Put your grocery bill on a diet

With the price of pretty much everything going up and our paychecks staying the same, we are all looking for ways to cut down on our bills. 

While you can combine your trips or carpool to save on gas, and adjust the thermostat in your home to cut back on your energy, when it comes to groceries you may think the only way to save is by clipping coupons. 

But Toni House , author of "Savvy Shopping: How to Reduce Your Weekly Grocery Bill to $85 Per Week - or Less!", says that's just not the case.

House knows first hand, she has been able to reduce her monthly grocery bill to $250 for a family of 4, without any complaints.  Here are here 6 tips to follow on your next shopping trip.

1. Be patient - wait for good deals
Save pricey purchases for double coupon days, and plan ahead for holidays.  By cutting back a little now, you can afford to splurge on your holiday meal.  Bottom line, the more you rush, the less you save.

2. Be detail-oriented
There is a lot of fine print involved in being a savvy shopper, from expiration dates to special offers to asterisks. Know exactly when a coupon expires, how much it's for, how much more it will be worth on double coupon days and whether or not it's worth the price in the first place.

3. Plan ahead
Plan a menu for at least three meals in advance; combined with leftovers, that should give you five days or more of meals, depending on the meal. This puts you in control of your shopping list; and not the other way around. Instead of always playing catch-up, replacing what you've run out of, you buy only when it's on the menu. Same goes for cereal, yogurt, bananas, fresh herbs and spices, etc.

4. Instead of making expensive foods (meat) the centerpiece of each meal, design menus that use the most expensive foods less often
For instance, at least twice a week from now on, try using meat as more of a filler than a main dish. Instead of making spaghetti with meat balls, or sausage, or chicken breasts, make spaghetti with a meat sauce of ground turkey or ground sausage, or ground chicken breakfast sausage.

5. At the grocery store, buy ONLY what you can eat
That means no paper plates, toilet paper, plastic cups, Army men, toothbrushes, jar candles, or greeting cards. Grocery store prices for non-food items are higher than you'll pay almost anywhere else, so make a hard-and-fast rule and stick to it.

6. Do use coupons, but only for products you actually need
Let's say you just bought twice as many hot dog buns as you needed last week and now you've run across a two-for-one coupon for… more hot dog buns? Do you really have room in your freezer for all those buns?