Looking at my monthly budget, outside of my mortgage and car, the biggest expenditure I have is food and groceries. While the wife and I have cut back on our eating out since starting a diet, we did notice our grocery bill increasing. I thought grocery shopping and cooking at home was suppose to save money! Actually, it can – if you shop wisely. I’m going to offer a few tips on how to lower your bill when at the grocery store.

• Get a shopping card. Almost everywhere you go, including grocery stores, they have some sort of MVP/Preferred Customer shopping card. You can sign up for these at checkout or customer service. Taking 3 minutes to fill out the form can literally save you hundreds of dollars a year depending on your grocery bill. Stores also provide more discounts for shoppers who use these cards. Bonus Tip: We actually have a keychain that contains all of our cards and keep it in our car. This ends the hassle of having 20 cards attached to your keys or poking you in the leg when in your pocket.

• Coupons. Yeah, nothing really shocking about this one and my honorable no-brainer mention for saving money. Picking up a Sunday paper for $1.50 or $2 can yield several dollars back in valuable coupons. Sure, a majority of the coupons are for products you don’t buy, but you only need 2 or 3 to break even. Too cheap to buy a paper? you can even get coupons online now and print from home. This is one site in particular is good. Circulars are also a good place to get coupons. Mine shows up in the mail on Tuesday and Wednesday. You can thumb through these in 2 minutes tops to find anything useful. You can even get the coupons emailed to you (be sure to use a junk email account). Bonus Tip: Proctor & Gamble, the people who make pretty much everything, allow you to load their coupons on your customer card. Check their site out, and you can see here if your grocery store card is eligible.

• Plan Ahead. Having a grocery list is crucial to saving money. I guarantee that if you go on your weekly trip to the store and don’t have a list, you will do at least one of two things – spend more money on things you already have or on thing you don’t need. It’s really not hard to plan meals. Using your coupons and figuring out your work week, write out your meals. Now check your fridge, freezer, and pantry to see if you have those items. If you don’t, write it down. Hopefully you have a pad on your fridge that you add items to during the week that you want to remember. Dishwashing detergent is one of these things. Real pain in the butt to come back from the store and realize you forgot soap. Toilet paper would be worse. Bonus Tip: keep your meals on the grocery list. This will help you remember why you are buying peppers or whatever. Have a list for all the stores you shop at, which leads to -

• Comparison shop. We have two stores we do most of our shopping at – Trader Joe’s and Safeway. If you don’t have a Trader Joe’s, I’m sorry. If you do, I hope you shop there. Trader Joe’s is probably my third biggest budget saver behind customer cards and coupons. Also under comparison shopping is warehouse purchases. Costco, BJ’s, Sam’s Club, etc all fall under here. For some items, you can save a lot of money if you use that much. Otherwise you are just being wasteful. Buying in bulk doesn’t always save money. For the most part, things like paper products will be better off purchased using coupons and sales offered by grocery stores. Don’t forget about places like Target that also have food sections. The point is you can save money by checking the cost of common items that you purchase among your area stores.

• Don’t go hungry. Studies show that you will end up buying more if you go to the grocery store hungry. Fill your belly before you fill your cart and you will keep your wallet full!

• Add that up. Bringing a calculator to the store can also help cut down on costs. You keep track of what the estimated total is of items in your cart. If you are on a strict budget, you’ll know if that pint of Breyer’s needs to go back. You can also use it to determine the value of items for comparison. Most stores have the “price per ounce” or “price per pint” however there is a problem. Sometimes they will list two different measures for comparison. You could be shopping for apple juice and one brand is listed as “price per ounce” the other is listed as “price per liter.” I’m not going to do fractions in the juice aisle. Bonus Tip: Embarrassed to be using a calculator in public? Use your cell phone – people will think you are texting.

• Buy store brand. sometimes. Everyone knows that store brands usually cost significantly less than their brand name equivalents. You do have to be careful here as some items just aren’t the same as far as quality. We love our private label green beans but steer clear from mustard. It’s worth the $.10 to get French’s. Also, with coupons sometimes you can get the name brand for even less that the store label. Just like other places, you get what you pay for. Spending a few total bucks more to ensure you will not only like but use the product goes a long way. You aren’t saving anything if you end up throwing it away.

So there you have it. Take these tips and tricks with you the next time you go to the grocery store and enjoy the savings. The wife and I even try to make shopping a game. We always try to save at least 20% off our total bill. I think the biggest discount we ever had was 42%. That’s $42 off of $100. Can you imagine saving that all the time? Most likely you can’t but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. None of these items are are going to push you too hard or are difficult by any means. That’s the point – saving can be easy, you just have to work on it a little.