[kashi]

I have a hard time thinking of things I am really brand loyal to. Mostly I buy whatever is cheapest...however, I prefer Charmin (I can't stand using crappy toilet paper at home when I have to use it all day at work), Barilla pasta (it's so much better!), Clasico pasta sauce (again, so much better!), and Crest toothpaste (years of disgusting cheap toothpaste turned me off of anything else). I'm willing to try just about anything once, though. I definitely think that flexibility is key when it comes to brands and saving money. If I knew what the generic equivelent of Charmin was, I'd buy it, but I don't want to take the risk of buying several packages of scratchy tissue-paper-like toilet paper to find out. Find things that you can switch temporarily with little commitment...like a can of store brand black olives instead of what you normally get. Then you can work your way up to bigger things.