Every day it seems that grocery prices rise to another all time high. For people on budgets or who simple just don't have extra money usually have to cut down on the amount of food they buy. It doesn't have to be this way. Here are some simple steps to spend less money at the grocery store yet bring home just as much groceries as you did before. The first step is coupon clipping.

Coupon clipping has been an all time favorite for saving money at the local grocery store. You can find them in the newspaper once a week. They are all over the internet. Manufacturer websites give them out by mail or download. There are lots of coupon clubs & exchanges. You can even find them in the isles of the grocery store. Some grocery stores offer “Double Coupons” where the store actually doubles the face amount of your coupon. Next, File the coupons in an organizer by food group so you can find them easily.

The second part of cutting your grocery bill is to look in your mailbox. Each week local grocery stores issue their weekly specials through flyers. Look through each fryer and circle the items that your family actually uses. Since you have been faithfully saving your coupons, take them out and compare the items you circled. If the coupons you have been filing matches the flyer specials, it's time to redeem that coupon. Buy as many products at the discount price. Most coupons limit the number items that can be purchased at one time. Max it out. Buying this way will save you money in the long run.

For example, say your family uses YUMMY brand peanut butter that regularly cost you $4.25 per jar in the grocery store. It's in this weeks local grocery store flier at $3.00 ea. You pull out your coupon that reads 1.00 off of one jar of YUMMY brand peanut butter. The coupon also states that you can buy up to 4 peanut butter jars with $1.00 off of each. That week you should buy 4 peanut butters jars. Your cost is calculated as follows: ($3.00 Sale price x 4 jars) - (1.00 off x 4 jars =$4.00) = $8.00. Your total cost for 4 jars of peanut butter is $8.00. Thats $2 a piece for your BRAND name jar of YUMMY peanut butter. Your non sale amount would be ($4.25 original price per jar x 4 jars = $17.00). If you went to the grocery store once a month to buy peanut butter, you would spend $17. Because you used your coupon on the sales priced peanut butter and purchased it in bulk, you saved $9 calculated as follows: ($17.00 non sale price - $8.00 sale with coupon price = $9.00 Savings). That is $9 in your pocket or back in the grocery money. You can spend that $9 on the items that you wanted to circle in the flyer but couldn't due to budgets constraints.

The above illustration was calculated with ONE type of grocery product. Imagine if you did that with ALL of your items. The savings is huge! The key is to save your coupons and use them when the sale is going on. Double Coupon stores will further reduce the price and increase your savings.

The $9 is over a 50% savings on your grocery bill. Cutting it by over half. If you do that with each item on your grocery list, you can either put the difference in savings or buy twice as many groceries! Happy Shopping!

Copyright © 2008, Gail Gallegos, All Rights Reserved.