Inquirer
If you were among the shoppers at a local Pathmark, Acme or A&P last week and you weren't toting a fistful of cents-off coupons, you probably looked as out of place as a bikini at a nudist camp. It was double-coupon time at area supermarkets, and for the first time in my adult grocery-shopping life, I was one of the coupon-clutchers. I was not going to be convinced easily that I belonged in this role. I bad embarked on this project because of what I had read in "Cashing In at The Checkout" (Grosett & Dunlap) a new book by Susan Samtur, a young woman who Las become known as a super shopper. Mrs. Samtur made much of the fact that she had once bought $130.18 worth of groceries for $7.07 to illustrate how much coupons could save. Although she admitted that the example was an extreme one (she had chosen a store that featured coupon-doubling and had more than the usual number of sales items, and she had been saving coupons for more than five years at the time). I had read the 152-page book carefully, convinced, despite Mrs. Samtur's protests to the contrary, that Shopping with coupon was: 1. A drag: 2. Not terribly profitable. 3. Wasteful in that it encouraged you to buy what you might not select without the cent-off deal, and 4. Slightly demeaning. On the basis of a single couponing expedition to the Waynewood A&P prepared to revise all four opinions. The experience, first of all, was anything but boring. Because I was new at this and poorly organized, coupons fluttered everywhere but where I wanted them to be. When I searched for the Oscar Mayer hot dog slip, I found the one for Behold furniture polish; when I was in the soap department, the Philadelphia cream cheese coupon surfaced. Susan Samtur says I could have avoided the chaos by having my coupons arranged alphabetically in a single large envelope. 1 was unable to find lemonade crystals, a chocolate flavored pie-crust shell, a yogurt, A new type of snack, cracker and the brand of deodorant for which I had good coupons. I respected the 30-cent coupon for grated cheese when I realized that it meant buying a large container of the cheese I needed only a small amount for those times when I don't take a minute to grate may own. My favorite coupon deals included those on dog biscuits which our two dogs consume at an alarming rate, and instant coffee, which I consume a bulk at the office. Even after I discovered that I had bought a pair of support stockings just so that I might save 50 cents and then had forgotten to give the stocking coupon to the checkout clerk and that I had left $2.64 worth of coupons clipped from the Wednesday Inquirer on my desk when I left for the shopping expedition, I found that I had managed to save $6.54. (just a few cents less than the cost of Mrs.
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