Price Books 101

What is one??  Why do I need one??  What do I do with it??

A price book is a very simple mechanism that helps you to put the first major dent in the grocery budget for your household.  It lets you keep track of what the stores near you are doing.  They run sales, seemingly willy-nilly, and you struggle to catch a good deal.  The price book takes the struggle out of finding the good deals. 

Very simply, a price book is your record of the prices your stores are charging for items that you use.  You make a simple grid – think an attendance sheet from school.  You put the items you commonly use where the names go – be sure to include brand name and size – you want to be sure to compare apples to apples.  Now, each week when you go to that store, make a note of the price of that item.  That’s it.  That’s all there is to it. 

If you shop at more than one store (goodness knows, I do), keep a price book for each store.  If you don’t go to a particular store one week, don’t obsess.  You want to record information for as many weeks as you can, but you don’t want to lose your mind doing it.  Just jot down the price of each item every time you go into that store.  (Now that I’ve written that line – if you go into the store twice during the same week, don’t bother recording the price again – it won’t have changed and you already know it)

You’ll want to accumulate about 12 weeks worth of information.  That will begin to show you the store’s pattern of sales.  And you’ll begin to know what is the rock bottom price for the items you use.  Soon, you’ll only be buying when things are at their rock-bottom price.  And, you’ll know how much to buy, because you’ll be able to predict when that price will come around again.  You’ll also start to see which stores are truly giving you better deals on the things that your family actually uses. 

You can pay someone else to do this for you.  The website The Grocery Game, essentially does this for you.  They keep track of prices and identify rock-bottom prices at which you want to stock up.  You pay a fee for each store that you want to track – they don’t give you the price book information – they simply tell  you when the price is rock-bottom in their estimation.  Many people are very successful using the Grocery Game and I don’t want to underestimate their value.  If you are a total beginner and trying to wrap your head around this whole thing, The Grocery Game can be an invaluable tool.  But at the same time – if my end goal is saving myself money, why do I want to pay them to do what I can do with a simple sheet of paper and a pencil?  Also, I find that some of the stores I use are not in the Grocery Game database, so I can’t get information for them.  Additionally, the Grocery Game doesn’t help me to compare stores to find the best possible deal.  Finally, as you learn to make the best use of catalina promotions and rolling ECBs and Register Rewards (other tutorials) you ‘ll find that the Grocery Game doesn’t factor these into the equation.  I think they may be a good short term crutch – but not a long term help for the serious shopper.  Lucky for all of us, they offer a short term freebie trial offer.