Frugal Friday: The Lazy Woman's Price Book
As part of the 3 Moms, 3 Kitchens, 31 Days series I am participating in with Joy from FiveJs and Toni, The Happy Housewife, I have been sharing about my menu planning and grocery list making. For today's Frugal Friday tip, I'd like to share the "lazy" method I've used for making a price book.
I use a Master Monthly Grocery List when I do our once a month grocery shopping. I created the list based around items that I know we buy/need on a regular basis. I've always loved the idea of keeping a price book, but I just never seemed to gather the energy for a full undertaking of that project. Then one day, as I was looking over my receipt from Kroger, I realized I could put the list together from the comfort of my couch.
Kroger's receipts make it easy to tell which items were on sale and which were regular priced. Even for the sale priced items, the receipt lists the amount taken off. So, I realized I could pull out my calculator and come up with the shelf price for everything on the receipt. Then, I just transferred it over to my master list. (You can see it here. The regular prices are in pink after each item.) As time has gone on, I have been able to fill in almost each item on the list. I think it took about 3 months of receipts to get to where I am now. That's not too bad, considering I did all the hard work in my pajamas instead of standing in the grocery store with a notebook and pen. I check the receipts each month to see if any of the prices on my list need to be adjusted, and if they do it takes only seconds to fix.
To view my other 3 Moms, 3 Kitchens, 31 Days posts, please click here. Also be sure to check in on the adventures going on in Toni and Joy's kitchens. And for more Frugal Friday posts, visit Crystal's blog at Biblical Womanhood.
4 comments:
I do the same thing, although lately I have been a little lazy at updating my price book. I agree that going to the store with a pen and paper and writing everything down is a big hassle. It's much better to just check your receipts and look at the things in your cupboard for the ounces, etc. so you can calculate the cost per oz.
I do the same thing, except instead of Kroger receipts I use Sam's and Meijer receipts. :) It definitely has helped to not have the paper and pen in the store. I had a manager come up to me once when I was doing my pen and paper price book in the store asking me to refrain from doing so in the store! So I just now go by my receipts!
That is such a brilliant idea. I need to do a price book again (it's been a while) and this sounds so much easier than carrying a notebook around a store!
Now why didn't I think of that??! I've always wanted to do a price book but hesitated because it just seemed to time-consuming. This is a fantastic idea!!
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