SavingsAngel.com: 5 tips to cut your grocery bill in half

The easiest way to cut your grocery bill in half is by using manufacturers' coupons combined with the best sales at local West Michigan stores. Normally, this takes a lot of work to create a winning shopping list for your family.
Each week, SavingsAngel.com combines more than 2,000 products on sale at local grocery and drug stores with their enormous database of manufacturer coupons -- which are found in Sunday's Grand Rapids Press and, sometimes, online. This combination results in access to more than 300 products each week for 50 percent off or better.
Did you see the four big coupon inserts in Sunday’s paper? One thing manufacturers know about kids being back in school is that parents start getting back to regular shopping. This means lots of compelling coupon offers to sway those shopping dollars.
In celebration of the wave of new couponers starting this month, I’d like to present my top five tips that will help you cut your grocery bill in half.
Buy only the best deals
The best means 50 percent off or better. Buying only what you need week to week is the most expensive way to shop. Why would you buy full-price products when there are hundreds of others you can get for 50 to 80 percent off? Unless you want to grow all your own food, the best way for the majority of Americans to significantly cut their grocery bills is applying very high value coupons to great local sales. I wish I could tell you there was another way, but nearly every expert I’ve studied on this subject agrees on this point. Coupons are designed to do one thing: Get shoppers to buy their product. If you time the coupon redemption correctly, you’ll get to try all the latest products for pennies on the dollar.
Stock up
Let’s say that you can get Cheerios for $1 a box by applying a high value coupon to a great local sale. Let’s also assume that based on what your family eats, you will need a second box of Cheerios in three weeks. Doesn’t it make sense that you would go ahead and buy the second (or third or fourth) box today when you can get it for 75 percent off? You will save $5 to $9 on Cheerios alone by employing this strategy. This is the same plan we apply to nearly everything you buy on a regular basis and as a result, our total grocery bill drops by 50 to 75 percent.
Not your Mom’s couponing system
Not everyone can clip hundreds of coupons every week. I would guess only a small percentage of shoppers will realistically do this. This is why we use technology like SavingsAngel.com to do the ‘mass clipping’ for us. When a coupon comes out, many shoppers take that coupon out to the store and end up saving a small percentage on a full-price, brand-name product. What they didn’t realize is they should have waited three weeks to redeem the coupon when the product was on sale for half price. How would you keep track of all this without a system in place to do the work for you? It would otherwise be a lot of work. Watch TLC’s reality show "Extreme Couponing" if you don’t believe me. While the Extreme Couponers may save a great deal of money, they can also spend 10 to 20 hours a week to get those results. For those of us with busy lifestyles, let high-tech do the work for you.
Coupons for almost everything
If you aren’t following my advice and you go shopping this week, I want you to hear these words in your head every time you put something in your cart: “There’s probably a coupon for that.” A search on our coupon database revealed there are over 2,900 coupons you could be using right now. It doesn’t matter if you eat organic, gluten-free, vegan or Neanderthal. Manufacturers want you to try their food — and they’re willing you pay you to do so. My advice? Use their money -- not yours.
Don’t put this off
Each week you delay shopping smarter costs you $100.
You can follow my tips, or you can continue to shop the way you have always shopped. The reality is you are paying a luxury tax to not apply your Sunday coupons to the best local sales. It’s a luxury tax that can cost you a hundred dollars a week or more. Personally, I can think of many other things I would rather do with a hundred dollars a week than contribute toward retailer and manufacturer profits. Whether your goals are to get out of debt, save for retirement, give more to the things you really believe in, or have more fun, an extra $300 to $400 a month is a significant amount of money. You can have this simply from investing in a Sunday paper (perhaps a few extra copies to get even more coupons), technology to assist you in saving time and more money, and an extra hour or two a week.