Forget Clipping Coupons: These Tricks Will Slash Your Grocery Bill

Food. It's a big part of almost everyone's household budget. According to the Consumer Expenditure Survey published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American family spends $6,602 annually on food, making up a little over 10 percent of their annual spending.

If a person can figure out how to trim just 20 percent off that average annual food spending -- just 20 percent -- that saves over $1,300 a year, which can make a huge difference. It can help a family stop treading water paycheck to paycheck, reduce debt and start getting ahead.

[See: 10 Easy Ways to Pay Off Debt.]

Clipping coupons is the first strategy that springs to mind when it comes to saving money at the grocery store. However, unless you're willing to spend a ton of time on planning and coupon collecting, this tactic won't actually save you that much.

Here are some smart habits that will save you money. While some of them do require a time investment -- particularly the first two -- they actually repay that time by reducing how long you actually spend in the grocery store.

Plan meals before you go to the store. It's easy, and here's the trick. Just go to your grocery store's website, download the store flier for the week and then look for the items that are on sale. Plan meals around those on-sale items, ideally using things you already have in your refrigerator, freezer and pantry.

It actually doesn't take too long to do this. One trick is to simply do it on a whiteboard you hang in your kitchen. List the next seven days, then jot down a meal idea or two (depending on your needs) next to each of those days.

[See: 11 Ways to Save Time and Money.]

Make a grocery list before you go to the store. Once you have that meal plan, make a grocery list based on that meal plan. Scour your refrigerator and pantry and cupboards to check which items you actually need to make each of the listed meals.

You'll discover that your grocery list is surprisingly short and already contains sale items, so there's no need to wander down aisles aimlessly or to study the flier in the store either. You can just blitz through the store buying the things on your list. Because your trip is so quick, you'll regain the time you spent making the grocery list and meal plan.

Eat before you shop. It's a huge mistake to go to the grocery store hungry. You'll find yourself dropping all kinds of unnecessary snacks into your cart simply because you're craving them in the moment. Those cravings almost completely vanish if you go to the grocery store on a full stomach.

So, before you go to the grocery store, eat something at home. One great way to do this is to shop directly after lunch on the weekends or directly after dinner on weekdays. Eat an ordinary meal at home, then head to the grocery store with your grocery list in hand.

Buy store brands for most of your staples. When it comes to many basic food staples such as flour, sugar, salt, ketchup, cereal and oatmeal, the store-brand item is functionally identical to the name-brand version (or very close to it). The only difference is the label and the price.

If there's a store-brand version of a product you buy regularly, try it. You'll likely find it meets your needs perfectly and saves you some money on each purchase. This strategy also devours most of the advantages of clipping coupons, since coupons often just reduce the price of name-brand items.

[See: 12 Ways to Save Money on Food.]

Make meals in advance. One useful strategy is to spend a weekend afternoon once a month making a bunch of meals in advance to freeze for later enjoyment. This not only allows you to have tasty meals on hand for simple evening prep, a boon when you're tired, but also allows you to buy ingredients in bulk.

For example, you can make four pans of lasagna at once, eating one for dinner and storing the other three in the freezer. You can also fill freezer containers with all the ingredients needed for a slow cooker meal so that, on the morning of a busy day, you can plop the ingredients in the slow cooker, turn it on low and have a warm meal for the family when you get home. The possibilities are endless and they'll save you money both in terms of avoiding takeout and buying in bulk.

Make convenience foods ahead of time. It's far cheaper, for example, to buy a bunch of flour tortillas, eggs and other ingredients to make a few dozen of your own breakfast burritos than to buy premade burritos from the store or drive-through restaurant.

Taken together, these little strategies can shave tons of money off your food bill without requiring you to spend hours clipping coupons. In fact, most of these strategies take very little time, allowing you to spend more hours doing what you enjoy. That's frugality at work!

Trent Hamm is the founder of the personal finance website TheSimpleDollar.com, which provides consumers with resources and tools to make informed financial decisions.