Beating the High Cost of Eating: The Essential Guide to Supermarket Survival

This book showed me a whole lot of what I was doing wrong when shopping. They cover everything from the pros and cons of coupons and sale items, to little 'tricks' stores use to get you to spend more money. Bottom line, I may not use everything in this book, but it made me a whole lot more aware of how much time and money I was wasting. Definitely worth the read. Unless of course you really don't care about saving money on groceries. But then why would you even be reading this. xox MEF

I was pleased with some of the insight and tips that i was able to get from this book. I have used some of the suggestions and have saved money.

I have read many books on how to go grocery shopping. Many of them say the same thing over and over again... but Barabara Salsbury offers a fresh perspective. I love how she talks about the secerets of advertising and how they try to lure you in. I love how she tells us to give up on cupons (they never worked for me anyways). I highly recomend this book to anyone who wants to save money on grocery shopping.

This is definitely a book about squeezing the last penny out of your dollar. It is far beyond the typical "clip coupons" and "buy what you can in bulk" mentality. The author actually advises against most coupon shopping (buy the store brands when you can, they are cheaper than discounted national brands in many/most cases). I can honestly say I am a pretty good bargain shopper, but I got my money's worth in reading this book. There is a lot of information in this book that is obvious after reading about it, but not as obvious before it is pointed out. On the other hand, I thought the book went a little beyond what I would be willing to do. I'm all for stocking my kitchen so that I don't have to purchase items until they are on sale/priced to my liking, but building shelves and hiding them behind curtains in a baby's room or artifically raising the bed to fit more food under it seem extreme.

Barbara Salsbury packs her book with a lot of useful information. She doesn't write about how to choose the freshest produce or the best time of day to shop. She deals with subjects such as in-store psychology (ie: why we buy when we didn't plan to buy); how to properly read the ads; eye opening information about store games, gimmicks and surveys; menu planning the non-traditional, but easy, way; the expensive lure of one stop shopping; plus many more subjects tying it all together with what she calls her "Pantry Principle." I've been a grocery shopper for a long time and though I was doing a fairly good job at stretching my grocery budget, Barbara made me realize how much more I could do. She is quick to point out there is no villian here, grocery stores are a business and they are doing it well. Our job as consumers are to become "Super Shoppers" knowing how to stretch our hard earned dollars the farthest. Her chapters on Brands is amazing! We all know major brand names, but what about house brands? Private labels? Economy brands? No names? When I would look at the grocery shelf and see eight brands of canned peas, I didn't really know the difference between them, now I do because Barbara explains it. Barbara knows her stuff because she had to live it. In reading about her life, during a short period of time, her family experienced job loss, major hospital bills, their house being robbed, and because of a land fraud situation, didn't even own their home. She HAD to live these principles. You may already do or know some of things in this book. But it was well worth the money to me as it is chock full of great information, even if it just gives you a different way to look at something almost all of us have to....grocery shop.