How To Save On Food Bills

MarketWatch's Marshall Loeb Shares 4 Easy Tips To Save At Home And In Restaurants

(MarketWatch)  Food prices have been soaring in the last year. The price of milk alone has shot up by about 25%. Pasta products are up 30% and the price of eggs jumped 60%.

None of this is good news for your food budget. But there are some simple steps you can take to reduce your food bill. Consider these four tips:

Clip coupons.
Coupons -- remember those? Your mother used to clip them every Sunday from the circulars. Well, coupons are still alive and well, and they can get you great discounts at the grocery store. Most grocery stores double your coupon if it's for less than 50 cents. That can be a dollar of savings just by taking a second to look through the paper.

Pack your own lunch.
Eating lunch out can add up just because you do it every day. If you spend $8 on lunch every day, that's $40 a week, $160 a month. Making your own lunch with food bought at the grocery store will likely cut that cost in half.

Reduce eating out altogether.
Frequent eating out can be a huge hit to your wallet. Even fast food isn't cheap. Think about it this way, for a hamburger with french fries, at an average restaurant, it could cost in the neighborhood of $10 with tip. Compare that with a recent quote from Netgrocer.com, an online grocery store, which lists a pack of four 16-ounce Bison Buffalo Burgers for $9.45. For a dinner of four where each person orders a burger, the cost without drinks would be $40. This compares with under $15 if you had stayed home. That's almost $25 in savings.

If you must eat out, don't order drinks, stick with water.
This is always a good rule of thumb if you're trying to save. Soda can add another $1.50 to $2.50 on your bill per person. Beer can add $5 and up.

[paganwitch]

Coupons are not that great anymore. Save .35 on THREE boxes of cereal? I don''t call that savings. There are some great deals as well. Recently, I got four boxes of hair color for the price of two. They were buy one get one free and I had two coupons. Saved something like $2-3 on a bag of dog food. These are not on FOOD that we eat. Something is wrong when the coupons for non-food products offer better deals than the ones for food products.

[juliuswillis]

go to costco. for gas and food. i''ve just started doing that and i''m saving some $$ on each paycheck.

[mswolfestock]

Packing your lunch can also offer you a chance to cut calories. I don''t put mayo on my sandwiches any more, just mustard some of the time, and that saves a lot of calories over time. I also use fat-free salad dressing and there is a substantial calorie-cutting potential if you eat a lot of salads.

If you have any way of planting a garden, even in containers, you can save a lot of money during the summer. It does not take too many tomato plants to yield enough tomatoes to freeze or can. I plant a pretty large garden - I have not eaten store-bought green beans or tomato products for years.

Finally, get together with your friends and neighbors and buy your beef and pork wholesale. Contact your County Extension Agent for info RE: your local farmers or beef producers. When you buy your beef on the hoof or right from the slaughter house you will save a ton of money. We paid approximately $1.40 per pound the last time we bought half of a beef cow.