Ok I have heard severall of you mention and swear by a price book, and from what I can gather it is just a list of price comparisons, for example:

pampers: Walmart $, Target$, Shopko$, Sams$

Is this right? are most of the "basics" really constant and only the fresh stuff changes lots with the seasons?

What is the best way to organize this price book? I'd like to start one.

Also, how do you all find the time & energy to go to so many stores???? I find myself buying most items at Walmart regardless of price because I think most prices are fair (but not always the lowest) and because our Walmart is a superstore and I only have to take kids in and out of car seats one time! (lazy and wasteful right?) How are you all not exhausted at the end of the trip?

Thanks for the tips...we are trying to move into a all cash system to reduce the credit issues...well, I don't have to tell you all what a struggle that is, I could use all the help I can get!

As I had mentioned before, I don't use a pricebook. I keep it in my head.

How I go to so many stores, is that I only do it once a month! One day a month, I drive to Aldi's and Sam's (they are near each other, a half an hour from my house). I take my coolers with me then I come home and unload and head to the local HyVee to finish off my shopping. I definitely could not do that weekly. It usually takes me about 5 hours or so.

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~Happiness is a large family~

I keep one and I only use the 2 stores I go to. Walmart and Price Chopper. I started by making a list of everything on my reciept from shopping. Then I took the list with me the next week to the other store and copied the prices. I also use the sales flyer to get sale prices included. example... I shop at walmart today and copy down everything on my receipt, then next week I go to Price chopper with my list and I find out how much they sell the same kind of coffee I bought fromt walmart last week is, I write that down . Here is a great site for explaining it Make A Price Book: Save Money At The Market | Organized Home. Hope that does a better job

I use a book that can fit in my purse. Be sure to write in pencil because prices change so much. I list the product, product size, and then the cost at different stores. Most pages only have a few stores listed, depending on if it's a grocery item or household item. Go off your receipts. It takes awhile to build it up. Good luck.

I just use a small spiral notebook. I just use one page per product and list the prices from different stores. Seems daunting to start one...one time I lost mine and I was so sad! LOL! You're able to get it going again pretty quickly though.

I finally condensed my price book to a single page worksheet. I simply list the item and the ideal price point per unit of measure. For instance, I don't buy cold cereal unless it is approx 13 cents an ounce (around $2 for a 15 oz box). I try to buy beef for under $2 a lb. Ground beef is a great deal at $1 per pound. I buy Scott 1000 TP for 25 cents a roll.

I no longer keep track of which store where I found that price or when I last found it. I simply keep trying to buy items as close to the ideal price point as possible. So, when I go to the store and I see a deal but I'm not sure if it really is a good deal or not, I consult the little page in my purse.

Does the price of 'basics' change over the course of the year? Absolutely! As Thanksgiving or Easter approach look for baking staples (flour, sugar, etc) to drop in price. Once you start keeping track, you just might be surprised.

I get a lot of my price-point information from my receipt or from sale ads. When I'm new to an area or a new store opens, I'll make a special trip without children to do nothing but gather pricing information. I don't do it during a shopping trip.

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"I've been rich and I've been poor but independently wealthy is where it is at."

I'm just starting mine over again. I first make an empty spreadsheet listing my basic items and leaving a space for me to write the pirce and unit size. I make a sheet for each categor yof items(household, baby grocery etc...), make columns for the different stores I shop at and add columns to compute the unit price, then just plug in the numbers. (I print out a blank to get my initial prices.) I then print it out and check the prices about once a month because they do change. It takes time to set up, but once it is set up, it is very easy to keep up.

I was very good at keeping up with this untill we moved and had child #2 about 2 years ago. I have found that as I need to be more frugal than before, I can't keep the prices straight in my head. I am very excited to start this again. It is fun and challanging to me and I feel a sense of accompishment when I can shop with all that knowledge.

I am doing something different this time: I am writing down the sale prices for the things I use every week and hope that I will eventually be able to see a pattern and know when to buy and recognize what is a better sale than another. It only took me about 30-45 minutes to do this last week and I did it as I went through the ads. For Publix, I just save all the things to a grocery list and print it out.

HTH and good luck. Once I leave here, I'm going to set up my spreadsheets

I simplified it for myself....I pay someone else $20 every 8 weeks to do it for me...for 4 stores. I don't have to keep track of much at all...AND they match up coupons for me!

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I like this idea!! Thanks for the tip!

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"It's time to move from what we can do, to what we must do, to what we will do." ~Hillary Clinton

Your reasons for shopping at Walmart are totally valid! After I had my second child, I revisited my store-hopping and pared it down to Winco (grocery) and Target (household) only. When you shop at fewer stores, a price book is extra-important! You'll really get a feel for the sales cycles. My grocery pricebook includes pages A-Z for easy lookup, but for produce I track items seasonally on a few blank pages toward the back of my notebook. (No use knowing that strawberries were $1 in August when I'm looking at $2.50 as a good price in November!) Baby and Household items are tracked in separate sections. I note prices of other stores based on flyers (Walgreen's) or as I'm shopping (Costco) just to stay current and make sure my "home" store still has the best price.