How to Cut Grocery Costs With Pen and Paper

From the Oakland Township Patch (MI).

"A while ago, our struggling economy inspired me to follow a bit of advice offered in Amy Dacyczyn’s highly practical, helpful book, "The Complete Tightwad Gazette." (What a title, eh? Actually, it is among the most useful books you can own if you ever want practical ways to get the most for your money.)

One of her tips is to create a grocery price book, which does three great things for you:

1. When you see a sale on a particular item, you will be able to tell whether it really is a good deal or not, and if it is, you will know that stocking up is going to save you money over time.

2. After a while, you will see patterns, so you’ll know that you can do well on dry goods at one store but produce is best at another, and so on.

3. You know whether it’s worth buying a product just because you happen to have a coupon for it.

Armed with this knowledge and a willingness to stock sale items in your basement or pantry, you may be surprised how much money you can save over the course of a year.

Creating a price book

I bought myself a blank book and created alphabetical tabs to make it easy to use. Whenever I went to the store and had a few extra minutes, I recorded the unit prices of items I buy repeatedly. For instance, in the “B” section, I started a list of prices for bread, beef, beans, butter, and so on.

I recorded unit prices for the same items at different stores. I also was able to lift prices off many of my receipts and from sales fliers (which are available online if you miss the one in your mailbox). One of my girlfriends was doing the same thing, too, so we shared pricing information for local stores. I gathered information for Meijer, Aldi, Hollywood Market and Costco.

Using unit prices to find the best deals

Some stores will list the unit price on the price marker. The unit price is how much an item costs per a specific amount, like how meat is usually calculated as dollars per pound. Using the unit price is the only reliable way to compare prices between stores.

For example, if butter costs $7.87 for four pounds at one store, and $2.90 per pound at another store, which is the better bargain? Using unit prices, you can find the answer.

If the price marker in the store does not list the unit price and you’re desperate to know it for that particular item, you can calculate it. If you have an 18-ounce can of your favorite soup that costs $1.50, then divide 1.50 into 18 parts and you’ll know what that soup costs per ounce.

Then, when you find a 12-ounce can of the same soup elsewhere, you can divide its price by 12. Now you have a price-per-ounce for each can, and you know which is the bargain. Sounds like a lot of math, but it’s not too bad with a calculator, and you only have to do it once.

Finding patterns to shop savvy

As time went by and I accumulated the information I needed, I began to see patterns for the items I personally shop for. For a large number of my regular items, I can’t beat a good Meijer sale. For me, Costco is great for basics, from batteries to olive oil to cheese, but I have to be careful that I don’t start buying higher-end items. It’s true that the higher-end items are cheaper at Costco much of the time, but I can do better by purchasing a lower-end counterpart elsewhere.

Hollywood Market periodically has some great sales on meat and ice cream, and Aldi has quite a few unbeatable prices, but the selection is limited, so I typically go once a month or so and stock up. If you go to Aldi, take a quarter to put in the slot for a grocery cart, your own bags (unless you want to buy some there) and cash or a debit card only.

So if your shopping bill seems like it gets higher all the time, try a price book. It’s the best way I know to get control of your spending, shop with confidence and get the most for your money."

This is where I learned it, and now you can too. You'll even find that over the years of doing it, you tend to memorize whole categories of stuff and YOUR price limits for each, like I have, and how to find cheaper substitutions, and more nutritious food choices for the buck. This is the point when you decide you can throw away your price book, because you have surpassed it. Most of the information you find on this blog are ways I've surpassed the price book.

Follow my advice, and you can skip the price book step, but it makes for a good exercise when trying to see just where and how much you spend on food dollars. My Food Stamp Challenge foods list carries this a step further, adding nutrition and shopping-list-editing into the cost-lowering strategy. Basically, I've done the math and science for you.