When I first started creating my price book, I simply used the receipts from my grocery trips. That was an easy way to gradually build my price book without too much time and trouble, and it was obviously being built with products I actually buy.

Even if you don’t want to shop at multiple stores, price books can help you know when something truly is a good deal and whether or not to stock up on it. They can also help you know whether the warehouse store prices are good or not. I think a lot of people get into trouble at warehouse stores because they assume the prices are good, and often times they are not.

I believe the cycles are exactly what you thought. The stores by me often run sales at predicable times. If you keep track of the sales, you can start figuring them out and planning your shopping accordingly.

Hope that helps!

would the majority of you say that you do your shopping based on price per ounce?

i’m looking for some tips to really get started. also, what does it mean when you say you recognize cycles? do you mean that you start to notice noodles go on sale every other week? or is this some other kind of cycle?

I have no idea if this thing is going to save me money or not. Let alone how much I’ll wind up saving. I’m hoping to use a moderate approach to shopping. I don’t want to go crazy running all over town just to save $2.38 a week. I’m sticking to my two main shopping venues. I also don’t want to jump on the cheapest brand out there either, because often times with food you get what you pay for. Nowhere is this more apparent than when buying spices. Honestly, I’d be happy with shaving just 5% off of my grocery bill.

I’ve got about 3 weeks worth of data in my book now. Here’s what I can say about the experience so far. It’s forcing me to pay attention to prices. Usually if the cheaper store was out of something I would just buy it at the more expensive store. Now I ask myself if I can make that purchase a week later (when its hopefully back in stock) or if I should buy it at the more expensive store.

I’m hoping that with a few more weeks of data I’ll be able to figure out the sales cycles and maybe figure out some way to leverage them to my advantage. I also mark when I purchase an item, so that I get data on the frequency which I buy items. Not sure how useful this will be, but it’s at least interesting to know. I’m also working on calculating the cost of my main recipes.

Like I said before, I have no idea if this is going to save me money. But I do know that if I don’t actually compile some information there is no chance that I’ll save money. And to anyone who thinks this thing takes too long, it really doesn’t. I thought it would be a time consuming beast, but it’s not turning out to be much of a burden at all.

fern – it’s a little easier for us to do ours because we don’t have many stores to choose from (gosh…I wish we had an Aldi!). One store has the lowest price on everything so the price book is based on their prices. We shop at another store at least weekly for meat since we haven’t gotten sick from their meat. If we had more stores to choose from, it would be a lot different.

Another problem is that if you shop at multiple stores to take advantage of sales, your price book needs to cover prices at all of them.

My price book has columns for 5 stores i frequent, but i have neither the time nor think it worthwhile from a gas used point of view to go to more than one a week. So i look at the weekly sale circulars for several of the stores online, and end up going to whichever one store has the most sales of items i normally buy.

As far as the essentials like milk in particular I watch Walgreens, the grocery store ads and a local gas station for who has it on sale at any given time. Usually places here advertise their sale on milk on the marquee outside the store and most of the time at least one place has 2 for $5. We use a lot of milk

I use my price list database mostly when checking the sale ads for stores I don’t do my regular shopping at. This helps me figure out if/when a trip there is worth it to stock up. Also when shopping large warehouse type places like Sam’s Club or Costco I can quickly see if something is a better deal there since my list breaks items down by cost per unit.

As for other essentials we buy things we need now if its not on sale and try to stock up if we see a good deal.

‘Just a note to let you know that we didn’t receive a “pic” on this post after your statement, “Here’s a pic:”. Did you in fact send a picture of your chart? Would love to see it.

Sandy

Dawn, I started an informal “coupon train” with a few friends from work (I think there are 4 of us doing it now). We clip the coupons we need from our weekly circulars, write our initials on the front of every booklet, then pass them around among us. We have a good mix of kids/no kids, pets/no pets, and different brand preferences – so we often end up with multiple coupons for the stuff we use while being able to pass along those that would otherwise go into the recycling bin.

I am starting to use more coupons. I have heard people talk about “coupon trains” where they receive an envelope of coupons in the mail. They are able to take what they can use and replace them with others to share. Then they send it on to the next person. Have you heard of this? I would love to get involved in one but am not sure how to find one and join.