USA Today has this report today: Frugal families learn how to cope with soaring food costs.

A snippet:

They live in Miami. Tania, 47, works in payroll benefits for a hotel chain, and is raising two daughters. Her mother, Detha Ferguson, also lives with them. “I have four people to feed,” she says. “It has been a challenge for me to come down on that part of my budget.”

Every three weeks, she spends about $270. The Ramsay family seldom goes out to eat dinner. Tania is always looking for ways to save more money for her daughters’ college education. No wonder the food cost has been getting to her.

Now, you might want to also look at the comment board.

One person wrote this: “People who are fussy and/or too lazy to cook deserve to suffer financially.”

Another person replied: “Spoken like a young white man who doesn’t have to work 40+ hours a week, cook a dinner and still get the kids to cub scouts, soccer and karate.”

All right. I will jump into that fray.

I have always worked full-time and often more than 40 hours a week. (I’m salary these days, and frequently spend more than 40 hours in the office. When I was hourly at a previous newspaper reporter job, I had a LOT of overtime hours on that paycheck.)

My husband also works full-time.

We raised one daughter from my previous marriage. Yes, she was involved in sports and Girl Scouts and Sunday School. We also had to work in weekend visitations with her dad with travel times that, over the years, varied from 15 minutes to 90 minutes each way. And after we moved to Monroe, we were about an hour’s drive away from any of our nearest immediate family members.

In the meantime, I had to make the time to shop wisely / live frugally.

Where did I find the time?

I put my kid and her activities and needs first. I was not, and still am not, known for having a social butterfly lifestyle. Yes, I have friends. They are busy with kids and work and volunteer activities too.

I also found out the hard way, when I was in a situation where I had to commute a half-hour to work, that I could not add a work commute to my schedule. I need that extra time, and the opportunity to be home for lunch, to keep up with my family responsibilities. The three years I commuted are when I was so stressed out that breakfast was muffin and coffee from coffee shop, lunch was fast food and dinner was often take-out pizza. Yes, my overtime pay was frittered away in convenience foods.

That is why, when we chose what neighborhoods to live in during the past two moves, we looked for a location that was convenient to where I work.

I also expected my daughter to contribute with chores as much as possible. When she was in high school, she would often start dinner preparations before I got home and keep the snow shoveled off the sidewalks.

And I rejoiced when I got my first dishwasher four years ago.

When my husband commuted to work, and he has from time to time, it wasn’t such a big deal. After all, he’d rather bunch up his chores on the weekend.

But many of the things I am responsible for need to be done every day – or almost every day.

Now that you have figured out how I make the time, what do I do to get those grocery bills down? Go to my grocery shopping on a budget sidebar for tips and tricks that are really available to Monroe, Mich., residents, including a list of local stores that will double coupons.

And many of my grocery tips are also useful to the national readers.