Save your money on the newspaper!
Most supermarkets have their circulars online so you don't have to buy the irrelevant at death's door print based publication.

Also, shop around. I have found that Trader Joe's actually has the best prices on a lot of stuff I buy compared to the supermarkets and that some supermarkets in the same chain change prices from store to store.

My local grocery store's loyalty program rocks. They own a chain of gas stations so every $50 on your card nets you 10 cents off a gallon of gas (max of like 20 gallons or so). Also, they will automatically double any coupon you use.

PLUS there's the special savings for using the card...

We do have to get better at clipping coupons, but if there's one thing I'm good at, it's making sure that we make a shopping list and stick to it. My wife always wants to make impulse buys, but I almost never let her.

I check the circulars online and make a list, stopping at up to 3 supermarkets.

I wish I were better at clipping coupons, but I don't get newspaper delivery.

What is this double coupon thing? Can you use the same type of coupon on the same product you purchase?

I haven't bothered to clip coupons since my wife & I started eating healthier. It looks like 99% of the coupons in the newspaper inserts are for absolute crap packaged foods, and none of it is remotely healthy...

The only coupons I ever find useful are occasional ziplock bag offers, or cat litter.

The Dallas paper has a special 2-pack of the Sunday edition that's a good deal. $2 for 2 vs. $1.50 for one, with double everything --including coupons. You might have something similar where you live and it's a good way to snag extra coupons.

I'm doing a bit of a survey of my four local supermarkets to see how the prices run on my regular purchases. It's been interesting, as I've already been able to rule one store out as not worth it, while another is evenly divided between lower priced and higher priced than my usual place.

And apparently butter is priced by random number selection. The variation on the cost for the same box o' Land o' Lakes was quite astonishing.

I clip coupons and I strongly disagree that the average savings is $1 per item. That's usually only on new products that the manufacturers are trying to get you to start buying. Established brands are usually 50 cents, or a buck off if you buy two or more.

@Frank Murphy: Yes, because spending 50 cents on a newspaper will either make you or break you. LOL.

@Jessica Schwartz: Do circular sales really outweigh the time, money, and effort spent going to three different supermarkets?

@mamalicious: If the point is to save money, spending 50 cents unavoidably is foolish, especially since it's not just a one-off--you're talking $26 a year if you buy it every week. The person who does that to get coupons and doesn't actually save $26 in coupons is making a financial error. You've got to consider the costs as well as the savings.

@Frank Murphy: I was very surprised to discover cereal was MUCH cheaper at Trader Joes. On the other hand, 1 gal of milk is over $1 cheaper at BJs. Same brand.

They're "gearing up to release their findings?" I read that article over a week ago in the magazine.

My tips are built around eating what I want to eat. We topped at $60/week for the two of us and are working our way down.

Find a farmer's market but know what produce goes for normally at the grocery store. In Kansas City the river market often has produce really cheap. The place was packed yesterday. I found blackberries are a good deal there right now as they come at 2x the size for half the price. A good deal for fresh fruit. There's also spice vendors selling cheap in bulk and spices can be outrageous. I know of a similar store in St Louis so I imagine there's bulk spices sold somewhere in every big city. Consider spending $5 on gas and get spices at a fraction of the grocery cost, especially if you spice heavily.

We buy a lot of store brand items where the quality is high and look across sizes on stuff that lasts for the cheapest per ounce.

Don't do what I see so many people do. They glance at the prices and buy whatever is cheapest.
Dry goods it's easy to buy bad, like toilet paper. Without a calculator can you tell me if a 12-pack with 200 squares per roll single-ply for $8.50 a better deal than an 12 pack of 150 sheet double ply for $9? Did you even look at what you were getting beyond the price and number of rolls? I found one day the walmart brand came with less paper on an amount-of-paper cost than the name brand.

Use discount stores where it will hit your numbers the most, not for everything. We countered a year's cost at Sam's club just with allergy pills and we were already buying the off brand. 60 pills for $16 multiple times a year vs 350 pills for $16 once a year. We found their breakfast bars are cheaper in the name brand than our regular store has in their store brand and we eat these a lot. We'll save $100-150 per year just with this.

Between the two, for most people that's 10 days working they just pulled off the food budget and that's nothing to laugh at.

"Look For Extended Sales: Some weekly sales now run for over a month. "Weis Markets, for instance, dropped the price on thousands of staples for 90 days."

Weis gladly jacked up everything else while the prices on those few items were "frozen" and when the price freeze came off, jacked those items up as well (some by a significant amount).

Another tip to remember...the marketing area itself will have an effect on regular and sale prices. Areas with fewer (or no) competition will often result in sky-high prices, while areas with lots of stores will often have prices significantly lower.

@floraposte: I guess you're right if that is the only reason you'd buy a newspaper.

(I spend much more than $26 a year on a daily subscription to a newspaper because I actually read the darn thing, too. It may not be worth it to some, but it is to me. There's just something about reading a newspaper, magazine or book in hand that cannot compare to a computer screen.)

I also like having the Sunday circulars spread out right in front of me so that I can compare. Makes my planning much easier.

@WiglyWorm: Giant Eagle? I used to love FuelPerks when I lived in Pittsburgh.

@supercereal: Will save you hundreds/month. Stripping in front of a web-cam might be a better use of time, but that too has its drawbacks.

I loves me some Pathmark. If only I had the time to go there.

@taney71:
It doubles the amount of savings up to a certain point.
So, a .50 coupon off a jar of Salmonella-free peanut butter will be redeemed for $1.00 of the jar. The manufacturer pays the face value (in this case .50) plus a handling fee of a few more cents per coupon. The rest of the dollar (say... .43 cents) will be covered by the grocery store.

I say "up to a certain point" because many stores won't double above a set amount, often a dollar. So, a 40 cent coupon is worth 80 cents, and 50 cent coupon is worth a dollar, but a 55 cent coupon is worth 55 cents. Which is probably why you see so many 55 cent coupons.

Double coupons are great if you use coupons, but that non-reimbursed .43 has to come from somewhere, and it generally comes as higher prices to people who don't use coupons/loyalty cards.

And it's *really* important to know if you are getting a good deal in the first place.

A "price book" is a great place to start: It took me a while to do one, but sometimes the base price at one place without doubled coupons is cheaper than the reduced price with them, and that's good to know.

I started a price book after reading Amy Dacyczyn's "Tightwad Gazette" years ago. Here's how to do it: [organizedhome.com]

@taney71: Some stores double the value of coupons: for example, a .75 coupon takes 1.50 off your receipt. This is more prevalent in some areas than others--my local stores all stopped doubling recently (way to compete!)

@catnapped: Those extended sales are always priced worse than weekly ones for the same product.

@WiglyWorm: Yup, and now they have a deal with every new prescription or transferred prescription they give you $1 off a gallon of gas in fuel perks.

@orlo: I don't even spend hundreds per month, so that would be welcome!

But seriously, I flat out don't believe anyone can save hundreds per month by spending an afternoon traveling from store to store. The Wegman's by me has consistently low prices (I just paid $1.69 for a gallon of milk this afternoon!), which is better that $0.60 off an item I wouldn't have bought in the first place.

@bostonguy: That's close to what I find; the limitations also make them less valuable (saving twenty cents on one bag of sugar isn't compensation for having to go to a different store, and I'm not allowed to get more than one). I can see that if I were buying for a lot of people it might make sense to build my shopping and eating around them, but I'd rather buy what I actually like, and it's rare enough that there's a coupon for something in that category that my outlay almost certainly exceeds the value.

I have to disagree that supermarkets are helping shoppers with lower prices. From what I can see, prices have gone up a huge amount over the past couple of years -- and while there are often some good discounts every week, an overall shopping trip still costs quite a bit more. Ralphs, which used to have a great double-coupon program, recently capped doubling to $1 (so a 75-cent coupon is worth $1, and a $1 coupon is worth $1). Even Trader Joe's, my favorite store in the world, has (out of necessity) raised prices quite a bit. The only chain that hasn't raised prices significantly is 99 Cents Only Stores, because they didn't want to have to change their name.

You can also combine BOGO offers with coupons that require you to buy two items. Just this morning I was at CVS where they had a BOGO Free offer on Dove shampoo & conditioner, regular price $5 each. I had coupons for $1 off shampoo and $1.50 off conditioner. I bought one of each (one was free), and used the coupons. Along with the $2.50 in Extra Bucks for last quarter, I got $10 worth of stuff for free.

@bostonguy: Hey, I feed my kids that crap!

*on a side note: My parents were dirt poor and raised us on that "crap packaged foods" and I turned out O.K.

I'm sure there are better options, but if you are a single parent or a family of 5 just trying to get by- making sure you have enough food PERIOD is the main concern, not how healthy. I'd rather cut coupons, bargain shop, and use rewards to feed my family for a month vs. 2 weeks.

@marsneedsrabbits:

Thanks for the great information! I never heard of a price book. Damn you consumerist from keeping that tip from me!!!

If them having your data bothers you, and you don't build up rewards for using the card, share cards/phone numbers. About 2 dozen people at the school I work for all use the same number - doesn't give the store a thing about purchases cuz between them they buy 80 percent of what the store carries

@TedSez: Exactly right--you need to get your head out of the sand if you think supermarkets are out to help you. They're more than happy to pick your pockets if you let them.

I shop my local Price Choppers here in NY- I stock up when things are on sale with coupons, use my rewards card, get the fuel advantage deal of 10 cents off/gallon for every $50 I spend- it helps when you have a pantry and extra freezer.

When you know how to spot the deals, you'll soon see that even Wal Mart can't beat them. Sure, you can bring circulars into Wal Mart and they can manually price adjust at the register, but that takes HOURS when you are shopping for a big family. I haven't been to a Wal Mart in a very long time, thank goodness.

While there's always been the tip that when you see a sale such as "4 for $5.00", you really don't need to purchase that many as the individual item rings up at it's partial multiple price, some chains are insisting you purchase the said amount...any more or less and you'll pay way more for each of them.

I'll take the King Supers brand Aspirin and oatmeal. Stay away from my Heinz ketchup and A1 steak sauce.

@TerribleDecade: I wasn't aware anyone could ever love Pathmark.

@supercereal: It really depends on what you're buying and how much of it.

If you're cooking for a large family which consumes a large quantity of staple goods, it can be quite worth it, maybe up to $30-40 per week for an hour of clipping. So $30-40 an hour might be worth it to you, or not. It's higher than most salaries, but not all, and you might be a time stressed professional who will pay for the speed of shopping without clipping.

If you're cooking for just yourself it is much less fruitful, just because there's less to save on, and because of unit-sizing problems. For many staples, a single householder probably buys them too infrequently or in too small a quantity to make the time worth it. Probably more in the $3-8/hour clipping range for a single householder.

@supercereal: I saved $40 (25% of total bill) in one trip to the supermarket last week by checking the circular before I went. I would have saved more, but I was too lazy to dig out my coupon file.

Proctor and Gamble products on sale AND with cash rebates for buying certain ones in combination. Checked off everything I regularly buy from P&G and bought $140 worth of stuff.

Granted, we're currently stocking up on personal care items and kitchen-type stuff for the baby's arrival (running out of deoderant on a normal day is annoying; running out of deoderant when you have a newborn in the house is an unsolveable catastrophe), but I could easily see a family of four saving "hundreds" a month with the circulars. I think it'd also depend on how far apart the grocery stores are. Personally, I wouldn't be willing to drive "all over town," but we have two right across the street from each other in two places, and five I'm willing to patronize within about 2 or 3 miles of each other.

I miss double coupons. We don't have them here. But the grocery store is unionized so the service is ten times as good as it was when I lived in a "right-to-work" state with double coupons. I suppose it's worth the trade-off; I don't have to explain to six people allegedly employed in the produce department what a "rutabaga" is and that, no, I'm not speaking Spanish and, yes, "rutabaga" IS an English word.

Membership at bulk warehouses are worth it if you make a point of going there for the majority of your non-perishables. I have a Costco membership and the only thing I don't buy there on a regular basis is milk and fruits/vegetables (though I get them when I'm there, I only go there once a month or so).

Buying bulk pasta and freezing my own meat in ziplock bags saves me around $40/month vs buying at the grocery store, and I only have to make trips to the grocery store twice a month or so for milk and eggs and such.

Store brands are a great deal, and to most people, a big secret. I buy store brands all the time. The point of the store brands being the same as the national brands, however, I personally take issue with.

I've found that store brand substitutes are good for some products, but not for others. For example, you can't really go wrong with store brand paper plates or sandwich bags. However, I have found a large gap in quality between store brands and national brands for things like Mac & Cheese and taco seasoning mix.

It may seem that the 4 products I listed are pretty random - and they are - but I have done a lot of personal research (i.e. taste testing, etc.) for store brands vs. national brands. Suffice to say, at the supermarket, I ususally buy a mix of both.

@verucalise: I was raised on that crap packaged food and ended up wishing I wasn't. Yes, it's much worse financially to be totally healthy but right now, I'm self sufficient for breakfast and lunch while living with Dad through college.

90+ lbs later so far, I look back wishing I was at least taught to eat somewhat proper. Unfortunately, the fast food/bad food addiction took months to finally break. For a big family, yes, it's cheaper to make a large meal. It's all about not going overboard which too many do.

Yoko Broke Up The Beatles: The larger chains have their own private label premium brands, like Safeway Select and Private Selection at Kroger-owned stores. There are several Safeway Select items that I prefer to the brand name for both taste and quality: for example their strawberry preserves don't contain HFCS.

@supercereal: I used to go out of my way to shop at Wegman's but they have been raising their prices on things I bought regularly there; e.g., LactAid milk (now $5.99 for a 3-quart jug!), and some of their 'natural' cereal products. I can now match and sometimes beat those prices much closer to home. I find them still pretty good for produce, meats, and customer service. Wish they'd get rid of those 'Buy what you want when you want it' idiot signs though.

@Kevin Carlyle: I agree 100% about your point about pricing on paper products. It seems as if the stores go out of their way to make it hard to compare the various products from a unit-pricing standpoint.

But somehow I don't think you should be comparing unit pricing on one ply toilet paper versus two ply. It's not like they're interchangeable just by doublilng up on one-ply. To use one over the other is a personal preference :-)

@wardawg: especially cost effective is when you go halfsies on a membership with a relative or friend who shops at the same time you do. Or just tag along with a friend, and pay them for your food when you get to the checkout. I do that when I know my mom is going to costco. Sure, they may think she is getting an awful lot of food for one person, but you give em a dirty look and say "I have a high metabolism!"

@bostonguy: Your right 99% of the coupons are for packaged food that is not healthy and a horrible value. Most packaged food is really expensive compared to buying the basic ingredients and making your own. Most of the products that you see coupons for are a waste of money.
There are some coupons for things like personal care products like toothpaste or deodorant that are worth looking for since most of those are harder to make your own compared to say frozen tv dinner spaghetti vs. making your own.

We have a subscription to just the Sunday and Holiday paper.
My wife and I mainly got it just for the Sunday Coupons and Ads.
However, I also read the paper, so it isn't like we just get it for the coupons.

We shop at several stores depending on the deals and what we need.
We shop at Aldi, Wegmans, Walmart, Tops, Sam's, BJ's and others.

One place that will save you money is a bakery outlet.
Rochester has one in Henrietta, the Freihofer's Bakery Outlet.
We save tons of money buying all of our bread, rolls, bagels and other baked goods there. We freeze everything as well so it stays.

As for the Store/Generic brands vs. Name/National Brands.
It really depends on what you value more, money or quality.
While they say that the store brands may be the same, they can taste different due to a slightly altered recipe or ingredient.

For example, my wife has to have Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream whenever she wants it. However, with me, the store brand ice cream does it for me.

The best tactics to get more for your money that I have found are these. Use a price book, knowing who charges more or what the going rate is helps know if your getting ripped off or where to buy certain items. I look up store flyers the day I make my list and figure out what I want to buy due to it being on sale. I also buy non-perishables to stock up if the sale is good enough. Some stores put coupons in their flyers for things like veggies, bread, sugar. Instead of getting the paper I just pick up a copy of the flyer as I walk in the door and yank the coupons out. I shop at 3-5 stores to get groceries and household things. I do them in a loop from the house and back. That saves time and I can stop other places in between if I need to. I keep a cooler in the trunk if I think something needs to be kept cold in route. I buy very few processed products and instead buy raw ingredients like beans, flour, meat, veggies. Things we use large quantities of or don't go bad like flour or oats I buy huge bags at the food coop. Way better quality than the grocery store variety and quite a bit cheaper.

@wardawg:

Buying in bulk is a good thing even when you don't want the big quantity, but can justify the purchase anyway..

I grabbed a box of granola bar thingies from Sams. Big monster sized box of 72 units for $8. The normal store boxes are 12 units for $4.50.

Even if I don't want/need 72, buying the bulk box is a better deal than buying two normal store boxes and once you hit the 3rd normal store box the bulk box becomes a great purchase. Sure, sure, I threw out the last dozen or so bars because they got too old. So what.

Same with iced tea. I bought a case of the big brew bags at Sams for $5 or so. Damn cheap. One bag makes a gallon of tea and there was 24 or 48 bags in the case. The normal store packaging is nearly the same price and has enough bags for maybe 1 gallon of tea. Once I hit my second gallon I was on a $ saving roll.

My Aunt came over and say all the tea bags. I ended up giving her half the bags. She is a big tea drinker and there was no way I was going to drink that much tea. She joined Sams just to partake in the cheap tea bags.

All fair. Been doing that kind of stuff for years now. I just mainly keep note of the "normal" prices for stuff at each store and their policies. I especially like to take advantage of buy one get one free sales at stores that don't make you buy 2 to get the discounted price especially if it's on something I really don't need 2 of at the time.

And yeah, I am picky and choosy when it comes to storebrand stuff. For things like personal products that I expect a certain performance, I keep an eye out for when my fav national brand goes on sale and stock up so I'm never without something I know I'm gonna need so I can get near-storebrand price. Other things, depends on price and quality... and which store's storebrand too.