With the ongoing recession everyone is looking for saving tips to help make their money go further every month. One area that simply cannot be dropped is food shopping. Fortunately, however, there are some sensible ways of significantly reducing your shopping costs and here are 10 simple ways of doing so.

1. When doing your weekly shop, consider your chosen supermarkets ‘economy range’ as often the products are the same just in different packaging and a huge amount cheaper.

2. If you don’t do your grocery shopping online then do it at night if you can, as supermarkets such as ASDA or Tesco often reduce the price of food like bread, milk or cakes at the end of the day to make sure they sell it .

3. Before you go shopping, make a list of what you need and then stick to it, if you don’t know what you need, you’ll be more likely to overspend, also never shop hungry as this makes you buy lots of snacky items which you wouldn’t buy if you weren’t hungry.

4. Invest in a flask to stop you having to call at coffee shops where a cup of coffee could end up costing you around £2 a cup!

5. Get organised and make your own pack lunches for work, this will save you pounds against going out every day to buy your lunch.

6. Try to avoid ready meals as overall they will cost you more. By making your own meals you will find that it won’t take too much time and will certainly save you money.

7. Check sell by dates on the food you buy and check if it is freezable. Otherwise you risk buying too much food which cannot be eaten before it is out of date.

8. Try to make use of leftover meals, by either putting them in the fridge or taking them to work the following day.

9. Look out for special offers, but don’t be tempted to bulk up on your buy if you know that it will go to waste, but for washing up liquid, toothpaste or shampoo it could save you pounds in the long run!

10. Join cash back sites and earn cash back while you shop, the cash back can vary dependant on your purchase and sites having different terms and conditions so check them out to see which suits you the best. Also quite often these sites will promote discount codes which you enter at checkout and are not offered in store.

Follow these simple saving tips and you will discover some extra money in your pocket every month. Good luck!