When I read the original title of this article (”How to Shop Sensibly for Groceries When Someone in Your Family is a Brand Loyalist”) to my husband, he immediately chuckled and said “I don’t know how you do it but somehow, you do.” There is no question in our house about who has the specific brand “preferences” – he’s the one who has brand loyalty and it has been difficult for him to embrace generics.

I try to convince him that in most cases, generics are basically the same exact thing without marketing, which equals a lower price for the consumer, but he won’t believe me. And, I think he still doesn’t, but he does grumble a little less most of the time.

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I love a good deal.

For years, I’ve seen all the grocery store coupon sites out there listing wonderful combo deals, how you can get free this and free that, but I never did it because I didn’t want to spend the time it takes to clip, sort, and manage coupons. I didn’t want to try to match them up with the sales circulars and double/triple coupon promotions to get the best deal possible.

I have nothing against people who do this, in fact I’m very envious of their organizational ability. I know that’s what it took to be a coupon ninja, I’d probably last a week or two, then it would fall by the wayside the first chance it could. That’s just how I am (I don’t bother with new year’s resolutions either!).

However, there’s a much easier way to be a coupon ninja and it involves the power of the internet.

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I often wonder what keeps many from grocery shopping with a budget in mind and then sticking to it. I have actually sat down with a friend before who is trying to save money on her grocery bill. We have literally sat at my kitchen table together, gone over the store ad, planned out our meals, made the list, priced out the items and have gone to the store together. Essentially we had the same list – plus or minus a few things, but still with very similar approximate total prices. A few times during our outing we strayed from each other, but in the end, met at the cash register. Once there, her total bill was double what mine was.

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I think these two words bring different thoughts for different people. I know I may be unique, but all of my adult life I have found I love planning my trip to the grocery store – writing the grocery list, pricing out the items, going shopping.

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Learning how to predict supermarket and grocery store sales is so simple, a grade schooler could do it. All you have to do is pick up your Saturday circulars! Yeah, so I cheated a little, I hope you can forgive me. Typically supermarkets will advertise all their sales on Saturday when they won’t take into effect until Sunday so you get to find out if you should wait one day to buy that chicken because it’s not on sale this week but it will be next week.

One of the benefits of living within walking distance of the local Giant (a grocery store chain) is that it costs me nothing but time (i.e. no gasoline/car-related costs) when I go grocery shopping. With the Saturday circulars, I can see what’s advertised. Just the other week I knew, from that week’s circular, that a pound of chicken breast was going to run me $2.99 – a good price in this area and that itself was marked as a sale. Well, the advertisements that came with my Saturday paper clued me in on a sale that would start the next day where chicken breast was going to run a mere $1.66 (an unheard of price, at least for me) so I waited the one day and saved myself some easy money.

For those of you who thought I knew of a magic method of divining sales, I apologize.

CNN Money ran an article today explaining the benefits planning out your meals and preparing them yourself may have on your budget. Even without this article, everyone knows that cooking your own food is much cheaper than eating out or even buying prepared food but sometimes it’s hard to sit down and plan your meals a week in advance. Planning meals will reduce the amount of food you end up throwing away, which in most households is 14% of their food, up from 7% twenty years ago.

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