by K Scappace

Created on: March 29, 2009   Last Updated: March 30, 2009

Changing my way of shopping helped me save a lot of money. It was not easy, but I can feed a family of five with two extras on a weekly basis with under a hundred dollars this way and they enjoy the foods I buy.

The bulk of our shopping focuses on a specific meal for our family. For a very long time, I thought it was dinner. When I looked at my receipt though, I found I bought for breakfast most often. Identify your meal through your store receipt. Are you buying for the meal most eaten or the meal most desired? Compare how many fresh, frozen, and pre-made items there are. You will cut a major percentage of your bill by eliminating prepared foods. This is a two-fold benefit that saves you money in the doctor's office as well as in the store. Really, the only difference between your efforts to make parmesan noodles and Lipton's is the amount of salt in what you serve.

Every store has aisles we should avoid. For my family it is the snack aisle. We can easily spend twenty dollars or more per trip on chips and colas. You already know that buying a generic or store brand is cheaper than buying national brands. However, you can save thousands of dollars a year on your grocery bill by replacing them with fruits, vegetables, and nuts. At first, I did not believe this. The way a store prices produce by the pound seems more expensive than it is. A five bag of apples will feed more members of your family longer than the twenty cookies you get in a box.

School snacks and drinks are a huge market today. Really, we are paying for convenience not nutrition when we buy them. More members of your family will benefit if you buy a small drink container and pour juice into it than if you buy a pre-measured juice drink. The same is true for the snacks. If you buy a bag of grapes and put some in a Ziploc bag for your child to take to school, the rest of the grapes remain at home to feed your family.

Meats eat as much of our grocery dollar as anything else on the list. An old truism is to buy a single large cut of meat and butcher it to your needs. However, most of us are not butchers and discard this idea from the beginning. Your grocery store may offer free butcher services. Check it out. It will save you money and reduce trips to the store.

Every effort to save money at the store requires advance planning and setting limits. There is no way to save money without those two steps. You have to know where you are spending it and why before you can successfully change it. You have to understand what you are purchasing when you buy a product and what benefits the purchase provides your family. Compare the benefit of the purchase against the drawbacks and determine whether this is a good purchase. Saving money in the grocery store is as much about confidence in your purchases as it is finding the best deal.

You will save the most money on your grocery bill by eliminating trips to the store. This does not mean buying three gallons of milk in one trip, unless you have room to store them and know your family will use them before they expire. It may cost you less to pay an extra one or two dollars to buy the milk at a convenience store rather than making a trip to the grocery. How often do you go to the grocery store for a gallon of milk and come home with a bag full of other purchases?

Yes, stores try to make us spend money. They also want us to come back again. It does not benefit the store to take our money and not provide value. Use that knowledge to shop wisely instead of cheaply.

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