Successful grocery shopping begins with careful planning. Careful planning takes time, but allows you, the consumer, to remain in control of how your dollars are spent. A concise list of items you intend to purchase (and your commitment to buy ONLY what the list contains) will save you time and money.

Start by planning a full week's worth of meals-that means 3 meals a day for seven days. Use a single sheet of paper with a table format listing the days of the week down the left hand column and breakfast, lunch and dinner in columns across the top. This will make an easy-to-read grid of your week's food choices. You can gather suggestions from family members to fill in their requests for various meals. You can also factor in what meals produce left overs and consider family schedules as you layout the week's meals. This calendar will provide an opportunity to evalute the variety of foods and nutritional values of the meals you provide your family. You may begin to notice a pattern to your diet as you make this calendar of meals each week. You can change things around to increase variety or you can settle into an acceptable routine. The important thing is to plan your week in advance.

Now that you have your 21 meals established, it is time to make your shopping list. Start by listing the necessary ingredients for all your meals, then visit your pantry, cupboards and fridge to see what you already have. Refine your list by crossing off things you have or by reducing the quantity of items you need.

Keep your grocery lists in a small notebook and date each list. This can serve as a reference for sebsequent shopping trips and will allow you to confirm if you recently purchased an item so that you will not make unnecessary duplicate purchases.

Shop with your list and buy exclusively from it. The one exception to this rule would be to purchase something that was an exceptional value because of a limited time sale or coupon. But use caution and treat your list as your guidng light to true savings.

You can zip through the list and shop very quickly when you know what you want. You'll find much less time is necessary for shopping when you are not distracted by marketing techiques there were deliberately planned to capture your grocery dollars.

There are other techiques that can help reduce costs, like bulk shopping and sharing such as sharing within a group of co-op members. Storage and re-packaging and time are factors to take into consideration for this type of savings.

One other important tip is to make sure you are not hungry with you shop. Shop on a full stomach! Nothing creates impulse buying quicker than being hungry which makes everything look good and can completely throw off your resolve to stick to your list. Also get a sitter for the kids or shop when your spouse is home to be with them. Shopping alone will speed up your shopping trip and you won't have to say "no" to your children's wants.

Learn more about this author, Emily Joy White.
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