One of the easiest ways to save money on shopping is to use a price book. A PB is baiscily you shopping list with prices attached. A price book can be as simple or as fancy as you want it, but at its core is listing the prices you pay for the most commonly purchased items.
For example here’s my price book for Lidls
Bread 60 cent
German Bread 79 cents
Milk 69 cents a litre (about 2.80€ a gallon)
Salami 1.19€
Ham slices 2€
Hamburger 400grams 2€ (bit under a pound)
As you can see it’s quite simple but very very effective. But why does it work, I means don’t we all pay attention to prices and sales? It works effective for three reasons One is your aware of what things cost, two you pay attention to what’s going in your cart and three you make the connection between earning and spending
One: we all to a degree pay attention to prices, buy when things are on sale but writing down the price really makes that connection that it cost real money. You start to buy more when things are on sale and perhaps buying less when it isn’t.
Two: you pay attention to what really goes in your cart, this is really where I started saving money, instead of always buying the same things I started looking at what I was buying and asking do I really need this, is there a better cheaper alternative to it.
Three: Marketers spend millions of dollars per year trying to blur the connection between earning and spending, if your really made the connection you’d be alot more careful with your money.
A real life example: I used to buy the same sugar free chocolate chip cookies each week. I started my price book just before a big jump in price. They went from 89 cents to 1.29€ ouch. Even worse I was buying usually 5 packages a week or 25€ a month. Ouch! I liked them but I wanted to see if there were cheaper alternatives, sure enough I found a few cookies much cheaper end result, while I still buy the choc chip cookies I’ve cut my cookie bill by 75% while still enjoying (too many) cookies.
The downside: the only real downside, and this is true of anything is it takes a bit of discipline, for example, I’ve started buying my sliced cheese at Lidls while I think it’s cheaper I actually haven’t compared the price against carrefour to know for sure.
Philosophically speaking why do this? I understand most people think, too much work too much hassle etc. I’m not a cheapskate, life is too short not to enjoy etc. Well it’s really simple, by saving money on shopping it allows me to splurge on other things that I really like without breaking the budget. For example Campbells Mushroom Soup, love the stuff but it’s priced like gold here (1.69 € a tin) so by saving money else where I can buy it without breaking the budget.
[...] Original post by robinmadrid [...]