Just a few years ago would have spent money without even thinking or maybe I should say they would buy things on credit without thinking. Now those same individuals are rediscovering how to save money and reduce their monthly expenses. Unfortunately, while many of your monthly budget items are fixed expenses, one of the biggest expenses that you can control is your grocery budget.

Students of Christian finance will know that the Bible has always taught good stewardship. Even Jesus in one of his most famous parables said:

Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord. Matthew 25:21.

We at eChristianFinance.com believe that the financial principles of the Bible are timeless and have put together the following 10 tips for consumers to save money on their monthly grocery bills.

1. Don’t shop at just one store. You actually save money by shopping the best prices at multiple stores.

2. Always shop with a list. It’s a known fact that consumers spend as much as 30% less.

3. Bring a calculator with you when you shop for multiple reasons. You can calculate the price difference between large quantity items versus smaller sizes. You don’t always save money buying in bulk.   You will also get to the cashier and know exactly how much you are spending.

4. Shop store brands over name brand items. You can save as much as 60% or more.

5. Clip coupons. Check your local newspaper or use sites such as www.smartsource.com, www.coupons.com and www.retailmenot.com .  Use both the store coupon and the manufactures’ coupons whenever possible for maximum savings.

6. Check your local grocery store ads for sales and plan your meals accordingly.

7. Shop stores lost leaders. Stores will routinely drastically discount certain items in order to draw more consumers.

8. If something is a great buy stock up. 

9. In order to save money your kitchen pantry must be organized you will loose money by overstocking.

10. Be sure to plan your meals ahead. By planning ahead you will be less likely to eat out.

A lot of users will go to priceline.com and do searches for plane fares/hotel bookings and when the web browser spits back some prices and options they’re content with that. Well, yes, you can find a decent deal that way but if you want the really good deals you need to be willing to dig a little deeper. The absolute best feature of priceline.com is the “Name Your Own Price” option. This is where you can put in your own bid on what you think is a good price for your hotel, flight, rental car etc. This is very appealing to the savvy negotiator. This isn’t like haggling with a greasy salesman over a badly used car, this is price negotiation at its finest. You sip your coffee and calmly type in a price; priceline.com does some magic and if you’re lucky (and shrewd), you’ll get yourself a steep discount on the perfect vacation.

Here’s how it works: airlines don’t like flights with empty seats and even if they only get a small amount of the normal fare its still better than flying with no one in that chair. It works the same way with hotels. So priceline.com will submit your bid to most of the major airlines/hotels and if someone out there is needing your money badly enough they’ll match you up. A perfect union. Move over matchmaking.com and say hello to Priceline! Advantages? Absolutely! Disadvantages? Yeah, there’s some. Let’s take a closer look.

I’ve used Priceline for several years now and over time I’ve saved thousands of dollars combined on my travels. Last year my wife and I took a two week trip to Europe. I used Priceline for all my hotels, the end result? I was staying at 4 and 5 star hotels most of the time for under $100 a night. While we were in Europe we met some tourists that were spending more than that to stay at dubiously titled hostels. The main advantages of using the Name Your Own Price option on Priceline.com is the money that you will save. I’ve found that most times you are able to save at least 40-50% on hotels over Priceline’s already reasonable rates and usually 70-80% off of the hotel’s normal asking rate. (In Venice, Italy we stayed at a 5 star Hilton for $115 a night while the normal room rate was $495).

Using Priceline.com’s bidding feature is very simple. You just select “hotels”, type in the city that you want to stay in and enter the dates that you would like to stay there. Once you select “Search Hotels” and Priceline will return several hotels back to you. This listing of available hotels will have room rates and star ratings that you can purchase directly if you wish to stay at a particular hotel. If you’re willing to be a little more adventurous however, you can step up to the bidding process. On the top right hand side will be a little box that says, “Name Your Own Price.” This is where the fun begins. Clicking that box will take you to a new screen with a few necessary options. You’ll get to select the general area that you’d like to be located in; this way you can ensure you’re in the right area of town and not miles away from the places you’d like to visit. Once you select the area, you can then select the star rating of the hotel that you would like to stay in. I almost always select 4 star or greater since these hotels are the ones that will offer the greatest discounts off their normal rates. Finally, you have to enter your bid. Priceline will indicated the median retail price for hotel in the areas and star rating that you’ve selected. General rule of thumb that I’ve used is that you can typically get your stay at least 50% off of that median price. You can bid lower, of course, than that and sometimes still get a match but it just depends on how willing the hotels are to negotiate. The longer your stay though the more you’re going to save by getting a lower room rate. The main advantage of course is that you’re saving a lot of money and you’ll probably end up staying at a much nicer hotel than you would otherwise stay at. The disadvantages are that you don’t get to choose precisely which hotel you are staying at, you can’t just say “I want to stay at a Hilton on 3rd and main.” Generally speaking though, the cost savings are greater than any hotel loyalty rewards points and the locations are close enough that they represent no problems. When I recently stayed in St. Louis, MO I wound up at a Hyatt Regency directly across from the Arch which was where I wanted to be in anyway.

The airlines work in a very similar way although there are some significant differences that can make the “Name Your Own Price” less attractive than it is for the hotels. All you need to do is simply enter where you are flying from and where you want to go and then follow the same procedure for naming your own price. The drawback is that you can’t specify the times that you’d like to fly out at or the time you’d like to fly back, you can only choose days. This means if you have a tight schedule you need to keep, you might not get what you want. You could fly out anytime on the day you select (morning, midday or evening). Priceline does guarantee some things however. They guarantee you will get to spend at least 24 hours at your destination (i.e. they won’t fly you in at midnight on Friday night and ship you out at 11am on Saturday morning), but beyond that its somewhat up to the mercy of the airline schedules and availability. Again, just like the hotels you won’t get to select a specific airline that you’d like to fly either. Also, this isn’t available if you need to fly through multiple cities. Beyond that though, if you’ve got some freedom in your schedule then the name your own price for airlines is a wonderful idea that can save you a nice wad of cash.

The one area I wish Priceline would expand is to include the name your own price feature is their Vacation Packages. You can use this to put together an all inclusive vacation package to a certain city (Airline, Hotel and car). Unfortunately, they don’t have a name your own price option for these packages. However this might be something that they introduce in the future. So there, now you’ve learned a great way to save at least 50% (usually) on all your hotels and flights, maybe you can afford that little getaway after all. Time to check out Florida!

King Solomon was likely the richest man of his day. He lived in a massive palace (1 Kings 7: 2) that few could even imagine. He received annual incomes of gold, silver and other precious items. Yet none of Solomon’s wealth came because he prayed that God would bless him financially. In fact, Solomon prayed that God would give him neither riches nor poverty.

“Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me:” Proverbs 30:8.

However, when Solomon prayed for wisdom, God also blessed him with wealth & riches.

“Wisdom and knowledge is granted unto thee; and I will give thee riches, and wealth, and honour, such as none of the kings have had that have been before thee, neither shall there any after thee have the like.” 2 Chronicles 1:12.

God blessed Solomon with great wealth, but also gave him wisdom to know how to use that wealth. However, in today’s world many of us lack the wisdom we need to handle the finances that God has given us.

Most individuals will be faced with several major buying decisions in their lives – such as when they buy a house or a car. These are the types of major financial decisions that you should not only pray about, but it would also be a good idea to counsel with someone like your pastor as well.

In recent years, too many people have been quick to spend money without even pausing to consider the potential consequences. Unfortunately, Christians have been just as hasty to spend money without regard to their role as stewards of God’s money. As a consequence of hasty spending decisions, millions of individuals have found their world crashing in on them over the last year.

Of course praying over the major decisions in your life seems obvious and I’m sure many of you reading this article have already done that. But after praying about which house to buy or which car to purchase, do you pray about how you should spend the rest of your money? It’s not just the big-ticket items that you should pray about, but also the little ones.

While I’m not necessarily advocating praying over whether or not you should buy a hamburger at McDonald’s or not, it is important to remember that God requires you to be a good steward over all the finances He has given you.

Are you spending money on things that you know God wouldn’t approve of?

If Jesus were paying your bills or setting your budget, would He make the same choices that you are?

As Christians, we are striving to live as Jesus would live. This is easy to translate into our church attendance, our relationships with other saints of God, our relationship with the world, but it is just as valid with our financial lives as well. We should even be striving to spend our money as Jesus would.

I have to believe that if we as Christians would pray more about how to spend our money, we would make much better spending decisions. We would likely have less debt and more peace as impulsive buying is replaced by prayerful consideration.

Spending more money than you earn is certainly becoming less accepted behavior in today’s society. New credit card offers no longer arrive in your mail on a daily basis. The lack of easy credit is forcing both corporate America and individual consumers to relearn the proper habits of financial responsibility. However, the Bible has always set forth the principles of budgeting. “Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds. For riches are not for ever: and doth the crown endure to every generation?” Proverbs 27:23-24. 

So just how does an individual go about setting up a budget? 

The very first thing you should do is sit down and list out all of your monthly expenses. Next, you need to compare these expenses against your income. Then you can begin to layout a monthly budget by expense category to help you better manage your finances. 

Tithes & Offerings

At the very top of any budget you prepare should be a category for tithes and offerings. All that we have came from the Lord and so He deserves to be paid first and not just with anything that happens to be left over. “Thou shalt not delay to offer the first of thy ripe fruits” Exodus 22:29. 

At a minimum, you should be giving 10% of your income to the Lord, but this truly is a minimum. As your income increases so should your level of giving. I’m not just talking about the total amount increasing, but it should increase as a percentage of your income as well. You may be giving 10% when you’re making $30,000, but you should be giving much more than 10% when you’re making $100,000. 

Savings & Retirement

It’s important to get into the habit of setting aside a portion of your income for savings. In this recessionary environment, many individuals are bemoaning the fact that they have so little set aside in savings. 

While you should certainly strive to save as much as you can, a good rule of thumb is to try and save 10% of your income. These savings goals should strive to provide 1) at least six months income in case of a job loss or other economic catastrophe, 2) an emergency fund for those unplanned expenses, and 3) money for vacations or other fun items. 

In addition to a regular savings pattern, you should also be contributing towards a retirement fund. Many employers offer 401k plans that provide company matching of your contributions. You should always try to contribute the maximum amount to the plan that your company will match. After all this is basically free money and it would be foolish to not take advantage of it. 

Housing

Undoubtedly the biggest single expense in your budget will be for your home. It is also a fixed monthly amount with little you can do to change that (outside of buying a cheaper house or possibly refinancing to a lower interest rate). So it’s very important that you when you initially buy a home, you buy one that you know you can afford. Your monthly house payments (including property taxes and insurance) should not exceed 30% of your income and a good target is 25% of your gross income. 

Transportation

The other major expense item in your budget is your car payment. Outside of a house, a car is the only other item you should ever have to go in debt to purchase. While some say you could spend up to 20% of you net income on a car, I would strongly recommend keeping this number below 10%. 

Utilities

Energy bills, water bills, phone bills, etc. they all add up. While many of these costs are beyond your control, there are steps you can take to reduce these expenses. A programmable thermostat can provide significant savings (especially if you are gone during the day). Do you really need both a home phone and a cell phone? Just switching to a cheaper plan can provide some savings each month…and every little bit helps. 

Food

Grocery costs can vary greatly from one family to another. However, it’s generally the one area of your budget that you have the most control over. Many people are surprised to find out how much they spend each month just by going out to eat or ordering pizza every week. Creating a good budget doesn’t mean you have start eating hot dogs every night either. However, maybe instead of going out to eat a steak dinner and spending $50 or more, buy some nice steaks for $10 and eat at home. You still get to treat yourself to something a little special without completely blowing through your grocery budget. 

Also, don’t forget coupons as a great way to save a few extra dollars each month. Spending a few minutes perusing the Sunday paper or visiting online can end up saving you several dollars. If you’re making a purchase online a great website to check is www.RetailMeNot.com. They often provide coupon codes that can save you 10-20% off your purchase price. 

Other Expenses

Clothes, magazine subscriptions, Netflix, cable tv, Starbucks, etc. these miscellaneous expenses can really add up. It’s not necessarily wrong to spend money on these items, but you have to make sure you only spend what you can afford. Carefully review how much you spend on these items each month – a good rule of thumb is that these expenses shouldn’t be more than 5-7% of your total income. 

Of course these are not hard and fast rules by any means, but simply guides you can use to help you in constructing your budget. No two budgets will be identical. As your income increases you should be able to spend less as a percentage of your income on your monthly expenses and contribute a greater percentage towards your charitable giving and savings.

However, the principles of the Word of God teach us to not be conformed to this world.  That applies to many different avenues of life, but it certainly applies to your financial life.  There is no reason for a child of God to be a mere debt statistic.  The apostle Paul even went so far as to say that we should owe no man anything.  

So how do we transform ourselves from the debt-quagmire of this world?  Unfortunately, you can’t just simply walk away from your financial problems.  However, there are some principles that you can live your life by that will allow you to live a life that is debt free! 

Cash vs. Credit

Even though we have become a “plastic society”, there’s no reason you should have to conform to that mentality. If you are making a purchase of less than $20 or buying something to eat or drink then it’s a good idea to use cash. You will find that you make very different spending decisions when you use cash than if you just whip out a credit card. When buying with credit cards we tend to spend much more than we would have by just paying with cash.  In fact, when McDonald’s began allowing customers to use credit cards, their average sale went from $5 to $7. 

Credit cards can be a convenient way to pay for larger purchases, but even then they should only be used if you already have the money to completely pay off the credit card statement when you receive it.  Someone who knows how to responsibly use credit cards doesn’t need a dozen of them (the average household has 9).  You really only need one primary credit card and maybe one additional card for emergency use.  

The cost of credit

It’s surprising how few people realize the true cost of credit.  Too many only take notice of the low introductory rates that are headlined on the multiple credit card offers they receive.  Currently, the average credit card interest rate is over 14% and many individuals with credit card balances are paying 20-30%.  Just using the national averages of a 14% interest rate with a $9,000 balance would result in having to pay $1,260 a year in interest just for the privilege of still owing $9,000.  If that individual earns $35,000 a year and takes home roughly 75% of their paycheck, they will have to work a total of 100 hours or two and a half weeks just to earn enough to pay that credit card interest. 

A recent report from the Government Accountability Office estimated that about 70 percent of the credit card industry’s revenue comes from late fees and other penalties.  These can be as high as $39 (annual fees, over limit fees, late payment fees, cash advance fees, balance transfer fees, etc.) and are piled onto already high credit balances and interest fees.

Just say no

Credit card companies have gotten very smart in the way they solicit you with new credit card offers.  For one thing, they have wealth of data about your spending habits (e.g. where you shop, what you buy, where you go for vacation), so it’s very easy for them to target offers specifically to your interests.  It’s easy to think that you will sign up for a credit card offer just for the “free” gift or incentive and then cancel it.  However, most people never do and that’s why the average household has nine credit cards with an average available balance of $19,000.  Your best course of action is to not accept the solicitations in the first place.  Otherwise, your ability to get credit in the future for the things that you will really want, like a car loan or a home mortgage will be much more difficult due to your multiple credit card accounts and credit inquiries. Even if those accounts have a zero balance or even if you have never used the card, the credit issuer knows that they still represent the availability of credit, and that you could max them out the next day and suddenly be deeply in debt. 

Create a budget….and follow it

Think about what you spend your money on and why.  Are you trying to maintain the lifestyle that you had at home, when your parents were paying for your needs and many of your “wants”?  Or are you trying to keep up with your “wealthy” friends or neighbors who are probably trying to live a lifestyle that they can’t afford either? 

Take the time to create a realistic budget that you can stick to. Many of your monthly expenses are regularly occurring fixed amounts (tithes, mortgage, car payment, etc.).  Make sure you have accounted for all your real “needs” before setting aside funds for your “wants”.    

Remember that your budget should also include a savings component.  Too many people fall into the trap of just saving “whatever is left over”.  This often turns out to be zero or even a negative amount if your credit balances are increasing.  However, the prudent man forseeth the evil and prepares both for the future as well as for any unexpected expenses that might come up.  

Live within your means

Overspending and living above your means with credit cards by buying things that you “want” but can’t afford can be very harmful both to you and to your family.  Young people that start out by engaging in this type of destructive behavior can end up spending the rest of their life suffering the consequences.  For many people, the high credit card balances is only part of the problem.  The more serious issue is the behavior that led to the high balances and sometimes that’s harder to eliminate than the actual balance.  

Learning to live within your income will make it easier to adjust if you encounter hard times (lose your job, health issues, etc.).  Maybe even more importantly it will help keep you in check if you encounter good times.  

Using debt…not abusing it

By paying your credit card balance off on time every month, you basically receive an interest-free monthly loan.  However, if you carry a balance of even $1 you will pay interest on everything that you charge from the moment that you charged it. If you do have a balance on your credit card, resolve to pay it off as quickly as possible and never pay only the minimum payment or less than the actual interest due. 

Although you don’t hear much about them, there are people that know how to use credit cards properly.  In fact, almost 40% pay their balance off every month.  Of course, in our perverse society that calls evil good and good evil, these individuals are referred to as “deadbeats”. 

If you pay for something with a credit card and don’t immediately pay it off, you can end up paying double or even triple the total cost due to the interest and fees incurred for the benefit of paying with credit.  So before you choose to buy something on credit that you know you won’t be able to pay off immediately, ask yourself if you’re willing to paying double or triple the price you think you’re paying just for the benefit of getting it now.  

The credit card industry has done a good job on getting consumers to focus on their “wants” and not on what they can afford.  Almost all mid-to-high ticket items are discussed in terms of their monthly payment rather than the actual cost.  However, by following the principles of the Bible you can experience a much higher standard of living than you will by being held captive to the credit card industry.