Grocery Price Book

Lately I've been reevaluating my grocery & meal planning habits. I have gotten lazy and definitely not being a good steward of a grocery money. I haven't been wasteful, just not being as frugal as I'd like to be. I started planning our meals monthly to help with my meal planning, but needed a way to make sure I was getting the best grocery prices when I shopped.

I created my own version of a Grocery Price Book based on ideas in both $5 Dinner Mom and Family Feasts for $75 a Week. I made one page per grocery category that I typically buy (Fruits & Veggies, Dairy, Baking Supplies, etc). I included cleaning supplies and Healthy & Beauty items because that all falls into the same category for us. See below...

My goal is to write down unit prices for the same product at each store I regularly visit. Many of these will be store-brand items, but that will help me to figure out where I can get each item for the best price or take advantage if I see a big sale at a local grocery store (since most of my shopping comes from Walmart and Sams/Costco). 

I think this will really help with my couponing and stockpiling. I rarely stockpile by using food coupons unless Harris Teeter is running a Super Doubles or Triple Coupons event because I can usually find store brands that I like just as much for less than the price with coupon. However, now I'll be able to compare a store brand to the coupon price to make my decision to stock up or not.

If you're wondering how I'm going to keep this with me, I'm going to hole punch the pages (I printed on cardstock so it would be more durable) and keep them in the front of my coupon binder. Having my coupons with my price list will be very useful.

I don't expect to get this done all in a day, but my plan is to write down prices for at least one page at a different store each week while I'm there (childless during preschool hours) anyway. Hopefully over the next month or two, I'll have my prices filled in and will transform into a "Grocery Guru" - ha!