Making a Price book

I wrote here about making a Price book . I have had a few questions since then and so I will revisit the subject.

Making a Price book is a valuable exercise in your quest to save money. To make it as painless as possible you could start once a week by looking at the grocery fliers. Look for things you buy. So, for example let's say you buy some of the things in this flier. Say zucchini.
On the top of your page write Zucchini.
Make a column for the month February
Then you make a column for the Store: Old Town
For other products you will have a column for Brand
For other products you will have a column for Size
For other products you will have a column for Price
Finally make a column for $/kg .49
You have your page for Zucchini

Zucchini
Month Store  Brand  Size  Price $/Kg
Feb   Old Town                         .49

Each time you see zucchini advertised for this price or LOWER..you mark it in. So, only a few months a year.

Start off with a few basic items and add as you have the time. You can customize your pages depending on what it is...for example Ground Beef in my book looks like this:
Ground Beef(Lean)
Month Store                 $/lb $/kg


Interesting that as I was writing this post I got my email subscription from Mrs January and she had this link to a free printable Price Book page!

You can also use my weekly sales posts if there are things you normally buy and use them to update your price book. Remember you only want to put in prices when they are lower than the first price you recorded. In a short time you will notice a pattern. For example, let's do asparagus. You can see it in the flyer above and I just saw it in the Walmart flyer for next week at $1.47.
Asparagus
Month   Store             $/lb
Feb    Old Town      $1.99
Feb    Walmart         $1.47

Asparagus actually cycles quite often. 6 out of 12 months! This $1.47/lb is a great price. The lowest I have ever recorded it is in April at Superstore for $1.28/lb, but typically it cycles to $1.68/lb in Feb, Mar, Apr, May, June,and Nov.
This week would be a good time to menu plan with some asparagus(and zucchini!).
Hope this helps....