Beg for help.

I started with Kevin O'Connor, a coupon clipper who runs BargainsLa.com for his deal-obsessed wife, Suzanne. O'Connor suggested I maximize the number of coupons that appeal to me by nixing my brand loyalty. Done. He also encouraged me to buy in bulk for meat, bread, cereal and other items that freeze well or have a long shelf life.

Coupon clipping takes time, but it can pay off. Compare how much time you spend gathering coupons with how much you save. "If you spend hours and hours and save $5, it's not worth it," O'Connor said. "But if I save $70, it's worth it."

Having spent more than a few hours surfing coupon sites - there are just shy of a million - and not saving a single dollar, so far I'm thinking coupon clipping is not the smartest use of my time. But I don't give up easily. I turned to Stephanie Nelson, grocery coupon clipper extraordinaire. She once paid $18 for $103 worth of groceries. Nelson shares her secrets at CouponMom.com, which boasts hundreds of dollars worth of coupons.

Again, I found the coupons on Nelson's site are mostly for items I rarely purchase. The site's virtual coupon organizer produced a list of the date and page the coupon would be published in the local Sunday newspaper - but no actual coupons. I still had to sift through the newspaper circulars, scissors at the ready. Nelson declined to respond to e-mails requesting an interview.

Jennifer Levanduski, a stay-at-home mom from Newbury Park, found coupon-clipping success through www.TheGroceryGame.com. The site compiles coupons and sale prices, crunches the numbers and spits out a list of items by store. Items in green are free, in blue are a "great" deal and in black if you should hold off.

She clips every coupon in the Sunday newspaper circular so she will be ready if TheGroceryGame says an item is at a price worth buying. Using the site has cut her grocery bill in half, but Levanduski, 36, warns that it is not a cut-and-dry process. "There's a certain amount of discipline" required, she said. "If you stick to the list, you are going to save all kinds of money. If you start throwing all kinds of things in your cart, you won't."

The site charges $1 for a four-week trial membership. After that, it jumps to $10 for two months for the first store and $5 per additional store.

Disappointed in the coupons available online and wary of paying for coupons, I decided to list the items I buy every week and compare prices at Trader Joe's and Vons, the two supermarkets I shop at most frequently. My list included 35 items, everything from pasta and carrots to eggs and pork chops.

For certain items, there was a clear price winner. Olive oil, apples, butter, pasta and lettuce were cheaper at Trader Joe's. Rice, cereal, potatoes, sugar and cranberry juice were cheaper at Vons. Sales and coupons helped push fresh orange juice, yogurt and cereal to the Vons side.

Meat prices were mixed. Vons' Safeway brand specials beat Trader Joe's by a good margin. But Vons' regular meat prices were often higher than Trader Joe's. Moral of my pocketbook: If the meat is not on sale at Vons, buy it at Trader Joe's. For the full comparison with prices, click here.

I gathered these prices from the Trader Joe's in West Hills and the Vons in Reseda. Where possible, I compared items sold under the same brand. I focused on price, not brand, because successful coupon clippers consider multiple brands to get the best deal. While prices are fairly consistent at Trader Joe's, they fluctuate at the major chains.

Alison Mochizuki, a spokeswoman for Trader Joe's, said the Monrovia-based grocery chain prefers "everyday low prices" to coupons and sales. "We believe a cart full of Trader Joe's products will always be lower than a cart of groceries from another retailer," Mochizuki said. Trader Joe's does not buy broadcast TV ads, and 80 percent of its products are sold under the Trader Joe's label, which reduces its end price in some cases.

Vons has so many items and brands for sale that "it is not a true apples-to-apples comparison," spokesman Daymond Rice said. "Customers who use their Vons club card tell us time and again that we are more than competitive against both the traditional and nontraditional formats."

My comparison exercise made me familiar with what is a "good" price for my staple items. In lieu of being a hard-nosed coupon clipper, knowing the price range for an item means easily figuring out where and when I should buy an item and when I should stock up. Making my list took about an hour at each store and elicited more than a few stares.

When I have coupons, fantastic. Otherwise, I will whip out my cheat sheet of "good" prices to make a decision. Make your own or copy mine. I promise I won't tell.