A price book is an essential tool for comparing prices. Price books track the best prices on frequently-purchased items, such as groceries and household items.
This is the first article in the Creating a Price Book series, which includes:
- This article.
- Create Price Book Pages by Hand or with Online Printables
- Price Books - Word Processsed - Make Forms with Word Processing Software
- Electronic Price Books - Spreadsheets, PDAs and SmartPhones
Comparing Prices
A price book is an essential tool for comparing prices. Price books track the best prices on frequently-purchased items, such as groceries and household items.
Price Book Basics
Your price book will hold one sheet of paper or index card for each item you track prices on. A spiral notebook or memo pad can be used to create a price book, but a binder or address book with ringed binding or index cards make it easier to keep items listed in alphabetical order. Keep item pages in alphabetical order to make it easier to find the best prices while shopping.
Do not immediately try to record prices for every item you buy. Instead, use this simple method to gradually build your price book data:
- Use sale flyers from the mail and newspapers to enter sale prices into your price book at your leisure, or during TV commercials.
- Choose two or three items per week and enter prices for these items while shopping. Be sure to record prices for each store you visit where the same items are sold.
- Build price comparisons by recording the price listed on shelves for brands you do not usually buy.
- When you feel ambitious, record prices from your receipts to build your price book faster.
- Note rotating sales in your price book so you know when you can stock up on items at the best price. For example, canned vegetables may go on sale every six weeks at one grocery store, bathroom tissue every eight weeks at another and towels and linens semi-annually at your favorite department store.
- Remember to record prices at Sam's Club, Costco or other warehouse stores to get a price per unit to make price comparisons with regular retail outlets.
Sizing Up a Price Book
Your price book needs to be conveniently sized to carry with you and easy to use at the store while comparing prices, and the size of the price book depends on the size of the pages it holds. You can use standard sized 8-1/2" x 11" paper, half sheets (8-1/2" x 5-1/2") or smaller memo pads or index cards (3" x 5" or 4" x 6"). Buy alphabetized page dividers to make finding items in your price book easier, and use a binder insert, clip or other method of holding a pen in the binder.
Smaller pages make it easier to carry the price book in a purse or pocket, and a smaller price book is easier to handle while pushing a grocery cart for most people. However, those who have arthritis or other problems with grasping smaller objects will need to use a standard or half-sheet sized binder or note book.
Your comfort with reading and writing small characters is another consideration. Small pages allow less space for writing, although you can come up with abbreviations that take up less space.
Index cards come in sizes up to 5" x 7" and are easy to use with some of the binding options mentioned below. Use lined index cards for your price book with A-Z index card guides to make it easier to find price book item pages. Consider using colored lined index cards to define the part of a store items are found in. For example, blue cards for frozen foods and green cards for produce. Either arrange all the cards alphabetically and use the colors to find an item more quickly, or you use a color for each store area/department and alphabetize within that color.
Binding Your Price Book
Price books in spiral notebooks need no binding, but other types of paper require some method of holding pages together. Choose the binding option that works best for you, and remember you will need an adjustable paper punch or buy your paper at an office supply store and ask them to punch holes to match the binder for you.
- Three ring binders can easily be found in sizes to hold stnadard 8-1/2" x 11" pages and 8-1/2" x 5-1/2" half sheets. Choose a three ring binder that is 1/2" to 1" thick to avoid having it get too bulky to handle easily while shopping. An inexpensive three ring binder from a discount store works just as well as the overpriced binders often found in office supply stores.
- A ring bound loose leaf address book is an ideal alternative for smaller pages, and they come with alphabetized tabs to organize price book pages.
- Binders for personal planner/organizers work well for a price book because these binders have pen holders. Alphabetized tabs are available for these binders, as well as zippered pouches and pocket folders which are convenient coupon holders.
- A binder clip or a rubber band holds small index cards together, but there are more fun and functional choices. Lightweight vinyl index card dispensers with velcro closures are one option, or you can forget binding index cards altogether and keep them in a plastic recipe box as long as the box is easy enough to carry in a tote or purse. The Mead Ringdex is an innovative index card option as well.
Discuss setting up a price book in the Personal Budgeting Forum.
