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Shop for Savings with a Price Book

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One of the tools for saving money that should be at our side whenever we shop for food is the price book. A price book contains the usual unit price for grocery staples like sugar, flour, oil, milk and other items we buy the most, listed by store. Not every item we purchase should be tracked, just the ones we frequently buy.

When I began using a price book to keep up with unit pricing, I first used my saved sales receipts from past purchases to calculate the price for items in my price book. This was easier than standing in the aisle jotting down the information. I also avoided the strange looks from other shoppers.

So how does knowing the unit price reduce your grocery budget? It allows you to make an informed decision about the amount of an item before you commit to purchase it. For example, my price book shows the local store with the lowest sugar price is our mega superstore. One day while shopping at a wholesale club 85 miles away, I checked my price book and saw that the $.65/ounce price on a 25lb. bag of sugar wasn’t a bargain because I normally pay $.58/ounce. A deal isn’t always a deal and our price book confirmed this was an instance where buying in bulk wouldn’t save money.

There’s an initial amount of time involved in setting up a price book, but having this kind of information at our fingertips will help reduce our grocery budget. Over time, we’ll rely less on the price book because we’ve memorized the lowest price possible for frequently purchased items. For instance, if we now know the lowest price on our favorite cereal is $.12/ounce, we can quickly decide if a similar item on sale is truly a better buy.

Do you think the time it takes to use a price book is worth the savings? Share your thoughts below.

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Shari Waters

Shari is a freelance writer and speaker specializing in the topics of starting a home business, living richly on less, and the challenges of raising children while doing both.