Although the economy is improving, many families are still looking for ways to trim their household spending. It's easy to evaluate the "extras" that can be eliminated, or at least postponed. But how can you reduce the amount you spend on the basics, especially the grocery bill?

Turns out, there are lots of options for saving money on your weekly grocery excursions. Fawn Rechkemmer, a stay-at-home mother of two and self-proclaimed "tightwad," has mastered the art of clipping coupons, combing offers and taking advantage of sales. As a result, she's seen a significant reduction in her food bill.

"Before I started using The Grocery Game, I was using coupons, but still spending $130 per week on groceries," Fawn says. "In the first year of using The Grocery Game, my average weekly expense dropped to $76 per week, and I averaged 48 percent in savings per week."

So what are Fawn's two biggest tips for busy families? Plan ahead and use coupons. Many families make multiple trips to the grocery store every week and don't shop from a list. "I've found it's much more efficient to invest a couple hours before I go to the grocery store to plan out some meals, make a list, and gather up the coupons I need," says Fawn. "I shop once per week, and we always have plenty of food."

Make Peace with Coupons
Many busy parents view clipping, filing and remembering to use coupons as a huge hassle. But Fawn says coupons are a necessary evil when trying to save money. "Try it for a month," she says of clipping coupons. "Keep track of the time it takes you to cut your coupons and how much money you save. Then, divide the money saved by time spent, and see if your grocery shopping 'hourly wage' is worth it."

There are a variety of different kinds of coupons out there, and it's important to know the difference in order to use them effectively.

Store coupons can only be used at a specific store. These coupons typically cannot be doubled, but they can often be combined with a manufacturer coupon for more savings. If you have a frequent shopper card at a certain store, they will send you coupons via email or snail mail the more you use your card.

Manufacturer coupons are the most traditional type of coupon and can be found in the Sunday paper. According to Fawn, most grocery stores double the value of manufacturer coupons up to a certain amount. For example, Kroger doubles coupons with a face value of up to $0.65.

Digital coupons can be loaded directly onto your store shopping card with a click of your mouse. The savings are automatically applied when you swipe your card at the register (and buy the appropriate product). If you have a store shopping card, you can load electronic coupons at the following websites:

Shortcuts.com
Cellfire.com
UPromise.com
Kroger

Internet coupons can be found online and often have higher values than paper coupons. A good place to start hunting for internet coupons is Teri's Coupon Center, which is free for anyone to access. Another cool tool: If you are a Target shopper and have a smart phone, you can sign up on Target's website to have coupons sent directly to your phone. At the register, you bring up an image of the coupon, and the cashier scans it.

Playing "The Grocery Game"
The biggest tool in Fawn's arsenal is The Grocery Game, a website that provides a weekly list of sale items at Kroger matched with coupons that are available in weekly newspaper inserts.

Each week, The Grocery Game website publishes a store-specific list of items that are on sale. In greater Little Rock, the stores are Kroger, Walgreens and Target. By combining sales (both published and unpublished) with manufacturer coupons, printable internet coupons, and digital coupons, the list sorts items into three color categories - Green, Blue, and Black. Green items are free, blue items are "buy now and stockpile" and black are "buy only if you need." You can try The Grocery Game free for four weeks, and then it costs $10 every eight weeks per store list.

"With this list you are basically optimizing your shopping dollars by buying items not just when they are on sale, but when they are at the best sale price, and then stacking coupon savings on top of that," says Fawn. "Whenever possible, stock up on blue items so that you have enough of that item to get you through until the next big sale."

DealSeekingMom.com is another great website for finding deals on grocery items. The site publishes deals for a variety of different chain stores, links to freebies and giveaways, and product-specific savings. But according to Fawn, the best part of the site is the coupon database. "If you know you need eggs but aren't sure where to find a coupon for them, simply enter 'eggs' into the database search box," she explains, "and a list of coupons for eggs will pop up. Internet and digital coupons are linked directly to the list, so you can go straight to them."

So go ahead and invite the family over for Thanksgiving and Christmas. With these money-saving tips, you can host the meals and not break the bank. Plus, you'll go into 2011 equipped to save serious money at the checkout counter, leaving more money for those "extras" you may have had to go without.