Use a pricebook
I mentioned that shopping lists are probably the best known and most used tip. Pricebooks are probably the least known and used of all the tips, but there are some excellent financial reasons to learn more. First, let’s talk about what a pricebook actually is.
A pricebook is a personal resource for historical cost information. Typically it is something you maintain yourself and use for your own benefit. In your pricebook, you record the costs of various items you buy from time to time. If you record these costs each time you buy a specific item, it won’t take long for you to have enough data to see highs, lows, and trends. To make this more clear, here is what a page from a pricebook might contain (all numbers are made up).
Item: Strawberries
5/17/2005—$0.16/oz.—Wal-Mart
6/9/2005—$0.09/oz.—Wal-Mart
7/16/2005—$0.12/oz.—WinCo
8/23/2005—$0.13/oz.—Wal-Mart
9/14/2005—$0.13/oz.—Wal-Mart
Looking at my pricebook page for strawberries, I can see that my best price was in June, and then it went gradually up for the rest of the summer. Not only does that tell me what a good price for strawberries is, but it also shows that I shouldn’t bother buying them in the off-season. This isn’t really a shock (and they’re not as good in May!) but it also applies to things that don’t necessarily have “seasons,” like canned foods and baking supplies. Most grocery stores change their prices fairly regularly, so it’s worthwhile to note trends in order to get the best price on an item.
The most useful function of a pricebook is to help you know the difference between a good price and a mediocre one. Grocery stores operate using a whole bunch of tricks, many of them designed to play on shoppers’ subconscious tendancies. For instance, if a grocery store highlights a price by putting up a sign with big numbers over the product, they will sell significantly more of that product, even if the price is not a good one. It doesn’t have to be on sale; people associate that kind of promotion with sales so they assume it must be a good price to be marked that way.
If you carry a pricebook, you won’t be fooled by these gimmicks. It’s easy enough to look up “chicken breasts, frozen” to see that the “great” price is above average (and then you get to feel superior to everyone—just a fringe benefit). This will also help you spot the good loss leaders when you go through the ads pre-shopping trip. If you have a reasonable expectation that your normal store will offer an item at the same price within a month, then you know it’s probably not worth going out of your way to buy it now at another store.
Pricebooks don’t have to be a lot of work. The idea of writing down prices all of the time is daunting. It will take you some time to set up initially. This basically involves identifying what items you want to track and writing them down. I write mine in a little pocket-sized notebook, but some people do it on their computer, or handheld PDA, or 3×5 note cards. You may want to track absolutely everything you ever buy, or you may want to exclude things you’ll purchase every shopping trip regardless of price, or you may want to track items you purchase a few times a year. That’s up to you. I track our “regular” items—things I anticipate buying more than once a year (for us, this excludes a lot of spices, special cheeses, etc.). Realistically, once you’re up and running, it will probably take you about 15-20 seconds per item to record the important information, and you probably won’t be recording every item every time.
Regardless of whether you use a notebook or something else, you’ll want to list each individual item at the top of the page (or equivalent). If you happen to have any receipts around, you can enter any previous prices you can find under the item heading. It usually makes the most sense to list the price by $/unit (like $/oz. for most food). For laundry detergents, you might list $/load of wash, since that’s how the package usually shows it. This also makes it easy because so many grocery stores list $/oz. on the pricetag; then all you have to do is copy down the number.
Once you’ve done this foundational work, just take the book to the store with you. When you look at purchasing an item, you can consult your pricebook and compare the current price with the historical ones. When you’re first getting your pricebook started, you’ll probably want to record the prices for everything you have in your book so that you actually have something to compare with later. After you have a few prices over a few weeks or month, you’ll probably just want to write down the price when you buy something, because then your averages and lows will be reflective of your choices, not just the stores’ prices.
You’ll notice that in my example, I also record the specific store where I saw the price. If you track this, it can help you discover if one store is almost always the cheapest for a certain item. Of course, you may still choose to pay a slight premium for convenience, but it’s very worthwhile to have the data—especially when it’s just a matter of writing a couple of abbreviated letters (“wm” or “wc” or “al” in my case).
If you’re the kind of person who really gets into trending and averaging, you can stick this data in your favorite spreadsheet app and graph it over time. If you really don’t care about all that, you can look at your pricebook only when you’re shopping and it will still save you a bundle.
Do you use a pricebook? Have any questions or comments? Please use the comments section below!
This post is part of the “Smart grocery shopping� series.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
3 Comments
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
-
[...] goes to show that the pricebook can reveal even the surprising deals! Bookmark this post on del.icio.us Related posts: How to save on booksA good, free magazineHow to save on car insuranceShop lessoften [...]
-
[...] over time and memory is better than a book. Frugal Underground has a great post on this as well: Use a pricebook Where do you stand in the price book vs. memory camp? SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Price Book [...]
Combine your price book with cost-per-serving info, and you REALLY have a dynamite little budget-builder.
Cost-per-serving: the story of eating cheaply
The basic premise–to lower cost PER SERVING of the foods you eat. Start by reducing your initial food costs—make and use a price book.
By buying and eating more sensibly, you’re taken a major step toward lowering overall cost of food and health care by boosting nutrition—this leads to lower incidences of sickness.
Break out your calculators and follow along if you wish.
Using the Food Guide Pyramid info as reference, determine how much of what foods constitute a serving, and then calculate how much each serving costs. For example, let’s say you’ve just bought a 2 pound bag of brown rice for $1.09. That’s 56¢/lb. dry cost.
$1.09 (price) divided by 2 (dry weight in pounds) = 55¢ (rounding up)
Next, you determine the amount of cooked rice that equals 1 serving (let’s say 1/2 cup). A 2 lb. bag of rice contains 4 cups uncooked rice, and 1 dry measure cup=8 oz. or 1/2 lb., so each dry cup is worth 28¢.
$1.09 (price) divided by 4 (cups in dry measure) = 27¢ (rounding down)
Since rice doubles in size, you’d only have to cook 1/4 c. dry rice to get the ½ cup serving size, which will now cost you only 14¢ per serving, since you now need half the amount of dry rice.
$1.09 (price) divided by 8 (cups in cooked measure) = 14¢ (rounding up)
Even if you dumped the WHOLE BAG into the pot, you would get 8 lbs. of cooked rice for only $1.09 and 14¢ per serving–enough to feed the neighborhood–1/4 cup at a time.
The same principle applies to pasta, beans, and other dried foods as well.
Our problem here in America is portion size–we eat too much per portion! By calculating out the portion size and cost per, the costs of feeding go down DRAMATICALLY, thereby enabling you to know your costs per meal, and to eat for a heck of a lot less than you are now. You certainly don’t have to live on beans, rice, and pasta to do it, either. This is what home economics was supposed to be all about.
For meats, there is a little different strategy: you need to determine the actual amount of meat versus bones and fat. A quickie overview–
For meat with no bone or fat = allow 4 to 5 servings per pound
For meat with little bone or fat = 3 to 4 servings per pound
For meat with medium bone or fat (like a chuck blade steak) = allow 2 to 3 servings per pound
For meat with a large amount of bone or fat (like a turkey) = allow 1 to 2 servings per pound
Meats with no bone or fat (boneless/skinless) tend to cost more, with the possible exception of ground beef. However, there’s less waste, so you get more servings per pound. Holiday turkeys, whole chickens, and other meats with hollow centers are the absolute worst purchases for cost-per-serving, because those hollow centers are essentially waste—when bought frozen, those cavities collect frozen water, making your purchase by weight more expensive. Why pay for ice? If those cavities were full of solid meat, they’d be a better buy. Suggestion: you might want to re-think your holiday meat purchases and switch to turkey thighs instead—one bone, lots of meat per piece, and little waste.
As for bony meats commonly used as meal-stretchers: chicken wings, legs, backs, and so forth—too much bone and too little meat equals a terrible cost-per-serving buy, no matter how cheap the price. If you were to strip the meat off these pieces and actually weigh it, you’d see that you paid way too much per pound AND serving for that little bit of actual useable meat. For soups and stews, you’re better off using one whole boneless chicken thigh, cut up, than several smaller, bonier parts (or a carcass) for the meat to boil away from. The amount in waste (bones) is greater than the amount in meat—this is not a bargain!
Looking at the Pyramid chart, I see that a serving constitutes 2-3 oz. (a little smaller than a deck of cards), and we should have 2 servings/day. To make your “deck of cards” go further, try chopping, shredding, or dicing your meat. Go half-and-half with some beans. Also, 1/3 c. of nuts counts as a serving, as well as 1/3 cup of reconstituted TVP.
Did anyone learn this in Home Ec? I certainly didn’t. Our class focused on learning to use that newfangled microwave thingie!
Cheap Ingredient recipe sites:
http://www.yumyum.com/fscratch/
http://www.miserlymoms.com/MOMfrecipes2.htm
http://frugalliving.miningco.com/parenting/frugalliving/msubfoodrec.htm
http://www.creativehomemaking.com/download.htm#Cooking (downloadable booklets)
http://www.usda.gov/cnpp/Pubs/Cookbook/thriftym.pdf (booklet w/portion info for family of four)
http://www.usda.gov/cnpp/DietGd.pdf Check out page 15 (booklet page), or page 17 (PDF page)–booklet page is located on the right side of the page images, the PDF page number is on the bottom left of the screen. The page will have the food pyramid on it, and underneath will be a list of portion sizes, titled “What Counts as a Serving”.
http://www.digsmagazine.com/nourish.htm
http://www.notjustbeans.com/
http://www.living-foods.com/recipes/ (vegan/living and raw food recipes)
http://www.stretcher.com/menu/topic-g.htm#groceriesandfood (scroll down to “groceries and food� section)
Meat Purchase Reference Sites
Cost per serving info for pork: http://www.hormel.com/templates/knowledge/knowledge.asp?catitemid=31&id=163
Better food shopping: http://ceinfo.unh.edu/Pubs/PubsFN/Labeled.pdf (PDF)
Butcher’s tips: http://www.pioneerthinking.com/butcher.html
Buying Meat By the Serving: http://ianrpubs.unl.edu/foods/g947.htm –I highly recommend printing out the chart and keeping it in your price books for handy grocery store reference.