by Daniel Koontz

Created on: December 22, 2008

Many of our friends and acquaintances wring their hands, complaining about the rising costs of groceries, thinking there's nothing they can do but pay the extra money each week.

Fools!

If done right, grocery shopping can be done so cheaply that it's laughable, and believe me, you won't be forced to eat gruel every day. So without further ado, here are seven tips that will help you make your grocery shopping laughably cheap:

1) Buy your staples in bulk and load up if you see any staples on sale:

Basic staples like rice, brown rice, sugar, flour, etc are extremely inexpensive when bought in bulk, and since they can be stored for a long time without spoiling, there's no downside to buying them this way. Even eggs will keep for weeks in a fridge.

2) Make recipes that contain fresh produce:

You can get an entire pound of collard greens for 99c. Most other vegetables are equally inexpensive. Two pounds of carrots? Less than a dollar. Potatoes? Two bucks for 5 pounds. A dozen eggs? $1.79. You get the picture: most raw or basic items in the grocery store are quite inexpensive. You only really start paying through the nose when you buy prepared foods. Which brings us to our next suggestion:

3) Lay off the prepared foods and take-out dinners:
Yes they may save time. But prepared foods are high in sodium and fat, cost extra money, and they usually don't even taste all that good. Do those Hot Pockets really taste good enough that it's worth ingesting all that excess sodium and partially hydrogenated soybean oil? Have you ever made your own pizza and compared the taste to a flash-frozen store-bought pizza? Furthermore, as you get more practice cooking, find that buying fully prepared takeout meals don't save you any time, even while they cost you extra money. It's much more time efficient to make just ONE grocery trip a week to the store and make a couple of scalable meals rather than making a habit of picking something up for takeout multiple times a week.

4) Buy generic at all times:

Have you ever purchased your local store brand pasta sauce and compared it to Ragu? You might be surprised to find it's not only half the price but it tastes twice as good. You'll also find the "generic rule" true when you buy most dried pastas as well as most canned items. The only difference you'll feel is in the wallet.

5) Learn when different fruits and veggies are "in season" and buy them then:

As you get more experience buying fresh fruits and vegetables, you'll begin to notice significant price

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>