited a supermarket with me to demonstrate just how much a dedicated refunder can save. She bought $57.35 worth of groceries including such staples as potatoes, canned vegetables, salad dressing and tuna fish and ended up paying only 27 cents (after coupons) for the whole purchase. In addition to saving cash, Samtur has outfitted family with hats, jackets, slippers, sock carry-all bag T-shirts and other items FREE for sending in box tops and can labels. She has even gotten a popcorn popper, a hamburger cooker and a set of garden tools by saving up labels and, somewhat like green stamps, cashing in several on a manufacturer's offer that calls for, ----------------------- know what part of a box to save for what product." Samtur said. For beginners, she recommends saving whole boxes and can labels, or when possible, peeling a printed outside paper wrapping off a box or bag so it can be easily stored until a coupon offer appears. Among the items manufacturers frequently require are: box tops and bottoms, product net weight statements. Universal Product Codes (those series of black computer lines on the box) or the circular "seal of quality" that identifies a product somewhere on the package. Samtur is able to store her label and disassembled box backlog in three shoeboxes and two slightly larger boxes. And she has them cataloged alphabetically, usually by manufacturer's name, so that when the company, say Lipton's, is offering a refund, she can go first to her Lip-ton label collection. She saves the "cash-off" coupons clipped from the newspaper food section in an index, filed alphabetically by "product" type. She always makes a list before going shopping taking advantage of sale products listed in the newspaper food section and consulting her inventory of coupons "As you start off, it's a good idea to buy in quantity when something is on sale," Samtur suggested. But she claimed that in four or five months of clipping you should be at the point of saving 50 percent on your grocery bill. Samtur said she re moves labels or takes a razor blade and cuts off the label she needs as she takes products out of her grocery bag when she gets ---------- Yonkers, NY. 10710), consumers even place ads to trade one type of coupon for another ... reminiscent of kids with bubble-gum baseball cards. "The first time they get that manufacturer's check in the mail, they're hooked" observed Steve. (Many companies send crisp $1 bills or shiny silver dollars to further impress consumers.) Today, Samtur is not the only couponaholic in the family. "When Steve's aunt calls up and says, 'What's new?' she doesn't mean with me or the family. She means with the coupons. Samtur said
|
