5 Rules For Saving Money at the Grocery Store

There are lots of ways to save money, and any method you can add to your money-saving toolbox will help you better achieve your financial goals. Whether it's putting more money towards retirement, a college fund, a down payment on a home or automobile or that vacation you've been dreaming about, reaching your financial goals requires that you make wise financial choices. In other words, reaching financial goals requires you to be frugal.

As humans, we need to eat and grocery shopping typically occupies a big chunk of our budget. This is even truer for larger families or families with special dietary needs. However, you can significantly reduce your grocery bill by employing five basic rules to your grocery shopping tasks:

1. Always shop with a list

2. Plan your meals

3. Buy store brands or generics when available

4. Use the store's loyalty card

5. Use coupons for additional savings

Always shop with a list

Shopping with a list is vital. While we allocate a certain amount for groceries each week in our monthly budgets (you do budget, don't you?), we should further regulate food spending by always using a list during our grocery store excursions. A grocery shopping list is a natural extension of the monthly budget. This list is your grocery spending plan just as your budget is your overall household spending plan. It helps you see where you can cut costs, helps you stay on track with your financial goals and helps to curb costly impulse buying.

Plan your meals

A good grocery list will follow a weekly menu plan. Buy items that you can reuse in different dishes and work with your family so everyone agrees on the meals of the week. Schedule dinner so that everyone eats together and make it a habit to save leftovers that will make delicious weekend lunches. Developing your grocery list around a meal plan will also help you avoid dining out, which can be unhealthy as well as expensive.

Buy store brands or generics and use the store's loyalty card

Buying grocery store brand products will save you money -- lots of money. Industry sales research cited by the Private Label Manufacturers Association (PLMA) shows that American shoppers save about $15.8 billion annually by choosing store brands over name brands. To test this theory, your trusty writer ventured into a local grocery store with pen and legal pad, walked the various isles and documented actual price differences for 20 common grocery items: aspirin, acetametaphin, ibuprofen, green beans, sweet corn, ketchup, mayonnaise, mixed fruit, sugar, condensed milk, cornflakes, raisin bran, facial tissue, whipped cream, ice cream, chocolate milk, graham crackers, cream cheese, eggs and peanut butter.

Including savings from using the store's loyalty card (another must-have money-saving tool), I calculated a savings of between 13 and 68 percent with an average 42 percent savings. If I purchased all items from name brand manufacturers, I would have paid $74.41. Foregoing the lure of buying brand name items, the total came to $43.45 - a $30.96 savings for 20 items (an average of over $1.50 per item) just for buying store brands and using my store loyalty card.

The difference in prices is what the PLMA calls the "marketing tax" which you pay so name brand manufacturers can promote their products through advertising and other means. However, many store brand items are produced by the same manufacturers that make competing name brand items. You can save a lot of money by choosing to not pay this "marketing tax" and keep that money where it belongs - in your pocket!

Use coupons for additional savings

In addition to store brand and loyalty card savings, you should make the most of your grocery shopping dollars by cutting, organizing and using coupons (check your Sunday newspaper). Coupons are a marketing gimmick, so don't buy items you do not need just so you can save a little on the purchase. In reality, that's a waste of money. Use coupons to save money on items you need and use. Try a different brand if a coupon from that competitor can save you money - even if it's only a few cents because every penny adds up at the checkout counter. Cut and organize coupons on the same day you plan your next week's meal menu so you can maximize your savings by planning dishes around coupons.

Don't limit your coupon clipping to your Sunday newspaper. Try coupon websites, like CoolSavings.com One website, CouponBar.com even offers a toolbar you can add to your web browser. You can even find people selling sets of coupons on eBay.

While it may seem like a lot of planning, the savings add up. Depending on your current grocery shopping habits, you may be able to cut your weekly grocery bill in half - or even more! The key to this strategy, as with any budgeting strategy, is to develop your plan and then stick to it. Once these five frugal habits become a part of your routine, you'll thank yourself for all the initial efforts you made to develop these valuable money-saving skills.

John Janney is the president of the National Financial Awareness Network, a personal finance publishing company and author of "How To Get GREAT CREDIT!" NFAN offers educational products and services such as the popular Do-It-Yourself Debt Settlement Kit at http://www.diydebtsettlementkit.com and http://www.HelpForDebtors.com

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Spending Wisely - Helpful Tips For Cutting Food Expenses

One of the basic techniques for successful money management is to realize the control WE have over the process.

Our budget includes both fixed expenses and variable expenses. Fixed expenses are those bills we have to pay that are the same amount every month, such as our mortgage payment.

The expenditures we want to concentrate on in this article are the ones we call variable expenses. These are the ones WE can control DAILY and can either set us up for overall financial success or failure. With the right attitude, it can even be a fun process, because we are in control!

Variable expenses can include money spent on food, utilities, fuel, and any others that can "go up or down" with our daily decisions. This is why making wise decisions about buying food can have a great impact on our budget. As we think about the impact, it becomes necessary to consider carefully how much we spend on this expense category.

As homemakers, or who I like to call Chief Domestic Engineers (female or male), it becomes quickly evident the important responsibility regarding the amount we spend at the grocery store and the amount spent eating out. Money in this category can be spent in large portions and spent very quickly.

It is a small pass time of mine to notice what other grocery shoppers have in their carts because I am looking for good ideas for meal planning, and something I might buy NEXT food shopping trip, because it is not on my list this time. In the process, I can't help but notice others savings potential with just a little tweaking of food buying decisions!

Consider these ideas:

1) If there is some expensive food you really want, instead of buying it every week, consider buying it every other week or once a month, such as a bakery item or special seafood selection.

2) Buy store brands (generic such as Great Value) whenever available. It is a known fact that a lot of the manufacturing plants produce the exact same product on the same assembly line and glue the store brand label on instead of their name brand. Think about if there are only two brands of lemon juice, the store brand or the name brand; who do you think makes the store brand? Yes, 99% chance it is the name brand manufacturing company.

3) Buy everything on sale when you can get it. If you have a supply of that product, then wait until the next sale comes up. Try to anticipate how much your family will use until the next sale on that product, then buy it, and save a lot of money.
Once in a while, I miss guess and have canned goods that have been around for a while and are a month from their expiration date; I donate them right away to the community soup kitchen, so they won't go to waste. It is a good feeling to help.

4) Use coupons when you can, but it is unwise just to buy a product because you have a coupon. It has been my experience that in a lot of instances, it is less expensive to buy the store brand (generic) than to buy the name brand product even with using the coupon. Coupons come in great when there is a product you especially like and you can take advantage of the savings.

Check out our coupon links and see if there is something you can save on. Happy Shopping! Give yourself a challenge to see how much you can save on your regular grocery bill this month.

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Betty Gustin

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Save Cash By Planning Meals and Using Internet Grocery Coupons

With the current state of the economy, everyone is looking to save a few dollars on their monthly bills. While some bills such as rent and car payment are difficult to reduce, there are others such as food that can be reduced with careful planning. The combination of meal planning and internet grocery coupons will cut your grocery bill without sacrificing food quality.

The first step or your money saving plan is to plan your meals ahead. Whether you are a family that eats at home 7 days a week or 4 days a week, you can save money by planning ahead. The reason for planning ahead is that you don't purchase unnecessary items on your grocery trip. Impulse purchases at the grocery store can be a budget killer. With your list in hand, you can get the items you need and leave the store before you spend over your budget.

The next step is to see if a store near you has a sale on the items you are buying. Many areas have a few stores that you can choose. Each store has different items on sale each. This will require checking out the sales circulars. If you don't get a paper copy, most store websites have printable sales circulars. Check each website to see if they have any item on you list on sale.

The final step to save money on groceries is to use internet grocery coupons. Most people don't like the though of sifting through the Sunday paper and clipping coupons. It not glamorous but it can be well worth it. Online food coupons can save the hassle of flipping through tons of pages to find your coupon. Most online coupons sites allow you to search for specific items with cuts down on you search time.

Internet grocery coupons and planning meals head can reduce your grocery bill. If you need to cut expenses, I would advise starting with your grocery bill to see what you can save.

CLICK HERE to get free coupons for groceries!

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