Using a Price Book to Identify a Deal

Shannon, a new Housewife Hacks reader, asked a great question recently. She wanted to know how I know when a product has hit “rock bottom”. The answer is pretty simple: spend time spent tracking prices! The easiest way to get to know average prices for the items you buy is to create a price book. I am not organized by nature. (I’m scatter-brained!) But making a price book was easy to do and it made my attempt to live more frugally a heck of a lot easier.

A price book can be a little notebook, a file in your cell phone, or anything that you can write in when you go to the store. You can even scrawl on the back of a receipt if you must. Just put it into something else when you get home. Amy Dacyczyn, author of the The Complete Tightwad Gazette, was one of the first people to popularize a price book is a power tool for tracking prices, products and sales. It will save you time and ease stress in the long run. Just make one!

What I did was buy a tiny notebook and put it in my purse. I went to Walmart and Super Target, both stores that have regular prices that are pretty average or on the low side of average. I went aisle by aisle, making notes on items.

Make sure you track the size or package count. When you get home, you can input the information into a spreadsheet if you’re a data nerd like me. Here’s an example from Organized Home:

If spreadsheets give you the heebie jeebies, just keep your info in the notebook and refer to it regularly. If you’re planning on doing this, you might want a bigger book or tabs or something else. Fancy, right?

There are actually software programs that allow you to keep a pricebook and will calculate cost per ounce and such. That’s really helpful too. Anything that does math for me I generally love. Uncommon Way to Wealth made the one that I currently use. Find it here.

You can even make one on your iphone. If I had an iphone I’d be all about this. RedBog Software makes an app that you can get here. Check it out below:

How cool is that? But your price book doesn’t need to be elaborate or hi-tech. It just needs to keep you organized. In time you won’t even need to refer to it very often because you’ll have those numbers nailed down in your head. But it’s a powerful tool in the arsenal of a frugal shopper. For more tips on frugal living and grocery shopping, check out my posts in Frugal 101.