Grocery shopping on a dime doesn’t have to be difficult. In fact, with a little planning and creativity, you’ll find that you can eat like a king on a pauper’s budget. By preparing a weekly shopping list, making a menu and cooking simply from scratch, you’ll find that you’re less stressed about what to make for supper each night. As an added bonus, you’ll be less likely to eat out AND you’ll eat healthier, since most inexpensive foods are not the processed, prepackaged sort.

• Step 1: Read the store ads. This can be a bit of a pain, since Family Thrift publishes a new sale ad on Sunday and Safeway’s comes out on Wednesday, though there are occasionally mini-Safeway ads in the Sunday paper. However, you can easily review these online at familythriftctr.com and safeway.com. Make a note of or circle exceptional deals. For instance, maybe grapes are 0.96/lb or breakfast sausage is 1.39/lb or boneless skinless chicken breasts are 1.88/lb. ThriftyRapidCity.com will also highlight a list of these great deals each week.

• Step 2: Check for coupons that match the exceptional deals. Flip through your coupon file and check for online coupons – maybe you can sweeten a 6/$2 Yoplait deal by tacking on a $1 manufacturer’s coupon. Or maybe you have a couple $1 off coupons for that breakfast sausage so that it comes out to thirty-nine cents a pound. ThriftyRapidCity.com will also help you with your coupon match-ups, though it always pays to check yourself – you may have a coupon in your stash that didn’t make it into our file!

•  Step 3: Make your shopping list, incorporating all of the best deals of the week. Plan to shop both stores, unless there are really no good deals at one or the other. Add in the things you need that are not on sale, such as milk or fresh fruits and vegetables. Make every effort, though, to buy these on sale too – sometimes Safeway will have milk 2/5.50 and there are usually certain produce items on sale – buy the peaches instead of the melon if the peaches are on sale!

•  Step 4: Make a menu for the week, incorporating items you already have in your pantry with the sale items you’ll be buying this week. If chicken is on sale, plan to have a lot of chicken dishes this week. Check your cupboard – you might have a bunch of pasta back there that you got on sale a month ago. Figure out what you can make with what you’ve got. Allrecipes.com can help – you enter what ingredients you have available and they give you a list of possible recipes. Thriftyrapidcity.com will post a frugal recipe each week incorporating the week’s sale items.

• Step 5: Go shopping! Be sure to buy only what is on your list and don’t shop when you’re hungry. Pick a time when the store will be not be crowded and you will not be hurried – after all, you’re only shopping once this week. Remember all of those exceptional deals? Well, make sure you buy enough of those things to last you a month or more. This is called stockpiling and it’s one of the best ways to cut your grocery bill. That chicken might not be 1.88 next week, so you’d best have enough in your freezer to last you until it goes on sale again.

• Step 6: Cook what you bought! Don’t waste, and don’t make excuses for not cooking when supper time rolls around. The worst money pit is wasted food and we’d hate to see all your good deals in the trash because you didn’t feel like cooking all week. Keep it simple, be disciplined and your pocket book will thank you.

•  For those who want to save even more money:

•  Step 7: Go once a month to the bread wholesale store – there is one on Haines Ave and one by Menards. Buy all your bread, bagels, hamburger buns, etc for the month and freeze them. This will save you oodles of money – I can buy bread for our family of 4 for a month for $10.

•  Step 8: Go once a month to XS Direct Discount store on Jackson Blvd. Stock up on canned goods, pasta, salad dressings and baking mixes. They often have very good prices but the inventory fluctuates so be prepared to spend a little time perusing the shelves.

•  Step 9: Shop weekly at Walgreens. By using their Register Rewards system, you can get different free and/or almost free items (often personal care products) each week.

•  Step 10: Check thriftyrapidcity.com regularly. We’ll do our best to alert you to all the great deals and hopefully inspire you to keep saving money!