I’m not a fan of fast food restaurants. I think they are particularly over priced for the amount of food you get. Let’s not even go into how unhealthy the food is.

Yet there are times when you’re tired, have little time, or for some other reason need to get a quick bite to eat. Its times like these that a quick stop into the local Burger King is unavoidable.

….. or is it.

Recently on my way to work I decided to bypass my local McDonald’s and make a quick stop at the nearby supermarket. In minutes I had picked up two bananas, a pear, and an orange and was on my way to my morning meeting.

The grand total – $1.64 for a healthy breakfast. Much less than the $4.99 I would have spent at McDonald’s.

Its not just breakfast that I’ve skipped the fast food restaurant in favor of the supermarket. One night coming home late from work I realized that there would be absolutely nothing to eat in the kitchen.

My normal inclination would have been to pull into the nearest Wendy’s and shell out $8.39 for dinner. This time I remembered that the local store was having a special on Marie Callender frozen dinners – 5 frozen dinners for $10.

Into the store I zipped and a few minutes later I was home enjoying my dinner for a fraction of the cost of Wendy’s.

Sometimes to save money you just have to think outside the box.

Have you ever used the supermarket instead of a fast food restaurant for a quick meal? Feel free to share your experience by leaving a comment below.

With food prices expected to rise even further in 2009, its more important than ever to shop strategically in order to get the best value for your money. One key to reaping huge savings is to understand your store’s sale cycles.

Almost every product in your local supermarket has a natural sales cycle. Every few weeks or so that product will go on sale. Yet not every sale will be a bargain. Sometimes the item will be sold at a 10% discount. At other times it may be sold at a 50% discount or more! Same product, vastly different sales prices.

Let’s take a closer look at how a normal sales cycle works. Over a nine week period, Marie Callender brand frozen dinners might be priced as follows:

As you can see the sales prices vary considerably. The sale price during week 2 of $4.09 per dinner, offers only a measly 20 cents off the normal price. The $2 per dinner sale price on week 9, however, provides a discount of over 50% off the regular price!

The smart thing to do here is to avoid the “fake” sales during weeks 2 and 7, and stock up only when the sales are significant during weeks 6 and 9.

However, this is easier said than done. It can be difficult to know exactly when a particular product is at the lowest point in its sales cycle. If, for example, you had walked into the store on week 7 and noticed these frozen dinners on sale for $3.99 a piece, you might have thought that this was a great deal and snatched up several.

How do you know when the store is offering its rock bottom price? The answer is a price book. This is a simple notebook where you write down the lowest prices you find for the items you commonly purchase.

In your price book, record the date, unit price, and store where you bought items for the lowest price. If you see the same item at a lower price on a different day or in a different store you again record it in your price book.

This price book will quickly give you a reference for deciding if a sale is really a bargain. Simply compare the current sale price to the prices recorded in your price book.

With a price book you start to notice the sales cycles of products and you can quickly recognize when an item is near its rock bottom price. Yes it does take a little more work to keep a price book, but the savings can be incredible.

In this example, using your price book, you’d notice that it is better to stock up at $2 per dinner, rather than at $3.99 per dinner, saving you nearly $1.99 per dinner. Multiply this type of savings over the multitude of products you buy for your family and you can see how quickly the savings pile up.

We all love the thrill of getting a great deal. A sense of pride overwhelms us when we get 50% off a purchase. Yet, grocery stores have learned how to play this love for the deal against us.

They have conditioned us to expect a great bargain whenever we pick up an item that has a bright red sale sign in front of it. But as we’ll see this habit can be dangerous to our wallet.

Let’s take a look at a basket of goods that an average shopper might purchase:
shredded cheese, cookies, waffles, orange juice, syrup, cereal, ravioli, trash bags, and spaghetti.

All of these items were recently on sale at a suburban Chicago supermarket. Now if we take a closer look we see that we did indeed get a great deal on some of our products.

We saved between 44% – 50% on each of these items. Truly great deals. But lets take a look at some of the other sale items in our basket.

The savings now don’t look so great. Only 10% – 11% savings. The savings on the rest of the goods in our basket were even worse.

On these items we saved a measly 5% and quite frankly a 5% savings is hardly worth the effort.

The lesson …. Before you instinctively pick up a sale item, compare the sale price with the original price to see if you’re truly getting a great deal. If you can’t save at least 30%, put the “sale” item right back on the shelf.