Grocery Price List – Your Life-Saving Grocery Shopping Strategy

The grocery stores’ goal is not to make us happy or healthy. Their goal is to take our money.

Or why would they keep the average of 39000 different products on their shelves?

Once you enter, they know you will go out with something.

The sooner you and I accept and understand that, the better.

Therefore I don’t trust them if they tell me their products are cheaper and of better quality. I want to be sure it’s true.

In this post, I will tell you exactly how you could beat the shops in their own game and save money on your groceries.

The Journey of Grocery Budgeting and The Need of Grocery Price List

Tell me if you can relate to that:

You really want to start budgeting your food and grocery list, but always get lost with the prices. You make a list and end up guessing each product’s price so you could sum the result at the end and “call it budgeting”.

Let’s face it…

It’s hard to budget and write down product prices if you don’t remember them. On the other hand, it’s almost impossible to remember the price of everything… who does that?

Also, it’s hard to choose the best quality for the ultimate price if you don’t have that info either, right?

How could you spare £50 for food this week if you don’t know what you could buy for £50?

The answer to all this:

Grocery Price List

A few weeks ago, I was doing a flip-through of my oldest budgeting agenda and saw something that could be an early version of a grocery price list.

As soon as I saw it, I realized I need something like that in my life again.

I googled it and turned out to be a huge part of the meal planning and money-saving business.

What Is A Grocery Price List?

A grocery price list (or a book) is a digital or physical document where you could keep track of the prices of the products you usually buy. In a nutshell, you will have a list of prices of the same product in different stores.

Next time when you sit down to prepare your grocery list, you will have extra help in calculating the cost of the products.

Even better…

You will know exactly which store sells it cheaper.

Why pay more if you could pay less?

I have to admit I am not very good at keeping grocery price lists.

But I intend to change that.

Would you like to join me?

How It’s Going To Benefit You?

The first thing a grocery price book will benefit you with is knowledge.

I usually do my main grocery shopping in Aldi. I do it for so long that I believe I know the prices of almost everything in there.

Well, I don’t.

Lucky for me, I always overprice everything, so I end up paying less than expected.

But it’s time to be more organized and take things seriously, right?

My Free Gift For You

I decided to create an easy; nothing fancy printable of how a grocery price book/list should look.

I did mine on paper but thought you might really want to try using Price Book but not have the time to draw lines in a notepad. So here’s the printable version of what I did for our household:

You could download the PDF by clicking here.

How To Use It?

Download it and print the file.

Take all of your latest receipts out and cover the desk with them. Make it messy.

Chose one to start with and write every product from it on the Grocery Price List. Keep in mind that if there are products you usually don’t buy, but you got last time, there’s no need to write them on the Price List unless you plan to include them on your permanent grocery list.

Product – The name of the product goes in the cell on the top of the table.

Date – Place the date you bought or saw the product in the store.

Store – The name of the store.

Size – Write down the volume (a kilo, grams, etc.)

Price – The price of the product per pack

Price Per Unit – Here comes the math. In this column, you want to calculate the price per unit (per 1kg, per 100g. per piece, etc. )

Notes – Any thoughts go in this column, including if the quality of the product is lower than what you’d prefer.

Once you write down everything you could think of, you are done.

Now you have a visual pricing book of everything you buy weekly.

That’s how it works for everything else.

What’s next?

Evaluate where the quality, the size, and the price match your taste and highlight it on the paper or the digital Table.

Often check if the information is still accurate.

Plan any store sales and discounts.

Buy in bulk if something you use gets almost-for-free-cheap.

Stick with this for at least a month or two before you give up. It’s all about the habit, and every habit takes time. Keep in mind your end goal and do all this only when you have enough time to do it…

EXAMPLE: Potatoes

We all buy them every week, so let’s use them as an example.

If you go to Asda, you will be likely overwhelmed by the variety of potatoes you could choose. However, I am interested in white potatoes only as they fit my family’s taste the most. One of the big bags of potatoes (2kg) costs £2.00 (£1.00 per kilo).

If I decide to buy potatoes from Aldi, they are 2.5kl and cost £1.45 (£0.58 per kilo).

In Lidl, there’s this huge bag of 7.5kg of white potatoes that costs £3.49 (£0.46 per kilo). After I insert all this data on my spreadsheet, it looks easy to choose.

However, sometimes the huge bag of potatoes in Lidl is full of small-sized potatoes, which could be very hard to peel. On top of that, there’s the risk of getting a few not-so-good potatoes with each bag.

How do I make the decision? In this case, on my way to Aldi (where I usually shop most of our food), I pass through Lidl. I check the bag, and if the potatoes are big enough and don’t look like Chinese torture, I get them knowing that there might be a few rotten pieces inside. 8 out of 10 times everything is fine, and all potatoes are of good quality.

Isn’t It All That Too Much Work For Me?

The potatoes-buying process from above might look a little bit too much for you.

But let me be honest and shock you:

You already do all this work and even more.

If you live in the UK, you most likely knew the potatoes story as you experience it partially every month. You do it on a subconscious level and never realize how much work your brain puts into taking the simple decision of where to get potatoes from.

Having a Grocery Price List will decrease the amount of work for you as you will do it once and refer to it every time you prepare your grocery shopping list.

There’s No way For You To Know EVERYTHING

Don’t get frustrated or discouraged by the fact you don’t have all of the information. On many of the receipts, the size of the pack is missing – that’s a trick by the stores, and we are all victims of it.

Once you focus your thoughts on saving and evaluating the products, it will be easier for you to fill every column. It will take time though. Be patient and know that the time you invest in this process will be worth it.

Many stores won’t allow you to walk between the aisles and write down their prices and the sizes of their products – they know why you do it and what’s next.

Now’s the moment to be a ninja shopper and find your way to get the information you need. I always have a pen with me when I go shopping and write the price and the size across the product on my shopping list. Sometimes I write it on my phone or memorize a few of them.

It’s worth your time and energy, and I know I already said that.

Charles Brixton said:

“You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.”

Let me know if you already have your version of the Grocery Price List or Book. Share your ideas on saving money while grocery shopping and beating the stores in their own game.

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Grocery Price List – Your Life-Saving Grocery Shopping Strategy