If you are new to couponing, you may not know what the high and low prices of your common grocery items are. Therefore, you need to do a little research on your household's grocery shopping before getting started.
The purpose of a price book is to track the prices of your most common items over a period of several weeks. By doing this, you will learn what the high and low prices of your items are, which will make it easy to identify when you should stock up on them.
Start by thinking of what your most frequently purchased items are...
Begin by listing each item you came up with at the top of a piece of notebook paper, or in a spiral. One item to a page makes this much easier. Comparing two stores would be great, but if you only shop at one store, this will be fine.
Make columns for each store you shop at and rows for a total of four weeks. Go to the stores you've listed each week (Monday is a great day to do this.) and write down the unit price. The unit price is the total amount of units (pounds, bbars in a box, etc.) divided by the total price. Keep in mind that sometimes buying a smaller size package will be the most cost effective purchase. Bigger is NOT always better. If the item was on sale that week, write the unit price, and SALE next to it.
Look on this list and notice when the lowest prices are. You should start noticing a pattern of when the item is on sale. Try to purchase when an item is at it's LOWEST unit price. Using your coupons during a sale, or when an item is at it's lowest price, will give you the best savings!
Once you get further into shopping, the price book will slowly find it's way into the trash can. You will begin learning when to buy your products and when to hold off.
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