Big Brood

Since mid-October or so, Goosey and I have been maintaining a price book. We have found that the price book has been one of our most effective tools in fighting food costs. As our brood grows in age and numbers our food costs are beginning to increase. To keep on top of it, we have used a price book. Here’s what it has done for us.

Before the price book, Goosey had a pretty good idea of what things should cost. I, of course, had no idea. But even she discovered surprises from just keeping track of the price of food. For instance:

• Big-box stores don’t always have the best price. I know that seems obvious but the price book gives us further detail on what we should and shouldn’t buy there.
• Prices are highly variable between stores, even on things you might think are so common that they would cost the same everywhere.
• Smaller stores are often better. We save quite a bit of money on the loss-leaders at our local Fareway and Aldi.
• Some stores offer 2 for the price of 1 sales, but change the price of the single item to be almost as much as 2. For instance, they might offer 2 milks for the price of 1, but the price on it will have changed to just a few cents below what we would pay for 2 jugs on a normal day. In addition, their price per jug is still higher than other stores.
• Warehouse and wholesale stores are often not the best deal.
• Some items are on sale during certain seasons.

Here’s how we built our price book.

1. We purchased a small notebook that Ma Goose could keep with her, since she does most of the shopping. It was a loose-leaf binder so that we could move the pages around as we needed.
2. We gathered together old receipts from our recent grocery shopping trips and any advertisements that we had laying around.
3. We scanned our receipts for grocery items. For each item, we wrote the name of the item at the top of a sheet of paper. One page for milk, one page for cheddar cheese, one page for eggs, one for cooking oil, etc.
4. We noted the product, brand, size, price and the date and location of purchase on one line. For instance on the cooking oil page:

   Canola Oil (StoreBrand/16oz) $X Store A 10/01/08
   Canola Oil (BrandName/12oz) $X Store B 12/15/08

5. After doing this for as many things as we could, building one page per item, we went through all of those pages and noted the price per unit for each line. This is a key to success with the price book.

   Canola Oil (StoreBrand/16oz) $X ($y/oz) Store A 10/01/08
   Canola Oil (BrandName/12oz) $X ($z/oz) Store B 12/15/08

Keeping this up to date is pretty easy. As my wife shops, she checks her notebook to make sure she’s getting a good price. If she finds a better than usual price, she makes a note of it.

While this did take some time and work in the beginning, the payoff from this is immediate and large. First, we were able to see how important it was to pay attention to unit price versus whole total price. Second, we now have a book to help us make sure we are always getting the best price.

To fully realize the power of the price book, you need to have a little room in your grocery budget to stock up. We may buy 3-4 times what we need depending on how often we find the item is on sale and how perishable it is.

An additional benefit is that we are now much more in touch with food price fluctuations. This can help us to adapt our buying habits to keep within our budget.

If you’d like to save the most money you can on groceries, use the price book. You’ll be amazed at the benefits. Oh, and it isn’t limited to groceries. For instance, I use it to keep track of prices on motor oil.

Do you have a price book? Do you have any other techniques you use to make your price book more useful?