Last week Voucher Mum asked me about my Price Book, after I mentioned it in this post: Frugal habits I’ve gained so far. I thought it would be a good idea to answer her question with a follow up post.
I first heard about Price Books when I read the Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn*. Basically Amy advocates saving money by keeping a list of all your most regularly bought grocery items; so that you can bulk buy them when they are on offer.
You work out how much items are, either by 100g unit or by individual unit, at all the stores/markets you use and record this information, either in a traditional notebook or as I do, on an excel sheet. It can take a lot of work to start with as you gather the information from your receipts, you could however to make it easier by using the supermarkets online sites. When you’ve been doing this a while you will start to remember how much stuff is and will know, without looking at your Price Book, whether an item is a bargain or not.
An easy example using 500g of dried raisins:
- Price Supermarket One: £1.00 per 500g
- Price Supermarket Two: £1.38 per 500g
- Price Health Store: £0.80 per 500g
Clearly the health store is cheapest, however Supermarket One has raisins on offer this week at buy one, get another one half price. So 2 x 500g for £1.50 which makes the raisins 0.75p for 500g cheaper than the health store. This is in the simplest format and you would only be saving 0.05p per 500g but if you apply this to every item you buy the savings will really add up.
Taking milk as an example, something you may use a lot of; a 50p saving for every 4 litres you buy, if you buy 20 litres a week will save you £130 a year, £10.83 a month.
For individual unit items, like say Toilet Rolls, work out how much you are paying for an individual roll; toilet rolls come in different unit sizes, say, 4, 9, 16, 24 and it can be confusing, however if you know how much they cost individually you will be able to work out what’s a bargain and what’s not {take a calculator, or use your mobile phone}
Using a Price Book can seriously save you money on your grocery bill, so it’s really worth the initial effort to set it up.
What about you, do you use a Price Book already, do you find it beneficial? Please let me know in the comments.
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*Please note that this is my Amazon Bookshop referral link, if you purchase the book through this link I will earn a small commission. For a non referral link the book can be found here.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
No I don’t use a price book, but I can see the value in it.
My problem is my wife does the shopping, if I were still single, I would probably use one!
“Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn” was a great book!
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I do see the value of keeping such a list. We both have Palm Smartphones and use their HandyShopper applications for this.
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Hey there, I don’t keep one, but its a good idea. recently I keep thinking about percentages. when you are dealing with pence, it can often seem like not much that one price is 80p and one price is £1.20 but that is 50% more expensive, which is a lot.
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Laura Reply:
September 20th, 2010 at 10:59 am
Mo: you’re right it soon adds up Mo
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I do, sort of. I used to have a paper book, then a spreadsheet. Now, however, it’s mostly in my head. A vast majority of the foods I buy never go on sale below what I can get at Trader Joe’s or Costco. And I know this. So I only have to keep some items in my head.
I remember when I first read The Complete Tightwad Gazette and started using a price book. We went to visit friends in the San Francisco Bay area and I was telling them how it worked. They couldn’t quite get it. “So you buy stuff on sale.” “Well, no, you only buy stuff when it’s at the lowest priced sale.” “Why?” “Because then you are paying the absolute minumum.”
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Laura Reply:
September 20th, 2010 at 11:03 am
Marcia: hello! I find I memorize lots of prices, however there has been so many [price] changes on food in this country lately that I was losing track
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This sounds like a great idea! I always check the “price per 100g” part of price tickets so having it in a document would be an added bonus.
I still can’t believe that after 2.5 years of blogging I’ve yet to come up with a frugal food shopping system that really works and continues to work for me. Food has become my new dresses and I’m spending far too much on it!
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