(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-04-04 18:39

Prices continue to rise. A survey conducted by the American Farm Bureau Federation in February showed that in the beginning months of this year, the cost of 16 grocery items, including flour and cheddar cheese, was $45.03, up $3.42, or 8 percent, from the fourth quarter.

Shopper Laura Miller (L) and her daughter shop at a Wal-Mart store in Santa Clarita, California April 1, 2008. [Agencies]

That has consumers like Laura Miller taking a calculated approach to shopping, much of which she does at Wal-Mart in Santa Clarita, California, a planned community on the outskirts of Los Angeles.

Married with three little girls, Miller said her food costs have almost doubled to $300 every two weeks.

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She plans meals two weeks in advance and shops with the daughter who doesn't ask her to buy snacks. Miller's printed shopping list, organized by item and place of purchase, shows that she does the bulk of her buying at Wal-Mart.

"I won't pay $6 for a box of cereal when I can get it for $3" at Wal-Mart, she said.

Karen Wikholm, a library worker from Romeoville, is another who does her homework before heading to the store, sorting through newspaper ads, hashing out which stores offer the best deals and figuring out where her coupons can go farthest.

She then gets in her car and, in one day, goes to her local Wal-Mart, Dominick's and Jewel grocery stores, buying only what is cheapest in each store.

The three stores are located about a mile from each other on a stretch of road that includes several strip malls interspersed with vacant plots for planned housing developments.

"We're shopping as the paycheck comes," she said.

Payday means grocery day

Increasingly, shoppers like Wikholm must wait until payday to load up on groceries and then hunker down until the next paycheck.

At all three Wal-Mart stores, that trend was visible.

The Wal-Mart in Secaucus, a few miles outside New York, operated at a leisurely pace on the afternoon of Monday, March 31. Shoppers slowly browsed store aisles or stopped at the in-store McDonald's for a snack.

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