Shopping with a grocery list is one of the most effective ways to slash your grocery bill. Not only does a list help you avoid costly impulse purchases but it also prevents expensive repeat trips to the supermarket.

Unfortunately, most shopping lists are flawed, making them much less effective as money saving devices.

Below I list three common grocery list flaws and how you can correct them to save more money.

Flaw 1: We make our list right before we go shopping.

This is the most common mistake in making an effective shopping list. You jot down a list right before you step foot in the store. Unfortunately, this almost always results in items being left off the list, necessitating the return trip to the supermarket you’re trying to avoid in the first place.

You can easily create a more effective list simply by posting a pad of paper (with an attached pen) or a wipe board directly to your fridge door. This way you can easily write down items as you run out of them ensuring that you don’t forget anything.

Flaw 2: Not everyone is involved in making the shopping list.

The person responsible for the shopping may leave off things other family members need. A husband may forget that his wife has run out of her favorite coffee beans. A mother may not realize that the kids have run out of their favorite after school snack.

Again, posting a pad of paper or wipe board on the refrigerator door provides everyone in the family with the opportunity to contribute to the grocery list.

Flaw 3: We think in terms of consumables, not in terms of needed ingredients.

Its easy to notice when we’ve run out of milk or the kid’s favorite cereals. These are things that we consume without much preparation and are thus easily noticeable.

Less noticeable are the individual ingredients we frequently need to make many of our meals. These include items like sugar, salt, olive oil, margarine, seasoning salt, herbs, and spices – the very items that frequently send us back on repeat trips to the grocery store, sometimes right in the middle of cooking!

One way to prevent this oversight is to take a moment to think about the meals you might prepare for the week. Then check to make sure you have all the necessary ingredients.

Some people take it a step further and completely plan all of their meals for the upcoming week. This allows them the additional benefit of planning their meals around the items that are on sale that week.

By creating a more effective grocery list you can avoid expensive impulse purchases and costly repeat trips to the supermarket. Do you have tips for creating a better shopping list? If so we’d like to hear from you. Leave a comment below.

A common piece of advice frequently given to shoppers is to check grocery store receipts for mistakes. This advice is now more important than ever!

You see supermarket offers are becoming ever more complex. Instead of a simple price discount, you’re often required to purchase multiple quantities of a product in order to obtain an even larger discount. Buy 2 bottles of soda get 1 free. Save $3 when you purchase 2 jars of spaghetti.

This works for the supermarket as they sell more product and it also works for you as you frequently enjoy larger discounts for buying more.

The problem with these increasingly complex grocery store offers is this. If the store scanner is not programmed correctly, the mistake will cost you more money than usual.

Let me give you an example.

A recent Chicago supermarket offered Marie Callender frozen dinners on sale for $2.99, or you could get the frozen dinners for the super low price of $1.99 IF you purchased 5 or more dinners. Naturally I picked up five dinners and placed them in my cart.

The problem arose when I arrived at the check-out counter. My total appeared to be $5 more than I had mentally calculated.

As the cashier and I scoured the receipt looking for the reason behind the $5 discrepancy, the store manager walked by glancing at the five dinners sitting at the end of the checkout counter. She then quickly relayed to the cashier that the scanners were having a problem applying the discount. It seems that I was still being charged $2.99 when I should have been charge $1.99 for the frozen dinners, creating the $5 overcharge.

As the manager had just taken care of another gentleman who was similarly overpriced, she quickly took care of me and I was on my way with my $5 in hand.

But I wonder how many others paying less attention walked out of the store not realizing that they had left their hard earned $5 in store cash register.

Have you been a victim of scanner errors or mispriced merchandise? If so tell us about it. Leave a comment below.

Today I’d like to mention some great frugal food articles from around the blogosphere. 

In a previous post we discussed the presence of pesticides on our produce and the possible impact on our children. Heather at the Greenest Dollar provides even more information about the pesticides on our food and the possible effects of these pesticides on humans. 

It seems you just can’t trust your grocery store flyer. Trent at the Simple Dollar sheds light on many of the deceptive practices found in your local supermarket sales circular. 

Still like dining out despite tough economic times? Myscha Theriault at WiseBread shows you how to eat out while spending less money. 

Borrow From None has a great article that explains the money saving concept of Once a Month Cooking. 

Do you have a green thumb? Squawkfox shows you how to save money with square foot gardening, while Frugal Upstate shows you how to dehydrate home grown herbs in your car. 

We participated in the following personal finance blog carnivals:

Carnival of Personal Finance #210 – Punch Out Edition – hosted by Suburban Dollar

Festival Of Frugality – Honeymoon Destination Edition – hosted by Financial Highway

A recent post by Myscha Theriault at the personal finance blog Wisebread.com got me thinking about our “friendly” local grocery stores. 

In the article she discusses things that frustrate us all about our local supermarket. Particularly how supermarkets will:

Dramatically increase the price on a favorite item.

Change the location of an item in the supermarket so it becomes difficult to find.

Stop carrying some of your favorite items for seemingly no reason at all.

I can totally relate to this article because I’ve had the very same gripes on several of my shopping trips. 

The simple fact is that supermarkets really have no interest in making our lives more convenient. 

Yeah they say they do. They advertise their friendly atmosphere, vast product selection, and super low prices. But the real truth of the matter is that your friendly supermarket is a big business whose sole existence for being is to make a profit, not to make our lives any easier.

In fact, your convenience gets in the way of their profits. Making things more convenient for the shopper directly interferes with them making more money. 

Let me explain. 

If your grocery store was truly concerned with making things more convenient for you they would place the basic staple items you need closer to the entrance. 

This convenience would allow us to quickly grab what we needed and go.  But how many times have you gone into the store for a quick trip to buy some butter or bag of sugar and come out with a cart full of groceries? 

Supermarkets purposefully place the essential staples not at the front of the store, but far in the back. As a result, we pass through row upon row of edible temptations. In fact, nearly 40% to 50% of all of our purchases inside the store are impulse purchases! 

If your supermarket made it convenient for you by placing all of the staples at the front of the store, they would lose all the profit they collect as you make your way to the back to purchase your essential items. 

If your grocery store was truly concerned with making things more convenient for you they would place the items we use together near each other.   

Why are the hot dogs on one end of the store and hot dog buns on the other end, the salad greens in one place while the the salad dressing sits in another?

Well it again relates to the issue above. By making us travel across the store to get the buns for our hot dogs we’re more inclined to make impulse purchases, spend more money, and increase the store’s profits. 

If your grocery store was truly concerned with making things more convenient for you they would keep sales items in stock. 

Lets consider the super cheap “loss leaders” that supermarkets use to lure us into the store. The simple fact is that if you don’t get to the store during the first two days of the sale the sale items are frequently out of stock.  But to make it convenient for us by keeping store shelves fully stocked of sale items would cost the supermarket profits. 

Many of these super cheap sales items are sold at a loss to the supermarket (ie the term “loss leader”). Their only purpose is to lure you into the store. Once a customer is in the store there is not much of an incentive to stock a product the store loses money on. 

If your grocery store was truly concerned with making things more convenient for you they would keep check out lines short. 

Long check-out lines. Why does it seem that grocery stores have some magical formula where the number of check-out lanes left open is directly proportional to the number of people in the store so that even at 11pm we are kept waiting in a check-out line?

Simply put, long check-out lines create a captive audience more likely to purchase that candy bar, bag of chips, or magazine sitting right in front of us. In fact, per square foot, the check-out area is one of the most profitable locations in the entire store!

If your grocery store was truly concerned with making things more convenient for you they would keep sale prices simple. 

As I mentioned in my last post, supermarkets make sale pricing unnecessarily complicated – 3 for $7, buy 2 get 1 free, 4 for $7. Determining the individual price of a sale item is like taking a 5th grade math test.  

Grocery stores have discovered that we simply spend more when prices are advertised this way. With a 3 for $7 sale, for instance, its often easier for us to just place 3 items in our shopping basket than divide 7 by 3 to determine the individual price of a sales item. 

They don’t want you to easily figure out the sale prices of  individual items … you might realize you’re not getting a great deal after all.

The take home lesson: Supermarkets are in the business of making money.  Making things more convenient for us costs them potential profits. And let me be clear there is nothing wrong with a business wanting to make money. We live in a capitalist society.

The key is for us to realize this so that we keep more money in our pockets. By understanding supermarket tricks and tactics we simply save more.

Update: We’d like to thank Counting My Pennies for including this article in the Carnival of Pecuniary Delights personal finance blog carnival.

Today we’re going to take a look at some great articles from around the web that help you save money on your food costs.

But first, I’d like to thank the Greener Pastures financial blog.

They have  including our article How to Buy Bread and Bakery Products So Cheap You’ll Think You’re Stealing in the most recent Carnival of Pecuniary Delights personal finance carnival.

And now, articles from around the blogosphere that help you cut your grocery and food costs.

Enhance Your Inexpensive Meals with These Simple Tips

Eating inexpensive meals doesn’t mean you have to eat like a pauper. A reader at the financial tips website, TipHero, has written a great article describing  Ten Ways to Enhance Inexpensive Meals.

Among her tips:

Grow your own gourmet produce. Accent meals with interesting serving pieces like soda and parfait glasses which you can buy cheaply at garage sales. Make delicious homemade bread to complement your meals, or use nice tablecloths and dim lights to change the dining atmosphere.

To read all of her great tips visit the TipHero website.

Discover Healthy Breakfast Ideas for a Dollar or Less

Recently, we wrote about 7 Smart Money Saving Breakfast Ideas. Well the folks at the Smart Spending blog have made us aware of an article appearing on WebMD.com that identifies 10 Healthy Breakfast Ideas for a Buck.

Save Money by Using What’s Left Over in Your Cupboard

Save money with this great article from WiseBread.com: Survivor Island Meal Plans: Use it or Lose It in 5 Easy Steps. It is a game plan for using what’s already in your kitchen cupboards to make interesting meals and stretch your food budget.

According to the author,

The Survivor Island Meal Plan is simple. With the exception of a few perishables you might be forced to buy (milk, bread, etc.), you use ONLY what you have in your home for the next week’s meals (or longer.)

Learn How Supermarkets Get You to Buy More

The CBS News – Early Show website has an interesting article on How Supermarkets Lure You To Buy More.

Among the tricks – placing things in the weekly store sales flyer that may not actually be on sale.

Discover How to Save Money Grocery Shopping

The blog Gather Little by Little has a money saving article entitled, 13 Ways to Save When Grocery Shopping!”. Among the tips,

-You can make your own cooking spray by putting vegetable oil in a spray bottle.

-There’s no nutritional difference between white eggs and brown eggs, which are more expensive.

-If you buy fresh greens by weight, give them a good shake before you put them in your grocery cart. An amazing amount of excess water (and weight) can be hidden between the leaves.

For a complete list of money savings read the entire article here.

Well that’s it for this week’s edition of Money Saving Food Tips From Around the Web. If you know of any great money saving food articles or websites let us know. Have a great week.

We’d like to thank Miss Thrifty for including our article Insider Restaurant Secrets That Save You Money in the latest edition of the Carnival of Pecuniary Delights financial blog carnival.

I would like to thank David over at MoneyNing.com for including our article,  The Little Secret Supermarkets Use to Get You to Spend More in the 200th edition of the Carnival of Personal Finance. Carnivals are an easy way to read a host of great personal finance articles from bloggers around the web. 

If you have time also check out David’s website. It is a great resource for anyone wanting to learn more about controlling their personal finances.

Every inch of a typical grocery store is designed to get you to spend more than you intend to or need to.

In fact, studies indicate that between 40% to 50% of all our grocery store purchases are impulse buys.

One of the tactics employed by grocery stores to increase impulse purchasing is the use of cross-merchandising of complement products.

Complement products are items that are frequently served together or used together to make a meal. Common complements include spaghetti sauce with spaghetti, peanut butter with jelly, ice cream with ice cream cones, and salad with salad dressing.

Supermarkets cross-merchandise complement products by taking items from their traditional shelf space and bundling them together with their complements in another area of the store. This is why you’ll find bottles of salad dressing in the produce section next to the lettuce. Why you’ll find salsa arranged next to the chips or why you’ll find ice cream cones so conveniently situated near the ice cream.

According to supermarket industry magazine Progressive Grocer:
“Cross-merchandising is fundamental to grabbing extra profit through increased impulse sales opportunities.”

The grocery store is counting on you to purchase the complement product when you pick up the regular item. Why not pick up the salsa when you’ve already thrown those chips in the cart?

Yet the problem is that frequently you may not even need the complement product. You may already have a half empty bottle of salad dressing at home when you purchase your head of lettuce. Do you really need that mint chocolate topping thats so conveniently positioned next to the ice cream?

There’s another way the cross merchandising of complement products gets you to spend more. Frequently, one of the items in the complement bundle is a more expensive variety or premium brand.

The salad dressing that’s conveniently located next to the lettuce in the produce section may be a dollar or two more expensive than the Kraft salad dressing you normally purchase. The premium brand of mustard positioned next to those packages of hot dogs may cost a dollar more than your normal French’s brand mustard.

This technique is especially evident at end of the aisle displays. Grocery stores often place complement products here, frequently with one of the products on sale.  Drawn to purchase the sale item you’re more inclined to pick up its complement as well.

Yet the complement, is more often than not, a higher priced or premium brand, creating more profit for the store. A common example is the cheap spaghetti placed on the same display with bottles of premium spaghetti sauce.  The money that the store loses on the sale of the discounted spaghetti is more than made up with the sale of the expensive spaghetti sauce.

The next time you’re shopping for groceries and are about to pick up a product placed alongside its complement, ask yourself if your really need the complement item. If so, take a walk down the supermarket aisle where you’ll often find a cheaper brand.

Why pay extra for a premium brand of spaghetti sauce to go with that box of spaghetti you’ve just picked up when you can simply walk a short distance to purchase a cheaper bottle of Prego or Ragu?

Many people are taking advantage of the great prices found at Aldi supermarkets.

Its estimated that consumers will save 40-50% at an Aldi grocery store compared to conventional supermarkets, and save 16-24% over large discount stores.

With these types of savings its no wonder that Aldi parking lots are filling up.

Yet the no frills shopping experience at Aldi’s is a little different than that encountered at other supermarkets. As a result, its easy to spot an Aldi newbie – someone making their first shopping trip at an Aldi grocery store.

Here are some quick tips on how not to look like a newbie when you stop by your local Aldi supermarket.

Bring a Quarter. When you go to use a shopping cart the first thing you’ll notice is that the carts are chained together. To release a cart slide a quarter into a small slot on top of the cart.

When you return the cart you get your quarter back. No quarter, no shopping cart. This apparently saves on labor costs as employees are not needed to chase down stray carts left in the parking lot.

Prepare for the Spartan Interior. You won’t find the bakery smells or large produce sections right as you walk through the door. In fact, the interiors of most Aldi stores are rather spartan – just food items lined on the shelves often in the same boxes they were shipped in. In many ways, the stores look more like small warehouses than supermarkets.

Expect a Quicker Shopping Trip. Don’t be shocked by the size of the stores. Compared to super-sized grocery stores, the size of a typical Aldi store is quite lilliputian. Yet the small size and open layout make the stores extremely easy to navigate so you’re in and out of the store quickly.

Don’t Think About Product Size. No you won’t have to chose between the small size, medium size, large size, or bulk size boxes of cereal. That’s because all of the products in the store are offered in only one size.

Remember the Guarantee. When you walk into an Aldi’s you might be surprised at how many store brands you’ll encounter – Happy Harvest pork and beans, Sweet Harvest fruit salad, Salad Mate salad dressing, and Berry Hill jelly just to name a few.

Aldi tests its store brand products on a regular basis to make sure that each product meets or exceeds the quality and taste of the national brand alternatives.

Better yet, they provide a double guarantee. If for any reason, you are not 100% satisfied with any product you purchase, they will replace the product AND refund your money.

Don’t Pull Out a Credit Card. Nothing will reveal that you’re a newbie faster than pulling out your credit card to pay for your groceries. You see the store doesn’t accept credit cards. Only cash and debit cards are accepted. This allows the store to avoid expensive merchant credit card fees.

Bring Your Own Bags. You won’t get free bags at this store. You can buy plastic or paper bags for a few cents. The better option is to purchase a few Aldi high-quality, re-usable cloth bags. These are extremely sturdy and can handle very heavy loads. At $2.99 a bag they are relatively cheap as well.

Pack Your Own Groceries. When you get to the check-out aisle you place your items on the counter. After the cashier scans the prices the items are placed back into your cart. From there you take them a short distance to another counter where you bag your own groceries.

Your shopping experience at Aldi’s will be slightly different. Yet the great prices and the money you save will be well worth it – and best of all, you won’t have to look like a newbie doing it.

With the worsening economy  families are looking for ways to cut costs and make ends meet. Even so, many people are still reluctant to try store brand products.

Some people still hold memories of the cheap, poor quality no-frills products of the past. Others are simply loyal to certain brands after a lifetime of listening to marketing messages.Yet there’s a simple secret that’s making store brand products a great deal for consumers.

The grocery business is a competitive cut throat environment.  In the ever increasing war over consumer dollars, supermarkets are looking for any possible advantage to pry customers from rival supermarket chains. As a result, the competition among supermarket chains has intensified.

Traditionally they have battled over prices with each chain trying to undercut the other – each one trying to position itself as the savings champion, the leader in low cost savings. Yet, supermarkets can lower prices only so much before dramatically affecting profits.

So they compete in other ways for the consumers’ dollars.  Grocery chains place their stores in high traffic areas. But as soon as one store is built, a competitor has often built a store literally across the street or a few blocks away.

To lure customer away from competitors each supermarket chain races to implement a wide variety of customer conveniences. They open their stores earlier and close the doors later. New products from organics to ethnic fare are introduced at an ever more rapid pace.  Cafes and lunch counters offer shoppers the convenience of prepared meals. In the supermarket wars, each grocery chain is looking to out do the next.

This is where store brands come into play. Store brands are the newest secret weapon in the supermarket wars as supermarket chains use their store brands to attract and lure customers away from their competition.

Forget brand loyalty to a particular product, supermarkets are attempting to build store loyalty to their particular chain. By creating high quality store brand products at lower prices, supermarkets are aiming to capture customer loyalty.

This presents a golden opportunity for consumers. Supermarkets are putting a considerable amount of effort to make sure that their store brand products meet or exceed the quality of name brand alternatives.  As a result, consumers can enjoy great food at cheaper prices.

I’ve experienced this strategy first hand. In Chicago we have a popular supermarket chain called Jewel-Osco. One particular day I picked up a box of Jewel-Osco brand of raisins. To my surprise not only were the raisins cheaper than the national brand Sun-Maid raisins, but they also tasted better.  A similar thing happened when I tried Jewel-Osco chocolate chip cookies. They were actually better than the Chips-Ahoy brand.

Due to the great taste and low price I’ve become hooked.  Now whenever I need raisins or chocolate chips cookies I make it a point to stop by my local Jewel-Osco to pick them up.

This is the exact symbiotic relationship grocery chains are looking to build. While I get great tasting raisins and cookies at a cheap price, the supermarket ensures that I stop by their store, where I’m bound to spend money on other things as well.

The next time you’re shopping, remember that the supermarket has put considerable effort into the taste and quality of its store brand products hoping to build store loyalty among customers. Use this fact to pick up great tasting store brand products at a much lower price than their name brand alternatives.