Price Book

wannabe_sybil

Does anyone use a price book and is it worth it?

Liney_2

Ooh interested - what is a price book please?

wannabe_sybil

The theory - you keep a track of what you pay. When you see a real bargain, you stock up.

Example, you prefer a particular brand of baked bean. It is usually 30p per tin. It is often on offer at 27p per tin, and you note that price in your price book. When it is at 27p you buy half a dozen tins or enough until to last until the next offer of 27p comes around. But when you go to a supermarket and see the beans at 23p, you check in your price book, see that it is hardly ever on at that offer and buy a caseload. (and share your good fortune on MSE:D)

I have a temptation to unnecessarily bulk buy and hoard. I had bought a lot of tins of Coca Cola for dear heart, because they were on offer, but then I noticed that they were always on offer, or rather at least once a month. So I don't bother much and try and persuade him to pick it up from Makro instead.

The price book tells you what prices you have actually paid, so when the lovely sign in the supermarket says - 'sale, only 50p for this loo roll' and you know that you have bought it in the recent past for only 29p (because you check in the book) then you are not misled by the sale sticker. Theoretically it shows you what the prices have recently been so that just because it says 'offer' or 'sale' you don't get misled.

Also, if you record eg washing powder in price per 100g then you will be less likely to be fooled by a 'sale' price for a smaller packet.

Now that prices are going up I was wondering if it was worth starting a price book (in the hope it would stop me buying a shedload every time I saw a sale sticker )

hth - I am sure someone else can explain it better than I.

Liney_2

Sounds like too much work for me - I have a 3 year old causing chaos in the aisles without stopping to read and write in a book. Sounds good though - and if someone who has the time and the good fortune to share on MSE then that is good enough for me )

wannabe_sybil

If I felt really dedicated (which is incredibly unlikely, I am more likely to get my groceries delivered by Elvis) then I could just run over the supermarkets on mysupermarket.com once per week and note the prices of regular buys and record them.

That would work for me as I get my groceries delivered, and the purpose is to make sure that I only buy in bulk when it is actually a bargain and not just the supermarket putting up the prices, two weeks later knocking them down and saying - wow! what a bargain, buy lots! Also if you were noting price per 100g etc then you are less likely to get caught out by the 'smaller box, same price' trick.

I was just wondering if anyone else had tried it and found it worth while?

thriftlady_2

Sybil if you do a search (titles only) on the OLd Style board you will find a couple of threads about price books;)

wannabe_sybil

Thriftlady - thank you I will have a look.