Keeping A Grocery Price Book (& My Aldi Spreadsheet)
By request…
Hope this is helpful!
If you are serious about sticking to a grocery budget, or using coupons to save money on the food and toiletries that you buy, then keeping a price book will prove to be a vital money saving companion.
So, what is a price book?
A price book is used to keep track of the cost of the items that you buy at the grocery store. You can keep one for each store that you frequent, or you can keep only one covering the prices of the grocery store in your area with the cheapest prices. I choose to keep one price book for Aldi, since generally their prices are lower than any other store around.
A price book can literally be a book that you keep your notes in, or a spreadsheet either on paper or in Excel. An address book works well for this as it has the alphabetic tabs to help you keep items in order. I like using an excel spreadsheet, since it’s easy to organize and update.
A price book is a great couponing companion as it is useful for cross checking advertised “sales” at other stores. Sometimes grocers will advertise an item as being “Hot” or “On Sale”, when in reality it isn’t a good deal at all! If you have your price book to look at, you’ll be able to quickly tell if it’s just a gimmick or worth the trip to the store.
A price book is also a necessity if you are trying to stick to a grocery budget. Something I’ve found helpful in keeping to our grocery goals is to make a menu for the week, then look at my price book and write down the cost of each item I need to purchase. That way I will know exactly how much that menu will cost me, and whether I have room for “extras” or if I need to cut something out.
But how do you get started making a price book?
First, decide what method you’ll use to organize your items; writing them in a book, or keeping a spreadsheet.
Next, simply keep your receipts once you’ve done your shopping. (If you have some extra time, you can even go through the store with a notepad and pen and jot down the cost of items you are likely to buy.) Then sit down, make your categories in your price book, and log the cost of every single item you purchased.
Do this every time you shop until you don’t have anything new to write. Double check your prices to make sure that you keep them current.
I don’t write the dates of purchases down. But if I keep old receipts I am able to use them as a reference when keeping up with inflation and seasonal fluctuations.
Here is my Aldi Prices Spreadsheet for those of you who want to see how I do it. It is organized by categories, not alphabetic. If I need to find an item quickly, I just use the Ctrl F on my keyboard to “Find” whatever word I’m looking for. I’ve updated most items, but some seasonal things (fresh fruit and veggies) may not be accurate. I’m sure prices are different depending on where you live.
You’ll see at the top of my spreadsheet I also calculate the cost of the drive to the store. I take this expense into consideration when I do my shopping as well. You are more than welcome to use my spreadsheet as a starting point, modify it in any way you’d like, or print it off. It is there for you to use!
I have found that keeping a price book has been an invaluable method for helping me to keep to a tight $35-45/wk grocery budget. I hope that you are able to use these tips to create your own price book, and to help you get on your way to saving even more money as well!
Do you keep a price book? I’d love to know how you organize yours!
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Wow! You are amazing! I really need to do something like this at my local Walmart. It’s so hard sometimes to know if something is a great deal and this would be an invaluable tool. We do have an Aldi’s here but its a 22 minute drive for me to go to so we only go about once a month- usually when I have to make a van payment so I get it all done in one shot. You’re such an inspiration to get this started! Thanks!!
Great idea – I’ve heard of this before, so should give it a try. I was looking at your prices & thinking how cheap everything was – I would say that over here (Ausralia) pretty much everything would be at least double the price (a lot would be triple) – & that’s at Aldi. We live very carefully on a budget of $200 per week – yes you read that right and I shop at Aldi once a month as it’s an hours drive away.
Thanks for sharing this.
Renata
That’s our grocery budget – sorry didn’t make that clear
I sorta keep a price book. In my head. I somehow inherited the goofy trick that my paternal grandma had (she was the ultimate in coupon-clipping – she ran an entire household for her and Grandpa on just social security and their small nest egg for the 20+ years they were retired from the lumber mill business). So I can stand there in Costco or the Grocery Outlet doing the math on the per-ounce cost on Cheerios and know where the cheapest is (right now, Costco).
Our grocery prices up here are a bit higher in general than yours though, color me jealous. Although from keeping track of sales and such, I pretty much get to avoid giving Walmart my business – their prices on most grocery items (even the generic stuff) are higher than the sale prices I pay when I buy/stock up at Costco or my local grocery stores. Except the generic Sudafed you have to get from behind the Pharmacy counter – can’t find that cheaper anywhere else in my county.
I have to agree that I’m jealous of your prices too!
I have one local grovery store that we shop at. You can’t beat their prices at Price Chopper or Shaw’s (Shaw’s is RIDICULOUS!). I am able to keep our grocery bill at about $100 per week. Sometimes it’s less, sometimes more, but 100 gives me some playing room. So we actually probably spend more like 80 a week if I averaged it out. I did keep a price list for a little while, but just bringing in the 100 cash and a list works for us! A note on coupons…they drive me crazy! Just about everything we buy doesn’t have coupons and our grocery store no longer accepts computer printed coupons. Makes me mad. Argh. Oh well 
Okay, I really shouldn’t have looked at the prices in your spreadsheet! Most things are at least double here. *sigh… lol
The spreadsheet is a great idea – I’m usually pretty good at keeping track of prices in my head – stopped myself from buying a bag of milk (3 litres) for $7.29. Went across the street and found the exact same milk for $4.
I think that the spreadsheet will come in especially handy when I send my husband out to do the shopping… he seems to have no clue as to how much things cost.
I’ve used a grocery book for years since I read about it in “Tightwad Gazette” It’s saved us a lot of money over the years. I wish I’d thought of using an address book though – great idea!
I keep a little notebook as my price book for now. It works, but I may decide to move to something more efficient. I have already seen prices inflate and it would be much easier to update a spreadsheet than pen and paper!
I’m trying to trim our $80/week grocery budget even further. I’ll definitely try your price sheet idea (and check out our local Aldi)! I subscribe to The Grocery Game (for a charge of $8/store, charged every 8 weeks) to match coupons with sales at our local chain supermarket. Basically they tell you when the item is at rock bottom for that sales cycle and what coupon to use so you get the item at its cheapest price (at least for that store). I figure my time saved is worth the $4 a month. However, you’re right that stores like Aldi often will have cheaper prices on many things than even my supermarket’s sales. Thanks for the good idea! By the way, my husband and I love your blog
thanks for the info. the thing I most like about aldi, besides the low prices and small store, is that their prices dont seem to flucuate too much, theres not all this up and down pricing like most other stores, I belive thats where other stores really fool the consumer, making you think youre getting a great deal, while raising the price on other things.
I haven’t kept one in a while, since most prices are stored in my head, and I can pretty well tell what I pay usually and know a good deal. However, since the nearest Aldi’s is 50 miles away, it makes more sense to shop the sales prices of different stores. I simply took a notebook and divided it into 20 or so sections (each letter of the alphabet- some were combined). Then, for each letter, I divided down the page into sections of the store (ie. Pharmacy, health and beauty, baby, condiments, household products….) leaving a few lines under each heading. Then, I made columns for the stores I shop at (Walmart, Harris Teeter, CVS, Walgreens, Lowes, Foodlion). Then, after each shopping trip, I would sit down, and write prices into the book, under the letter, store section, and store where I found it. For example, Pampers would go in the P pages, under the baby section, in the column for Walmart if I bought them there. Does that make sense? Then, on my next shopping trip, I could see if there was a better price elsewhere. If I found a better price for Pampers at CVS the next trip, I would write that down on the same line in the CVS column so I would know the best time to buy whatever. Stores go on a rotation of sales. What’s on sale now will be on sale again in aproximately 10-12 more weeks. Storing up extra of the things I use often (ie. CHEESE!!) saves me from having to buy it again before it goes back down to $1.25 for a half a pound at one of the stores in town. Hope this is making sense!
Also, before I go shopping, I go to the store websites to see what is on sale. If it’s not going to save me $10 to go to a store, I don’t go, since they are spread out, and I don’t want to waste more money in gas than I save at the store (I guess this would vary depending on how spread out your grocery stores are).
Long story, but it’s what I do, and I feed a family of 5 for $250 per month. Some do better than me, but hope it helps someone.
Thanks Becky C!
I don’t keep a price book for everything, just the common things that I buy each month. It was interesting – of the 3 stores close to my house, Wal-Mart was the most expensive and the upscale chain, Ukrop’s, was the cheapest. I also go to Target for soaps, cleaners, and household items mostly because I can buy them in volume. It also made my husband’s life a lot easier when I added his computer paper to the monthly shopping list for Target!
Mine is split out by the aisles in the store, so I’m not having to keep flipping around to find things. It also serves as my reminder for taking inventory before I go. I only get paid once a month, so we do large grocery run for the month and then very minimal the other weeks.
I have prices on my storage tally sheet, but they’re from three years ago – it might be good (for a laugh) to see what the difference is now. We have Aldi’s, but I don’t shop there – we do ‘Save-a-Lot’, instead. Same concept, though. Our family of six makes it on $100 a week, so far, and that’s including a few items for storage (usually seven or eight things).
My dial-up is still trying to load your link, so we’ll see whatcha got in a few!
We have created a free website that automates the entire grocery price book process from creating a grocery list to tracking your lowest unit price per item and your grocery spending. Please check us out and let us know what you think. The site is groceryhop.com.
I just put my pricebook up on my blog. The hardest thing for me was not having a spreadsheet program so I just had to type it out and save it in notepad. I plan to print it and make adjustments as I find better prices:)
Bless you for this! My family is on such a tight budget, and this will help me to determine the exact dollar amount we need for each two weeks. I really appreciate your work!
I just found this post this morning. Thank you! I had completely forgotten that I wanted to make a price book. I’ve been meaning to do this since I read the Tightwad Gazette a couple years ago.
Thank you so much for this! This will be a great help! For our family of four we are on a $200.00 a month grocery budget that is including our 2month olds, formula and diapers. So anyway to help with keeping that budget is well appreciated!
How did you figure out the amount of gas you would spend? Thanks again for posting this!
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