From Donna L Montaldo,
Your Guide to Coupons / Bargains.
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Planning - The Number One Key to Top Savings

The most important thing to remember about lowering your food bill is to plan your meals before going into the store. Dedicating time to grocery shopping and meal planning will cut your spending by up to 50 percent, if you stick to your list. Impulse-buying is the thirfty shopper's enemy, so while shopping avoid picking up items that aren't on your list.

How Much Are You Spending?

One easy method to determine how much you are spending on groceries, is to put all of your grocery receipts in one envelope for a month than add it up.

Analyze Your Spending

How much are you spending on actual food? Separate the toiletries and miscellaneous items to really find the answer. You will be amazed at what you find out.

Don't Shop on an Empty Stomach

It has been proven that going to the grocery store hungry can increases your food bill by up to 15 percent, due to impulse-buying. Often we leave work and stop in to pick up items for dinner. This can be a deadly practice to our frugal budgets. Play it safe - fill-up yourself before you fill-up your grocery cart.

Avoid Darting Into Convenience Stores

Convenience stores thrive on the principle that your quick trip in for a cheap coke will result in you making a purchase of at least two other items. Those two items will most likely be marked up by 60 percent or higher over grocery store prices. If you do want a coke or a quick cup of coffee, bring in only the exact or near to exact change to help stifle the impulse to get that Twinkie!

Don't Buy Toiletries at Grocery Stores

Grocery stores generally markup toilitries, 25 percent or higher, than discounted drug stores. It is worth a quick trip into Walmart or your favorite discount drugstore to stock up on your toiletry needs.

Practice "Mixing It" Yourself

Food items that include added sugars, spices, and sauces are often up to 50 percent higher than buying the basics and doing it yourself. Sugar coated cereals and frozen seasoned dinner mixes are a good example. A bottle of teriyaki goes much further than that little mixing package can ever hope to go. Plan your meals in advance to avoid the temptation to buy the "all in one" solutions.

Concentrated Juice Offers Big Savings

Most cartons of juice offer the buyer the opportunity to spend up to 60 percent more than purchasing the frozen concentrated equivalent. That is quite a big difference for the same amount of product.

Don't Be Shy About Shopping the Discount Basket

Often times they contain food products that manufactures want to clear off the shelf to make room for their newly designed package of the same product. Browsing the sale baskets in the stores is an excellent way to stretch your spending.

Shop Store Brands and Generic Products

A super large can of store brand spaghetti sauce is a perfect example of saving through store brand buying. You can break it down into reasonable proportions and freeze it for later. Not only do you increase you spending power, but you save on an extra trip to the store.

Don't Leave Money on the Table

You don't have to be a coupon junky to enjoy thrifty savings from bringing your coupons with you to the store. Just thumb through magazines and newspapers and clip out the coupons on products you already enjoy. Your savings will add up fast with little effort on your part.

See Also: Free Grocery Coupon Resources Have fun saving money while you shop!