I have been learning the coupon process for some time now.  But I always have questions and could always use more info.  When I want those questions answered reliably, I turn to Coupon Queen Heidi Kennedy, she is one of the gals from Hot Coupon World and someone I trust when it comes to all the facets of saving money and using coupons.

Here are some very helpful tips from her:

10 Ways To Save Money On Your Groceries

Statistics show that the average family of four spends $200 to $300 a week on their grocery shopping. However when times are tight, as they are for many in this country right now, finding ways to shave off a few dollars on your budget is a wise financial move. While there are items in your household budget that are pretty much set in stone (mortgage or rent, electricity,  gas, water, etc) the money you spend on your households groceries is one of the few areas of your budget that you can find ways to cut costs. And the best part of this is that unlike cutting costs else ware, like getting rid of cable or phone service, you may find that you can afford better products and eat better. Here are my sure fire ways to cut costs and save money on your groceries.

1. Become a cherry picker. No I am not talking about picking your own fruit at a local orchard, what I am talking about is to learn to shop the sales at your local grocery stores. Don’t be store loyal and shop at just one store. Instead plan your shopping trips to multiple stores so that you can glean the best deals that each store has to offer each week. This is is why it works… each week grocery stores put out what they call “loss leaders” these are items that are heavily discounted and advertised in their weekly sale fliers. The stores do these deep discounts to lure you into the store so that you will pick up the loss leader and then fill your cart with other items that are not that great of a deal. Take a look each week at the store fliers for your local grocery stores (you can find most of them online these days…just do an Internet search!) and make your shopping list based on the best deals each store has to offer. So if this week Store A has eggs on sale for 50¢ a dozen and Store B has cereal for $2.00 a box and Milk for $2.50 a gallon and Store C has boneless skinless chicken breasts for $1.20 a pound and laundry detergent for $2.00 a bottle. Then go ahead and shop around. Plan your trips to the grocery stores around other errands so that you are not wasting gas.

2. Forget generics and Walmart as being the cheapest way to buy your groceries. Many people have this misconception that buying generics is always cheaper than buying name brand items or they tell me that they do all of their shopping at Walmart because they have “everyday low prices”. And while there are times when generics and Walmart are indeed cheaper, this is just not always the case. Let’s take generics. If you walk into any grocery store right now, today and compare the price of generics verses a name brand competing brand you will probably find that many times the generic item is indeed cheaper. However, unlike generics name brand items are more likely to go on sale at some point in the year at a deep discount and it will be cheaper than generics. You just have to know when to shop. For example lets take an everyday item that most families use like cheese. If I walk into my local grocery stores and pick up an 8 ounce block of cheese the store brand will be about $2.50. However if I wait, at some point Kraft brand cheese will go on sale for $1.50 for an 8 ounce block saving me $1.00 on that cheese. When it goes on sale, I stock up and buy enough to last my family 6 months to a year (you can freeze cheese!) This method of waiting for items to go on sale and stocking up applies to just about every item that you buy… toilet paper, canned veggies, pasta, peanut butter, cereal, flour, toothpaste, pet food, frozen meals, butter, spaghetti sauce, granola bars, deodorant and much much more!

3. Build a stockpile. Back in the “olden days” our forefathers and foremothers used to garden, hunt, smoke, dehydrate, can, and preserve the fruits of their labors to hold them through the hard and lean times. They filled the root cellar, the pantry shelves, and the barn rafters with food and supplies to last them through the winter. These days most of us don’t have the time to garden enough to grow a years worth of food and most people these days don’t hunt and preserve their own meat. The art of home canning and other methods of food preservation has been lost on many of us (although it is showing a resurgence!). Instead of having to grow or kill our own food we have a grocery store on just about every corner with food at our fingertips ripe for the buying. However having a stockpile of food and household items at home is one of the smartest things you can do to save money. By purchasing items in bulk at the deep discounts offered by sales (and coupons, but we will come back to that later…) you can purchase at the very lowest price point and buy enough to last you until the prices drop again. When peanut butter is on sale for $1.00 a jar, go ahead and buy enough to last you a year so that you don’t have to buy peanut butter when it is not on sale at $3.00 a jar. This is the same principal when buying stocks, buy when the price is low so that you can buy more. Having a stockpile of food and household items bought at the lowest price points possible is just plain smart economics. And if times get really tough, you have the security in knowing that you have food on hand to feed your household. Just like your grandparents…you are secure for lean times.

4. Use coupons to save even more. I will not lie to you, using coupons takes a bit more time and effort than just shopping the sales. Buy shopping the sales and learning to take advantage of loss leaders and stockpiling when the prices are low you can shave 50% off your grocery bill right there. But by adding in manufactures coupons is where you can save 60%-90% off. And no matter how cheap generics or the loss leaders are, it is near impossible to get those items for free like you can sometimes by using coupons. In this month alone I have personally gotten for free 20 bottles of Gatorade, 20 boxes of Quaker oatmeal, 10 toothbrushes, 5 boxes of Band-Aids, 2 boxes of hair dye, 2 dozen eggs, 4 packages of tortillas and 2 bags of cat food all 100% for free after coupons. And as of the date of this article there are still 5 days left in the month! The key to using coupons is not to just use coupons because you have them, but to wait for the items that you have coupons for to also go on sale. Couponing is like a hand of poker, you have to know when to hold them and when to fold them. More often than not your coupons will expire before you use them, but when the sale and coupon stars align (item goes on sale AND you have coupons for it) then you will see the big time savings. Taking your peanut butter that is on sale for $1.00 down to a mere 50¢ a jar after coupon. And to go with the stockpile mentality you are going to want to collect multiple coupons so that you can buy multiple jars of peanut butter. There are literally thousands of coupons out there for just about every major brand (and a lot of minor brands too!) you just have to look for them and collect them and wait for those items to go on sale. Printable coupons that you print from your home computer is a fast and easy way to add coupon savings to your grocery shopping.

5. Learn the sales cycles. As I mentioned earlier, just about every brand name item goes on sale at some point in time during the year. Many times there are predictable sales cycles that you can count on so that you know to stock up when the prices are lowest. For example in February and October there will be good sales on Pepsi Co. brands (Soda, Lay’s potato chips, Quaker products). In the Autumn you will find the best sales on canned soups, chili’s and other cold weather meal type foods. Baking items like flour, sugar, canned milk, cake mixes, frosting, spices and extracts, baking soda, baking powder, brand sugar, powdered sugar, etc go on deep discount around Christmas and Easter. Barbecue and picnic items like hamburger, ketchup, BBQ sauce, mustard, pickles, olives, paper plates, napkins, relish, mayonnaise, salad dressings, hot dogs, ribs, fresh chicken, etc go on great sales around Memorial Day, Fourth of July and again Labor day and usually sales in between all summer long. These are the best times to stockpile these items.

6. Learn to cook at home. It almost goes without saying that eating out is a money waster. However what is even more of a waste of money is the fact that cooking real meals at home is something that a lot of people have not learned how to do. Buying food staples (when on sale & using coupons when possible) and learning how to cook real meals instead of relying on heavily processed or frozen meals is often cheaper, not to mention healthier. That is not to say that you should never eat out or turn to a box of macaroni & cheese but learning how to make items from scratch is just overall better for your pocketbook and your health. If your not a good cook or want to learn how to explore it find a book or website (I love sites such as AllRecipes.com And 5DollarDinners.com myself) If you want to save even more money, learn how to cook in bulk. A large batch of chili for example, can feed you for 3 or 4 meals at pennies per serving.

7. Shop in season. Fresh produce is one of the most expensive parts of many household’s budgets. However just like learning to shop the sales cycles to save on most of your groceries you also need to learn how to buy produce in season. Buying fresh berries in January is going to be expensive, 6 ounces of raspberries at $5.00. But by buying them in season (summer months) you are going to pay $2.50 or less…a 50% savings. And don’t forget that you can freeze most  seasonal produce to use later in the year. Look for produce deals all year round and plan your meals and snacking around what is in season at the time.

8. Invest in a freezer. If there is a way that you can afford it and you have the space for it a freezer can be a great money saving investment. The added cost of electricity needed to run an extra freezer will can easily be outweighed by the savings that you can garner from it by stocking up and buying in bulk items that can be frozen. I personally have two freezers in my garage. A chest freezer and an upright freezer. By having an extra freezer or two I can take advantage of great deals on meat, milk, cheese, frozen pizzas (great to have on hand and cheaper than eating out), frozen vegetables and fruits, and a myriad of other food items that can be frozen. This past year we bought a lamb (at $2.50 a pound) and this year we are planning on sharing a cow with another family member that we will purchase from a local 4-H club member. I could easily not go shopping for about 2 months by living out of my freezer and stockpile if I had to. We have vegetables, fruit, milk, butter and even eggs (scrambled in containers) and more in the freezers. The cost of running my two freezers is about $100 a year however I easily have $5000 or more in food items in my freezers so the costs outweigh the savings by far. If buying a new freezer is not in the budget look for a newer model used freezer in your local classifieds or on Craigslist.org.

9. Become friends with your store managers, butchers and produce department managers. Being nice and friendly to everyone is something we all should strive for in our day to day lives but if you had to pick just three people to be nice to I would choose your store managers, butchers and the produce department managers because they can help you save money. Being friendly and getting to know these folks is the way you can get the inside track on upcoming sales, discounts, unadvertised special, clearances, markdowns and other ways to save. If you want to save ask these guys and gals where the deals are and I will bet that they will be willing to tell you! I often see the store managers when I go to the grocery store and I now know them by name. I usually ask them “what are the deals this week” and they can tell you what the best deals are, sometimes things that I don’t know about like clearance in the laundry aisle or unadvertised sale on coffee. Getting to know your butcher and produce manager is a great way to get savings on items that are usually budget busters. These folks are specialists for their departments and can give you the heads up on great sales and markdowns. For example getting to know your produce manager he or she may be able to tell you what items are in season or can offer you a great deal on produce items that are going to go on markdown. The same can be said by being friendly with your butcher. Also you can try negotiating better prices too, one of the ways that I save money on buying ground beef is by going into the grocery store near the closing time of the butcher department and asking what sort of deal the butcher can give me if I buy up all his remaining days worth of hamburger meat. I know, and he knows that if the ground beef is not sold today that he has to throw it out, so he is willing to give me a discount if I am willing to buy in bulk!

10. Train your eyes for clearance items. Just about every grocery and drug store has clearance and markdowns. Some people think that clearance items are old, outdated or expired products and that is usually not the case. More often than not a store puts something on clearance when they need to clear shelf space to make room for new product. This can happen when a major brand issues a new package design and the store needs to get rid of the old packaged products to allow room for the new package. Clearance also happens when a store over buys a product or when an item was not a good seller, for whatever reason. Additionally you have seasonal clearance items that happen after most major holidays and seasons. Clearance shopping can be a great way to save 50%, 75% or more on perfectly good products. Some stores put special clearance tags on merchandise right on the regular store shelves, while others move the clearance items to a special aisle or section of the store. One of my local grocery stores puts clearance items in shopping carts near the front doors. Recently I was able to score 10 bags of Starbucks coffee for $2.00 a bag, a savings of $6.00 each! After the holidays most stores put seasonal items on deep discounts. The day after Valentines Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas you will find items at 50% off. Give it another week and everything that is left can usually be found for 75% off or more. You may also be able to negotiate those clearance priced items too with your store manager because again, his goal is to get rid of the items so that the store does not have to take a loss. So if you are willing to buy it up in bulk he or she may be willing to cut you a deal. I have been known to ask the manager if I buy the whole cart of clearance items what sort of discount will he be willing to give me and we usually can come to an agreement on a great price. One year after Christmas my local store had a cart full of red candles, my house is decorated in red so I asked the manager let’s make a deal and I walked away with a cart full of various sizes of candles for $10. So learn to train your eyes for those clearance tags and scoop up the deals!

By learning and following a few simple money saving strategies there is just no reason to pay full price on your groceries again. With these money saving tips and tricks you can easily shave off 50% or more on your grocery costs.