WE’RE all going off our trolley with the soaring cost of the weekly supermarket shop.

It’s rocketed 13 PER CENT in the past year, stretching budgets to the limit.

Yet load up with my few simple tips and you can chop family food bills by thousands.

Top of my budgeting shopping list is a challenge that will get you BIG SAVINGS.

The downshift challenge

THIS hugely powerful technique can chop a whopping £900 off your annual shopping bill and you WON’T NOTICE any change.

There are four brand levels in most supermarkets—at the top are premium brands such as Tesco Finest, followed by normal brands such as McVitie’s jaffa cakes, then own brands such as Morrisons crisps, and finally basic brands such as Sainsbury’s Economy loo roll.

Here’s the catch. Often these products are made by the same people in the same factories but with different marketing and packaging—we’re simply hypnotised into paying more.

My downshift challenge is simple—try dropping just one brand level on everything. To do it properly, compare products blind or at least without packaging, so you taste with your mouth, not your eyes.

If you do this:

The cost drops A THIRD. It’s amazingly consistent. If you drop a brand on everything and your basket will be a THIRD cheaper. I’ve repeatedly conducted various downshift experiments with families on my TV shows. Consistently they only notice the difference with HALF the goods.

So even if you only change down when you can’t tell the difference, you’d save around 17 per cent on a £100 weekly shop—a MASSIVE £900 a year.

Don’t just focus on downshifting on food. This technique also works for cleaning products, washing powder, shower gels and more. Downshift supermarkets too—by TRYING goods from budget stores Lidl, Aldi and Netto.

GET the best price for your trolley by typing in your shopping list at supermarket cost comparison site www.mysupermarket.co.uk .

It will calculate your bill at the four main online supermarkets— Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Ocado (Waitrose) and Asda—finding you the cheapest place to shop at the click of a button. Simply click and then your list’s filled in at the cheapest. Even if you don’t buy online, this site is a useful tool to see which of the supermarkets are cheapest generally as online prices, while not identical, do reflect in-store prices.

It will also flash up alternatives that can save you money, so if you want a trio of three six packs of cola, and buying a 12-pack and six-pack is actually a better bargain, it will tell you.

THERE are more online ways to save too such as click ’n’ print discount vouchers.

There are loads of offers you can print out or codes to use. For example, you can get £15 off a £50 online spend at Waitrose. But you better hurry as the offer ends today.

For a daily updated list of other money-off deals, ending today is a £15 off £50 online spend at Waitrose; a daily updated list's at www.moneysavingexpert.com/discountvouchers .

Special promotions. IF you’re buying a job lot of a particular item, u’ll find a list of promotions at check out www.fixtureferrets.co.uk for a list of promotions.

Time your shop for big discounts

EVERYONE knows you can get big discounts from the yellow ticket bargain bin of items nearing their sell-by date. But when’s yet when’s the perfect time to go?

To answer this I asked the thousands of users of my website who work in supermarkets to dish the dirt. The ir answer? Why said that while discounts begin as early as 10am the serious 75 per cent money off prices knock down starts begin at 7pm.

Many of those responsible for reductions advise shoppers to ask for a discount if they spot a particular item that’s damaged or near its sell-by date and ask us to reduce it, and we usually can". But be but they warn: be polite and charming. If you’re rude and demanding, you won’t get anywhere.

Declare war on waste

TYPICALLY, a British household tosses a staggering chucks £600 worth of UNUSED food in the in every year. What a waste. But three simple tricks can help this:

The first is dead easy. Just write a shopping list. Use a two-dimensional linear storage device. OK, what I actually mean is write a shopping list, but People find it tough to believe that something this straight-forward is so powerful.

Ensuring you’re not hungry before you shop and doing a week’s menu plan to co-ordinate your cooking and shopping will help too.

Also, stop throwing away ‘best before’ items. Many people bin food out just because it has hit the guide date. That’s a complete waste.

Best before just means manufacturers think it’s of optimum quality before that date and some of it can be perfectly good, safe and usable—within reason, of course for weeks or even sometimes months after.

Yet if a label says ‘use by’, that’s a safety warning for perishable goods, so throw them away beyond that date. And ignore ‘display until’ and ‘sell by’ as they’re instructions for shop staff.

Finally, Recipes for what’s left. Try fun little website www.cookingbynumbers.com can suggest recipes for what you’ve got left in your cupboard. for you where you can enter what food you have left in the cupboard and it will give you a recipe to cook ’em together.

Use 'raincheck' vouchers. DON’T worry if you spot a special offer item that has run out of stock. Many supermarkets offer vouchers allowing you to take advantage of the same deal at a later date. Tesco calls them “raincheck vouchers”, Sainsbury’s “special coupons”, and Asda “smiley vouchers”.

And finally here’s a sneaky extra tip with today’s News of the World. On Page 51 you’ll find a voucher for a free Birds Eye family meal of fish fingers, potato waffles and peas from Asda.

The meal would cost £3.33 to buy separately and the paper is only 95p. And as you can buy as many copies as you like and the voucher’s valid each time, if you’re going to eat the meals it’s still cheaper to buy more copies of the paper than the meal direct.

it’s still cheaper to buyIt’s worth £3.33—but you’ve got it free with your 95p paper.

And here’s the cherry on top—buy as many copies of the paper as you want and the voucher is valid each time. So it’s cheaper to buy more copies of the paper than the meal direct.

WARNING! Christmas is on the 25 December this year.

Every January I get annoyed. People stop me in the street, telling me they’re skint, requesting help. When I ask why they’ve no cash, they look at me as if I’m stupid and say “Christmas of course”.

While I’m polite and try to point them in the right direction, inside, as a money nerd, the frustration gnaws. Christmas isn’t some unexpected one-off expenditure; it’s completely predictable and easy to plan for.

So just in case, WARNING: Christmas is on the 25 December this year! And there’s still time to ensure you’re not skint. Remember, debt is simply paying for something each month AFTER you’ve had it, but you pay the bank interest on top. Saving is paying for something each month BEFORE you’ve had it, and it pays you interest.

So, if you haven’t already, you’ve four months left to set the money aside.

Plus apply now to get 5% discount on everything

A cashback credit card gives you a proportion of the money you spend on it back in cash, so apply for one now, not to borrow on, but to make money with. After all the Christmas run in is peek spending time for many.

Yet DON’T DO IT unless you set up a Direct Debit to pay it off in full each month, making it interest free, otherwise the amount they snatch from you in interest dwarves the cashback.

Currently the American Express Platinum credit card gives new customers a MASSIVE 5% cashback for the first three month. As it takes a few weeks to process, apply now and it should cover the whole pre-Christmas period, meaning 5% off everything.

It requires a decent credit history and minimum £20,000 earnings to get. If that’s doesn’t suit, an alternative is Egg Money (not the same as the normal Egg card) which offers a flat 1% on all spending, capped at £200 cashback per year. More info at www.moneysavingexpert.com/cashbackcards

Q&A SPECIAL

Q. My daughter asked if I'd capped my energy tariff after seeing you on TV. I told I'd prefer to pay the increase as it happens and not find in two years that my bills suddenly shoot up. Am I correct that this is what will happen? If so, why are none of the experts warning about this, it'll come as a sharp shock! Mr. M Rowlands

A. I must admit I was surprised and slightly confused by your question, but let me try and explain.

To set the scene, about a month ago I was yelling “cap now” on GMTV, as there were three cheap fixed rate tariffs left and all were about to (and subsequently did) end. By capping you lock-in at a set price and thus avoid price rises, and as massive hikes are currently predicted this is a good bet.

Yet in that week 100,000s, I suspect including your daughter, did cap. And they will have save money. Of course you are right, in 18 months or so, when these caps ends, they will face a big hike. Yet if they hadn’t capped, they’d still be paying that huge amount then anyway, but in the in between time would’ve also paid massively more.

The aim of capping wasn’t to stop price rises forever, that’s impossible, but it was to keep to the old cheaper prices for as long as possible. For me to be willing to pay much more now, just so you’re not hit with a big jump later, doesn’t make any sense.

Q. I’m confused, is now a good or bad time to change energy provider? Denise Evans – e-mail

Just over a week ago the last of the big six energy providers put the prices up of their main tariffs. Now all of them have done it, it’s the perfect time to compare as it’s a level playing field. So do a comparison and switch now. For full details and how to get sneaky extra cashback go to www.moneysavingexpert.com/gaselec .

Q. I read in a previous edition of your column that someone aged between 65 and 74 could earn £9,030 before being taxed. Is this correct? Liz Anderson.

A. In general, yes. For someone aged 65 to 74 the personal allowance, which is the amount you can earn tax free this tax year, is £9,030 for someone aged 75 or over its £9,180.

However as always with tax, the system’s absurdly complex. If you earn over £21,800, not only do you pay tax as normal on all income above the £9,080 (£9,180), but for every £1 above £21,800, your personal allowance is also reduced by 50p. And this continues until it hits the normal £6,035 personal allowance for the under 65s.

Q. My son is going to Las Vegas soon and has signed up for a Halifax card to use there. I've heard you mention various cards to avoid and some others which you say are the best but I can't remember the names of these. Is Halifax a good one? Karen Butland

A. No. Halifax’s DEBIT card is one of my cards from hell, alongside the debit cards from Lloyds TSB, NatWest and RBS. That’s because not only does it add to your exchange rate and charge a fee for withdrawing cash, like most cards, it also charges you £1.50 each time you spend on it. So if you pay for 30 different things on the trip it’d add £45.

My suggestion is to get a specialist CREDIT card only for spending overseas, with a Direct Debit set up to pay it off in full each month to minimise the interest. The best is Abbey Zero, followed by the Post Office and Nationwide, do this with those and you’ll save a huge chunk. Alternatively get the cheapest foreign currency use the comparison site at www.moneysavingexpert.com/cheaptravelmoney to find it.

Q. I’m just coming up to retirement and have scraped up to around £180,000 in my pension fund. I know I can take 25% as a lump sum, and the pension company says the rest will buy an annuity, is that the best thing? Silvia Hemmings

A. This is the single most important financial decision of your life, as once done you can’t change it. Your question scared the pants off me, not due to getting an annuity, which is a payment each year for the rest of your life, but because of your “the pension company says” line.

Let me shout something from the rooftops to anyone nearing retirement. NEVER just accept your pension company’s annuity rate, it’s a competitive market and you’ve A RIGHT to take your money to any provider.

This has a big impact. For a 65 year old woman with a £200,000 pension the best standard annuity pays £14,800 a year, while a poor one pays £13,000. If you lived to 90 that’s a £45,000 difference. It’s such a big decision, its one of the times I’m a fan of getting Independent Financial Advice.

Q. Can you help? I’m about to start uni and want to take out a student loan just so I can save it and earn interest. I don’t need the cash as I’ve other means. My dad says this isn’t allowed, I know he listens to you on the radio, so please tell him. Julie

A. Julie’s dad... ‘it is allowed!’ And it’s a good idea as long as she’s disciplined and doesn’t just frivolously spend it.

In fact she could also get a big 0% overdraft from the bank, and save this cash too to make more. If you’re worried about how it all works, I’ve a parents guide to student finance I published jointly with the government to help, you can download it at www.moneysavingexpert.com/parentsguide

Q. After reading your column, I applied to move the debt from my credit card to a 0% one which I should be able to pay off. Yet I wanted to move £5,000 and it’s only given me a credit limit for £3,000, what should I do. Ian Lewis

A. Move what you can onto the new card, and then apply for another new card with a different provider to move the rest onto. Even if this second application’s rejected, you’ll still save a huge whack moving the £3,000.

TV money guru Martin Lewis is the creator of the Consumer Revenge website MoneySavingExpert.com which is packed with info on how to get more money in your pocket.

PUT YOUR MONEYSAVING QUESTIONS TO MARTIN, EMAIL NOTW@MONEYSAVINGEXPERT.COM