Creating a Price Book

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I searched and saw no info on this, so here's a brief how-to. Creating a price book, IMO, is one of the best ways to save money - especially on food bills. I first learned about the idea in Amy Dacyczyn's Tightwad Gazettes. The basic idea is to collect prices on frequently purchased items so that you know when you've truly found a deal you "can't pass up." First, decide what products you buy often enough to keep track of. For me, these include fresh apples, fresh carrots, rolled oats, and various flours. Create a separate page for each product or category. Depending on what you buy, you may have a page for "meat" or you may have pages for "pork", "beef", etc. Different people keep different info in their price books. The basics are product, price, and the store you saw it at. For example: IGA Kraft American cheese $3.99/16 oz. IGA store brand American $2.99/16 oz. I keep several additional pieces of information in my book: date of sale and unit price. For example: 16 Oct. Ma&Pa supermarket Libby's pumpkin puree $0.59/16 oz. $0.04/oz. This does two things. Keeping the date allows you to the sale cycle on various products. For example, if peanut butter goes on sale dirt cheap every three months, you know you should buy enough to last that long in order to lower your food bill as much as possible. Second, keeping the unit price allows you to quickly compare prices across different-sized products. I hope this is helpful to folks making an effort to live more frugally! Feel free to ask any questions you have. ~Sara