Shopping 101: Know Your Prices

Just like on TV's The Price Is Right, in the everyday world of shopping, you have to know basically how much things cost. This helps you recognize a good deal or sale, and also know when to pass on an item. It's a basic premise to shopping wisely, so much so that I have overlooked it on this blog up to this point -- sorry!

Some people swear by price books, where they keep track of the prices of items they buy frequently. This provides a quick reference that they can take with them to the store, helping them gauge prices. It also helps track patterns -- i.e., how often certain things go on sale. This is great because you can start to predict (yes, you can!) when an item will be on sale and stock up for when it's not.

More power to these folks, but this is too complicated for me. Instead, I just kind of keep track in my head of the basic prices of products I buy frequently. That, coupled with information gathered by scanning the weekly specials either online or in the store ads, helps me know when it's time to stock up on a great deal or when to pass.

For instance, this week Walgreens is advertising Mott's apple juice for $2. That sounds good, but I happen to know the Randalls right down the street from my house has a coupon for the same juice, reducing the price to $.99. And I'm going there anyway, so I buy at Randalls.

And the other day Randalls had a deal on Skippy Peanut butter for $1.49. I didn't have any coupons for it, and I knew that without a coupon, about the cheapest I could get it would be roughly $2. So I bought a few jars (we go through some serious peanut butter at my house).

Make sense?

With a little general knowledge, or a detailed price book, you can start to see some serious savings at the checkout. It pays to pay attention, friends!

Update: check out this article, which talks about price books, stockpiling and coupons. I learned by reading that those "register coupons" I posted about last week are called "Catalinas". Excellent!!