A Shopper's Guide to Help you get the most for your Money at the Supermarket

For some reason (well, we do know what the reason is - it's good ol’ greedy profit), retail businesses love to turn every kind of shopping experience into some kind of the game show-like experience for the consumer. Getting what is rightfully yours comes down to luck understanding how the system works. Keep your wits about you and play your cards right and you could go home with a bunch of great stuff and money in your wallet. Be casual about the whole thing, and you go home with no money and poor quality stuff. You don't have to be shopping at some kind of expensive place for things to be like this. As this shopper's guide shows you, you could be shopping at your local discount supermarket and still find that the deck is stacked against you if you don't know what you doing.

Let's start with expensive cuts of meat. What is the most expensive cut of beef that the deli counter at your preferred supermarket has – tenderloin? Well, tenderloin beef happens to be a made product. What that means is, it wasn't considered special until supermarkets came along and decided that they needed to build something up that they could sell for more. Tenderloin is sold for a lot of money because it's supposed to be tender. And they built tenderness up to be something super special. The problem is, tenderloin happens to be tasteless meat. Sirloin, on the other hand is cheaper, plentifully available, and it happens to be more rich tasting. You need to put this at the top of your shopper's guide - no more paying for high-priced and tasteless mush. The same goes for swordfish. A pound of swordfish sells for $25. They want you to believe that it's a super special treat to cook swordfish at home. Swordfish doesn't taste any different than halibut. But halibut happens to be far less expensive and far less poisonous. That's right, swordfish happens to be one of the most mercury-poisoned fish in the world. You're not even supposed to give it to pregnant women and children.

Have you noticed how when you take your kid to the cereal aisle in the supermarket, he seems to go straight for the box with the most colorful-looking cartoon character? Manufacturers put those cartoon characters there to draw your child in the way you would a fish with bait. Anything with a colorful cartoon character on the box has to have a lot of money invested in what’s on the box rather than what's in it. If you want your money spent on nutrition for your child and not the Sugar Bear, go for cereal that is less glamorous-looking to your kid. Use your shopper's guide. You wouldn’t want to poison him with empty carbohydrates and sugar, now would you? Actually, any rule that is good for your child should be good for you too. There is a lot of hype that goes into energy drinks, and how they boost your spirits. Actually, the only thing in them that could do anything like that for you is caffeine. Now why would you spend four dollars for a can of caffeine when you could have it at home with a cup of coffee?