OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The grocery aisle is a daunting place for the uninitiated.

At least, it was when I first took on the challenge of what a thrifty neighbor calls "power shopping" — the feat of clipping coupons, poring over weekly grocery ads and having stores match the lower prices of their competitors in an effort to slash the family grocery bill.

As someone more accustomed to ordering out than planning a menu, I viewed such tasks as chores reserved for stay-at-home moms. But with more people facing pay cuts, layoffs and other financial woes brought on by a sour economy, moms like me who used to pay only casual attention to prices are finding themselves competing with longtime bargain hunters for the best deals in the grocery aisle.

My own venture into power shopping came in late February after a frank discussion with my husband about finally trying to pay off the more than $7,200 in credit card debt.

We began by taking a look at where our money was going.

And we were shocked to learn how much we were spending on food.

My family, which includes a 13-year-old daughter and 7-year-old stepdaughter, often spent $150 a week eating out — burgers, pizza and the like — in addition to the $100 or so a week we would spend in groceries.

Our $150-a-week spending on food included my daily latte habit, amounting to $25 a week. And despite having refrigerators and microwaves at work, my husband and I tended to eat lunch out — another $75 a week. We also ate fast food several nights a week, adding up to about $60 a week.

Would it be possible to start eating in and keep our grocery bill to, say, $100 a week? It seemed like a stretch, so I turned to the Internet and some stay-at-home moms for advice.

The result has been a weekly food budget that's dropped from around $250 to an average of $60 — a savings of about $1,900 over 10 weeks.

Our first savings came with my ending daily trips to the coffee shop in favor of making lattes at home with a cappuccino machine long ignored in a kitchen cupboard. And instead of lunches out, my husband and I now take leftovers from meals made at home.

That in itself was a big savings, but I wanted see how low I could get my grocery bill.

I started with something I had never done before: Checking out the grocery circulars that come with every Wednesday's newspaper.

A wealth of savings resides there. Milk that's normally $2.50 a gallon is on sale for $1.99; sugar that is normally about $3 for a 5-pound bag is slashed to $1.68 for the next three days. The perpetual kid favorite — hot dogs — are cut from more than $3 a package to $1.77.

Next, I looked for coupons from the Sunday newspaper and online to pair with every-week purchases and items already on sale. Armed with coupons, the milk is another 50-cents a gallon off, the sugar was another 55 cents a bag off and the hot dogs dropped to $1.27.

Those efforts alone cut what had been $8.50 for three items to $3.89. Stock up on these items (you can freeze them), and you've saved even more for the coming weeks.

Even buns for the dogs come cheap. A "thrift" bakery around the corner from my office offers hot dog buns at 89 cents per package on most days.

Slashing the grocery bill takes some effort. Comparing prices, planning weekly menus around sale items, clipping coupons and jotting out detailed grocery lists takes about an hour out of my week. Then there's the marathon shopping trip to the five stores near my house on Wednesdays, which usually takes about 2 hours. For the two local grocers that advertise bargains but are too far out of the way for me, I have a competitor match their prices.

There is also a learning curve.

I spent the first month desperately trying to take advantage of the most impressive bargains — such as a $10 ham slashed to $4.99 — only to find an empty shelf where it had been. I even went the store advertising the ham at 5:30 in the morning to beat what I thought must be a rabid band of power shoppers; still, no ham.

In an effort to ease my disappointment, I had decided that teams of volunteers for the local food pantry were staking out the chain's groceries, swooping in as the clock struck midnight to buy all the $4.99 hams they could.

It was upon closer inspection of the Wednesday weekly circular that I discovered my error. Based on the first circular I had seen, I had assumed all sales took effect Thursday. But most of the sales start on Wednesday, meaning I was waiting 24 hours to get to the store for the best bargains.

Armed with the correct information, I've been able to take advantage of the best bargains — although I still have to hit the stores early to do so.

There has also been more friction of late in getting stores to honor their pledge to match the price of items of competitors.

When I first tried my hand at price-matching at a nearby Wal-Mart, I asked the clerk what was required of me to get a better price on my groceries. She told me that the company's policy is for shoppers wanting to take advantage of competitors' prices to bring in the competitors' ads as proof of the lower price.

"But we don't ask to see those on items that cost less than $10," she noted.

However, I've had more clerks lately asking to see the ads from competitors to prove that half-gallon of ice cream tagged at $3.58 really does cost $1.77 somewhere else in the city.

Wal-Mart's public relations department didn't return several messages left seeking the company's policy on price-matching and whether there's been a change in the aforementioned $10 policy.

But a clerk in an Omaha store said increased use of the price-matching policy led her managers to ask clerks to double-check quoted prices at other stores, when possible.

No skin off my nose. Hauling paper from one store to the next is half the challenge in power shopping — and well worth the more than $9,800 I'm slated to save over the course of a year.