With gas prices hovering near record levels, food prices on the rise and Christmas looming, Doris Donohoe wants to trim her grocery bill.
"I shop the sales, I shop with coupons and I watch the ads," the Cypress resident said as she loaded $150 of groceries into her station wagon at the Stater Bros. supermarket in Long Beach last week.
Donohoe's money-saving efforts seem pretty obvious. But it's not all that easy at a time when we all are distracted by year-end tasks, holiday parties, long-distance travel and the search for gifts.
Supermarkets are putting out a holiday spread aimed at busy people looking for quick hits. And it's not just shrimp and cold cuts anymore. Gift cards for stores of all kinds hang near the register, holiday plates and glasses are on display, and wine goes out the door by the case.
At this time of year, it's easy to put aside coupon clipping and comparison shopping when we may need them most: December is the biggest month for the nation's supermarkets.
Food and beverage stores rang up $51.3 billion in sales last December, about 10% more than July, the next busiest month. And experts say this is the season to make money-saving ideas pay off.
Despite the many coupon shoppers you see at the store, few of them have a solid grocery-buying plan.
A study by the Food Marketing Institute found that only half of shoppers reported regularly making a grocery list, more than a third consistently perused advertisements and less than a third made a point of redeeming coupons.
First, make a shopping list
Yet these simple strategies and others can yield hundreds to thousands of dollars in savings a year, said Teri Gault, founder and chief executive of TheGroceryGame.com, a Santa Clarita-based online service that for a fee helps consumers optimize savings from coupons.
"It can be enough to buy a freezer, which will let you stockpile meats and frozen food when it is on sale and save even more money," said Gault, whose site tracks coupons and promotions sorted by product and supermarket chain.
Americans spend more than $500 billion annually at food and beverage stores, according to the Food Marketing Institute. Typically, a family of four spends $107.20 a week on groceries, usually over two trips to the store. During the holiday season, it's often much more.
