Economize with Home Cooking and Printable Grocery Coupons

If you are like many cash-strapped Americans, you may be doing more home cooking and using printable grocery coupons to save money during your shopping trip. These are both excellent ways to stay within a budget. But are you aware of some of the best practices for both shopping and using coupons for groceries?

Take a look through these tips for planning family meals and economizing on grocery store expenditures.

Grocery Shopping Tips

Most of us have heard the advice to never go grocery shopping on an empty stomach, but there are also some other tips you may want to consider before your next trip to the supermarket.

Find out when your local grocery store posts their sale items. For most markets, it is Wednesday. If you can, plan on going shopping that day. Anyone who lives in a rural area is probably aware that a day, or even hours, after the sale starts, the store can easily sell out of its deeply discounted deals.

When you are looking for a specific item, scan the shelves lowest to the floor. Major brands pay extra marketing dollars for the space at eye level and that is part of the reason their products are more expensive. Generic and store brands are usually stocked lower, or higher, making them harder to find.

Compare more than the price per box or package. One thing many manufacturers are resorting to doing is making their packages smaller in order to seem like their prices are not being raised. Cereal is a good example of this. The amount of cereal in a box has shrunk dramatically in recent years. If your grocery store lists the price per ounce, that is a far better way to compare pricing between two or more brands.

Grocery Coupon Tips

Of course one of the best ways to save money at the market is by using printable grocery coupons. But there are some good ways to use coupons, and some that make no sense.

Before you head out to the grocery store, plan your menus for the next couple of weeks or month (depending on how often you shop). Then make a list based on these menus. Only take along coupons that relate to the needed items. That way you will not be tempted to buy anything unnecessary.

Printable grocery coupons you find online can be a great time saver. They allow you to find just the coupons you need ahead of time and print them out at home. There is no excuse for not being prepared when you get to the store.

Although coupons can save the average family a lot of money on groceries, not all coupons are of the same value. Do some careful comparison before using a coupon as opposed to the cheaper store brand or another brand that might be on sale. You can always save the coupon for next time. The best scenario is to find the item you are looking for on sale and use a coupon with it. No coupon saves you money if you are buying something you don’t really need or could buy cheaper with an alternate brand.

Take advantage of your local market’s double or triple coupon days. When they offer to give you two or three times the face value of the coupon, the savings can add up substantially.

Shopping for groceries in these troubled economic times does not need to be a painful chore; with printable grocery coupons or coupons that are sent directly to you in the mail, it can be a fun challenge to provide homemade meals for your family on a budget. So make your menu and your list, print your coupons, and start saving at the supermarket today.

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