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As I was making my way through the grocery store the other day, I noticed that a lot of the products are smaller in sizes yet higher in prices. Ice cream cartons have drastically reduced in size but prices have remained the same, if not, higher? Candy bars have gone mini. And their “King” sizes are now the same size as their standard from a few years ago? Bags of chips are filled mostly with air?

I walked out of the grocery stores with less grocery and less money in my wallet.

If I’m going to put a dent in my grocery bill, I need to be more proactive. Here are my newly adopted rules when it comes to grocery shopping.

1. Don’t wait till the last minute.

2. The other night, I sent my husband out to purchase a bottle of Ranch Dressing. He came home with a tiny bottle for over $5. I normally purchase a good size bottle for no more than $4. Most of the time, I can get it for under $3. So needless to say, $5 was way over priced. We ended up getting it anyways because we needed it that night for dinner. When you leave something to the last minute, there’s no wiggle room to look elsewhere for a better deal. Take inventory of what you need ahead of time. So when you are out and about and happen to run across a great deal, you can pick it up. Not only are you getting something off your shopping list, but you are getting it for a great price.

1. Take advantage of the weekly sales.

   We get paper advertisements from four different grocery stores in our area every week. They used to go straight into the recycling. One day, I decided to actually look through them, and lo and behold, I noticed items that I would buy at regular price were going on sale for much less. Why pay more when you can pay less? Now instead of doing my grocery shopping whenever, I wait to do my grocery shopping on the same day of the sale. It requires waiting for the day of the sale, but if you can, you end up saving quite a bit.

1. Combine weekly sales with coupons.

   This doubles your saving power! A jar of mayo is currently on sale for $2.99. That’s already a deal. Combine it with a manufacturer coupon for an additional $0.50 off and you can get thatitem for $2.49. Doesn’t sound like much, but if you can do that with most of the items in you grocery basket, then it adds up to a nice chunk of savings!

Happy grocery shopping!

This entry was posted on Monday, January 16th, 2012 at 3:05 pm and is filed under Tips & Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.