Knowing Your Limits: How to Make Your Own Pricebook

A price-book is a record of the average price that you would pay for each product that comes into your home. Knowing how much an item usually costs will help you know when a sale is actually a good deal and when the stores are trying to get you to spend more money. It is a vital tool that has helped me learn how to be as frugal as possible.
This is a sample page. There is a link to a free printable of this template in the instructions. I like using a template because I tend to make a mess of things.


How to make your own price book
Step 1- Find an old notebook (or a binder and print out your own price-book pages, I like the one found on this link in pdf form http://www.stretcher.com/stories/09/09apr06j.cfm or you could google and see what goodies you can find!)
Step 1- Make a list of the top ten items that you use on a regular basis and write them each on their own page.
Step 2- At the top of each page label Item, Store, Date, Description, Size, and Unit Price
Step 3- Find out how much these items cost where you regularly shop.
Step 4-Fill in the information
Step 5- Update the book as needed, adding ten more items each week until you have a list of EVERYTHING that you normally buy for your home.


I am going to attempt to get my price-book in order. I have most of my information memorized but I noticed that most people don't know what a price-book is, let alone how to benefit from using one. My goal is to have a fully organized price-book to share with others by the end of the summer.