Suddenly Frugal Book Review: Coupon Queen

As I’d mentioned in an earlier post on extreme couponing, one of my goals for 2012 is to become better educated about couponing–including taking couponing to an extreme without going crazy. To that end I’ve been taping and watching back episodes of “Extreme Couponing,” and, thanks to an Amazon Gift Card I’d received, I treated myself to a handful of books on couponing. When I’m finished reading them, I will review them right here on Suddenly Frugal.

Supershop Like the Coupon Queen by Susan Samtur

The first book on my nightstand and which I recently finished was Supershop like the Coupon Queen: How to Save 50% or More Every Time You Shop by Susan Samtur. Samtur made a name for herself decades before the concept of extreme couponing was even in our collective consciousness. She is the author of the well-received book Cashing in at the Checkout. Clearly, this book was ahead of its time, because it shared with readers in the mid-1980s how best to take advantage of couponing and refunding–I remember my mother doing the latter in the early 1980s as a way to bring in extra cash.

It’s too bad that I can’t say the same about Supershop like the Coupon Queen: How to Save 50% or More Every Time You Shop–that it breaks new ground in the world of couponing. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s a book worth passing by, especially if you’re new to couponing.

For the newbie couponer, it’s a terrific little book. Samtur does an excellent job of explaining the lay of the supermarket land so that you can go into your local grocery store a smarter shopper and not fall for marketing traps–such as 2 for $5 deals when, regularly, a product costs $2.30 each. Samtur walks you through a typical grocery store aisle and talks about how you have to be strategic about your shopping–that the key is to buy what’s on your list, when it’s on sale (natch) and you have a coupon, and then get out of the store! The longer you stay in a store, the more you’re likely to spend, she says.

Samtur also helped me to retrain my eye to look for coupons that manufacturers stick on the front of products. These coupons usually appear on new products as a way to get you to try them, and often are high-value coupons that result in your getting that product for free. Who doesn’t love getting stuff for free?

Additionally, Samtur provides an in-depth view of refunding or sending in for rebates, and why it is worth your time to send in for rebates or refunds. (You’ll recall that I’ve shared this advice in the past when rebates allowed me to get office paper on the cheap, or when rebates put much needed dollars back in my wallet, in the form of prepaid gift cards.) My only issue is she devotes an entire chapter to refunding/rebates, and she could have easily included the information as part of another chapter. I ended up skimming the rest of this chapter.

What I could do without in this book is Samtur invoking her technologically savvy children to help her deal with Smartphones and other 21st century inventions. In my opinion if you’re going to position yourself as an expert, then be the expert or educate yourself enough to sound like an expert.

Besides writing books Samtur runs websites, which she mentions a number of times in the book. They are CouponQueen.com, RefundBundle.com (she started a magazine years ago called “Refund Bundle”) and SelectCouponProgram.com. Be advised that the latter two sites require a subscription in order to take full advantage of them. Her SelectCouponProgram.com site allows you to “buy” coupons from her site.

I know plenty of extreme couponers who use sites like these, to up their quantities of high-value coupons. Having never used Samtur’s site, I can’t vouch for whether or not it is worth the subscription price–about $10 a month, on a month-by-month basis, or $39.95 for a year upfront. For that price you get up to $50 a month in “free” coupons. However, it looks like you can request one (1) of each coupon only; other sites let you specify how many of certain coupons you want for a “clipping fee.”

If Samtur ever updates this book, here’s what is missing: Samtur tends to glance over past shopping trips where she was able to save between 50% and 90%. She mentions them and when she did them for TV appearances, but I would have loved to have read a blow-by-blow of how those savings added up in the real world. If there’s one benefit to watching “Extreme Couponing,” it’s when you get a hands-on lesson about the regular price of a product, what the sale price is, and what price the shopper’s coupon will take the product down to–including if it’s free or a moneymaker. I wish Samtur would have included a shopping trip’s worth of these kinds of examples in her book.

Tags: Book Review, Extreme Couponing, rebates, refunds, The Coupon Queen