• Plan Your Visit – Before you hit the market, sit down and plan your meals and needs, so that you can buy only the items you need and help avoid unnecessary impulse buys.  Also, with proper planning, you can save time by buying enough so that you only need to visit the grocery store once or twice a week.
• Shop During Off Hours – Avoid the rush and crowds by heading to the grocery store during slow times:  early morning and late at night.  While not a money-saving tip, it can make the trip a bit less stressful and allow you to better focus on the task at hand.
• Consider Coupons and Incentive Programs – With your grocery list in hand, check sites like coupons.com or flip through your Sunday paper to find coupons that you can use to save money on the thing that you need to buy.  Sites like Coupon Mom go a step further by helping you time the use of coupons so that you can maximize your savings.  Likewise, in-store incentive programs like those run by Safeway are an additional avenue that you can use to save money on groceries.
• Choose the Right Store – All stores are not created equal.  Gourmet markets like Whole Foods are fine for high-end products, but can be really expensive if you do all of your shopping there.  Likewise, wholesale stores like Costco provide savings when you buy in bulk, but lack the variety that you may find at a common grocery store.  Your best bet?  Investigate each type of store and determine where you should shop for the products you commonly use.  For example, you may find that it’s best to bulk paper products at Costco or Sams, but vegetables at your local market.
• Eat Before You Shop – Minimize the temptation to buy on impulse by eating before you go to the grocery store. 
• Understand the Strategies that Stores Employ – The most expensive goods tend to be placed at eye-level and on the ends of aisles.  Less expensive items tend to be placed either low or high, so you have to think about them and perhaps stretch a little to get to them.  Likewise, the healthy foods:  fresh vegetables and lean meats, for example, tend to be placed around the perimeter of the store.
• Load Up on Cheap, Healthy Foods – You can buy good, healthy foods without breaking the bank.  In fact, some of the best foods are downright inexpensive.  Among them:  eggs, bananas, tea, coffee, oatmeal, spinach, potatoes, nuts, apples, beans, broccoli, tofu, and lowfat milk.
• Load Up when Necessities go on Sale – If you notice that items you frequently buy are being deeply discounted by your grocer, then consider stocking up and then storing or freezing them until you need them.  Beware that some sale items may be close to expiration.  If that’s the case, then look toward the back of the case to see if there are fresher items available.  Grocers rotate their stock so that the items with the closest expiration items are toward the front.
• Try the Store Brands – Store brands used to be lumped into the same category as generics.  However, these days some are quite good…and some are even produced in the same facility as more expensive name-brand goods.  Recently, I noticed that my grocer had store-brand vanilla wafers for only 99 cents; whereas the name brand version was $2.49.  The taste?  Exactly the same.
• Ignore the Packaging – Marketers spend a lot of time focused on packaging graphics and verbiage with one goal in mind:  to get you to buy it.  Do your best to ignore it and focus instead on your shopping list and the product label.
• Read the Labels – The most important information can almost always be found on the label.  What’s the product size?  How many calories does it have?  Are the sodium levels too high?  Is there enough protein? Does it contain ingredients that you want to avoid?
• Comparison Shop – Compare similar products to see which one offers the best value.  You might find, for example, that one brand of yogurt is higher in protein while having fewer calories.  Likewise, you might discover (as I recently did) that one brand of tissues offered twice the number of sheets at the same price point as their competitors.
• Go for Grains – When purchasing baked goods, steer clear of processed flour and sweeteners and look for whole-grain products.
• Focus on the Cashier – When it’s time to checkout, keep an eye on the prices as the cashier rings up the merchandise.  Pricing mistakes are common, so you may catch one and save yourself a dollar or two.  Likewise, by focusing on the prices, you will be less inclined to consider the candy or magazines that they have placed around the register as an impulse buy.
• Check out local Co-Ops – Some local farms band together and sell their goods directly to consumers, either through local markets or through delivery services.  These services are sometimes your best choice if you want to find the freshest food.  Local Harvest has a database of co-ops around the US.

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