Grocery Shopping

Oh, Hi! There is a reason I started with budgeting before diving right into Grocery Shopping. You have to know how much you want/have to spend for grocery shopping or else you don't know if you are saving any money really. My sister really helped me with this. I already had set up my budget but she showed me how to make that money go farther. Here are a few of the tips I picked up:

1. Make a list. If you go in with a plan you will always have a more successful trip. I like to organize it into aisles in the store. From there I put how much I expect to pay next to it. While I shop I put how much I actually spent next to each item. This serves two purposes: the first is seeing if you can spend more in one area and less in another and the second is to keep for your next trip to help you estimate prices. Then, before I check out I add up my totals and make sure that I am under budget.
2. Make a meal calendar. This is important for making the list knowing how much of each item you will need. There is a great template for this on Microsoft Word. When you open a new document go to calendars and you will find it there.
3. Plan shopping trips. I usually go every 2 weeks. I've tried going every week and that didn't work for me and I usually spent more at each trip. Currently, I bought groceries for the whole month (except perishables) and only doing one trip this month. I'll tell you what I think when this month is over...
4. Look over adds and coupons! I'm not very good at this right now. However, I am trying and I have seen a difference. I just go to Walmart with my adds and have them price match everything. I haven't been great at couponing. Partly, because I don't have a printer and I don't get the news paper. I still get the red plum adds so I guess I should be better than I am. Oh well, I'm still working on it.

I didn't think about this but it was mentioned to me that as gas prices go up so do prices on food. SCARY! Anyway, feel free to leave some other tips that you know of, I'm just a beginner with all of this.