by Lisa Web

Created on: December 07, 2009

How to stretch your grocery budget and buy more for less. Seems simple enough, right? And it is. Follow these tips and get more bang for your buck at your grocery store.

1. Know your store. Find out if your store has weekly sales, and what day the start and end on. See if your grocery store offers a membership club that provides additional savings or offers.

2. Know your groceries. Know what you normally buy. This is easily done if you keep a grocery list. Take the time to note prices on items that you often buy. Their normal retail, and sale prices alike. Let's take pasta for example. At your local store, normal price may be $1.50 per package, so you would want to note that. You also know that this pasta often is on sale 10 packages for $10.00, or $1.00 each. You would want to note that as well. What you have just done is created a "price book". Do this for all items that you normally purchase. Mark the regular price, and keep track of the best sale price that you find. You can keep these in a book, on a notecard, but the easiest way is to use a computer printed grocery list and simply add these prices in after the item name.

Why is this helpful? If you see that pasta is now $0.75 per box, you know that this is a good time to stock up at a much cheaper price than you would normally find. If you do this for all the items you normally use, you can buy in larger quantities when sale prices are at their lowest, and avoid having to buy these items at a higher sale price, or even full price.

This is also helpful if you shop more than one grocery store. You would want to mark which store has the best sale price that you have found. It is beneficial to your budget to shop at more than one store, if they are along your normal path to work or other places. You can mix and match, getting the best prices on what you need.

3. Know your coupons. Clip and save coupons for anything that you would normally buy, or items that you would like to buy if the price is right. There are many ways to organize and keep coupons, some people toss them in an envelope, storage acordian file, or even in a binder. However you keep them, treat your coupons as cash. It may seem insignificant to save $0.25 on an item, but add that savings to sale prices and you can save a good amount on what you need to get. If you treat them like cash, this is $0.25 that you have in your pocket when you leave the store. Coupons can be a hassle at first, but they are well worth it.

Don't forget to look online

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