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....

The ever shrinking package

I had to blog this as I was utterly surprised. Like me you probably have noticed that the things you buy are in an ever shrinking package. Your 1kg has become 750g and you are paying the same price or even more than before! Well, the other day I was in Costco, I desperately needed chocolate chips. There they were on an end of the aisle sale for $10.79. I looked in my price book and was sad to see that they had gone up, but isn't that the way of groceries these days??? Imagine my surprise when I noticed(once I was home) that it was actually a larger size! Usually this comes in the 2kg size, not it's 2.4kg. That's $4.50/kg! I have lots of peanut butter so peanut butter chocolate chip cookies or granola bars will be made as soon as the heat wave passes!
By the way, these are still on sale at Costco  this week.

Shopping Smart Tonight!

Rob with a hummingbird.

Tonight May 20th 630pm-900pm Shopping Smart Seminar
Open to everyone. Details on sidebar of blog.

Need some more money to get you to the end of the month?
Want to get paid to work at home?
Come learn how to drastically reduce your grocery spending!

Learn how to make and use a Pricebook to track the ever changing grocery prices.
When is it a good time to bulk buy?
Learn a different method of meal planning.
Learn how to feed your family health choices.

Please email me if you are planning on attending.

Saving on Groceries

When looking at your spending plan(budget is a word I try to avoid) you may notice that grocery spending probably is second only to your mortgage in the amount you spend. Most families of 4 find they spend $800-$1000 per month on groceries. For sake of this example, groceries are everything you buy at the grocery store. Food and toiletries as well as cleaners, etc. As a rule, people think this is not an area that could be trimmed. I want to tell you you can! You can shave this drastically and free up money for other areas, as well as eat better! Prepackaged, premade meals contain preservatives that would be missing if you can make it at home.
My idea of grocery shopping is a little different than the norm. I go to purchase the things on sale. Yes, I have to get milk weekly, but all other things can be negotiable. The veggies and fruits we buy are the ones on sale, or in season. For example, this Thursday, Friday, Sat, IGA marketplace has bananas for .39/lb!!! That is an olden days price! We will get lots and make banana bread, muffins and smoothies. The ones we won't use in time can be peeled(thanks Sylvia!)and popped into a Ziploc and frozen, to later be used in smoothies! Right now at Cooper's they have a coupon for buy one get one free cod. One family size serving is $10, so with the coupon, $5. It's frozen, there's a limit of 4 free, or 8 total, so we will stock up and make fish and chips(see America's test kitchen DVD season 7 available at www.orl.bc.ca ). Lean ground beef is also on sale at Cooper's. So, I bought 3 chubs and will break some down and freeze it raw. I will make homemade hamburgers and freeze them, as well as meatballs. Finally, I will precook some and freeze it so it's all ready to go. It doesn't take that long, but it saves me time in the long run! My price book(see an early post)helps me know when prices have reached their lowest and lets me know how much I need to stock up before it goes on sale again! Our family of 4 spends $450/month. Want to start saving right away? Start by menu planning one week from what you have on hand. Make it a game...what do you have already? What if you couldn't get out to the store? What could you make? Use the Internet, get ideas from cookbooks and magazines(hopefully your library is fully stocked!) One friend told me she saves best by keeping her grocery trips to a minimum..what if you only went once a week? What about a grocery envelope where you keep cash for the month? Every time you go to the store you take your money out of the envelope and put the receipt inside. On the front of the envelope you can keep a running tally, or just peak in the envelope to see where you are at! Don't want to use cash? Do the same thing with the receipts after you pay with your debit card! Start with something. Don't try and reinvent the wheel in 2 seconds, just change one thing..then next month another..watch your progress..and celebrate! Even keeping track of what you spend is an amazing step in the right direction!