Price Book Update

In August I introduced the concept of the Price Book and how it can, over time, help you save money on groceries and determine the ideal prices for items. I challenged you to start keeping a Price Book along with me to see what we could learn together. Here is my first months worth of lessons.

1) I do not go grocery shopping often. This is a good thing. I tend to be a stocker, so I don't buy much until there's a good sale and then I stock. My main purchases are perishables like milk. Since I was getting procude from my CSA farm (alas, no longer because of Hurricane Irene) I wasn't buying much of that either. So my conclusions are farely humble because of the small amonut of shopping/entries. This is why Price Books get better with age. I suspect it will take about a year of entering everything I buy into the book to really get the most out of this - and even then it is wise not to stop.

2) The ideal price for 11-12 oz boxes of cereal in my neighbourhood is $2.00 or less. This usually only happens at drugstore sales.

3) It is about 50 cents cheaper to buy eggs at Walgreens than the supermarkets here. When Walgreens has a sale it becomes $1 cheaper than the supermarkets.


4)Fruit is best purchased at the guys with carts on the street corners, but buy it only one day in advance. And one of the guys seems to run specials on the weekend because he gets less foot traffic. Bananas drop from 4 for $1 to 5 for a $1.