Business: Cashing In on Coupons

One index of how financially pressed Americans feel is the popularity of grocery coupons, those little pieces of paper snipped from product labels or newspaper ads that housewives have long used to save nickels and dimes at the check-out counter. By the Agriculture Department's reckoning, coupons are used at least occasionally in 80% of American households, up from 58% in 1971. Nonetheless, only one coupon in ten is ever redeemed at a store, and there is at least one determined bargain hunter who believes that consumers do not realize the full potential of these freebies. She is Susan Samtur, 34, a...