I always feel a little silly giving frugal tips.  They are never very profound.

I am going to share one anyway...

Schedule your shopping trips. 

Or should I say: Make your shopping trips infrequent?
(I told you I'm not good at this)

In the past I have made numerous trips to the store in a matter of days.  This is definitely not the way to save money.  Especially not with the price of gas these days.

I now go one day a week.  This is really saving money, time, and stress. 

A few months ago I began planning my menu according to what is on sale, using coupons and shopping at more than one store.  This doesn’t come naturally and I find it both tiring and time consuming.  I’m sure it will get easier, but I still don’t want to do it more than once a week!       

Because I have been buying larger amounts of useful items when on sale, I have a nice little stockpile in my pantry.  This has enabled me to go even longer between shopping trips.  I am now seriously considering grocery shopping every two weeks or making my second week of shopping smaller (milk, eggs etc). 

The longer I go between trips the more creative I get.  This is conducive to leftovers being used up instead of letting them go to waste. 

A recent snow storm on my shopping day showed me that we could last quite a while with the food we had on hand; and a day or two without milk wasn't going to kill us.

The only draw back to shopping every two weeks is missing out on some deals.  I combat this problem by:
1. Not looking at the sales flyer if I really don’t want to go out or spend money. 
2.  If a trip to the store is feasible then I’ll take a peek, but only venture out if it is a super bargain.

One other point that comes to mind is that you may not want to stretch your food too far.  The only reason I say this is because I clearly remember a time when we tried to go without to save money, but there really wasn’t enough to eat. We ended up getting fast food instead.  That was not a money (or health) saver.  It would have been better to make a quick trip to the store for some basics.

Visit Crystal for more Frugal Friday tips.  She has a great post today about balancing frugality, health, and nutrition.