A price book is a valuable tool if you like to stock up on great deals.  For frugal moms, it’s a way to keep close tabs on prices in various stores over a period of time so that true bargains are easily spotted.  It can also tell you which stores have the lowest everyday prices on the things you buy most often.  Armed with this information, you’ll be able to spot a great deal when you see it. 

For most, it is a small spiral notebook that can tuck nicely into your purse.  Each page corresponds with a different product that you buy.  The most important information to capture is the price as well as the store in which it was purchased.  Beyond that, you may also want to include the size of the item as well as the brand name.  How detailed you make your book is up to you.

Doing your price book in a spreadsheet format such as Excel is also a good idea.  It can simplify the process greatly by creating a function where the cost per ounce is automatically calculated for you.  If you have a PDA or Smart Phone (such as a Palm or BlackBerry) you can upload it for easy reference when you’re shopping. 

Start with the 25-50 products your family uses most often.  To get a good idea of which items to include, look at what’s currently in your pantry and start from there.  Or, save your grocery cash register receipts for a period of time.  Most of them will include information such as the brand/product purchased, the date, and some will even include the size of the product. 

My spreadsheet includes these rows:  item, store, date purchased.  Many people also include the size of the item so that they can compute the price per ounce.  You may find that most of the things you buy come in pretty standard sizes (for example a can of cream of mushroom soup, a block of cream cheese, etc.) and that this isn’t always necessary. 

You may also want to include the brand name of products you buy in your price book, especially if you prefer one brand over another.  That way, you can evaluate whether buying a name brand is worth paying the extra money, or in some cases you may notice that the brand name doesn’t cost any more than the generic counterpart.

As you do this over several months, your entries may slow down.  You’ll notice that some prices don’t vary by much, others vary greatly.  You’ll begin to memorize prices. 

The longer you save the information, the greater the resource your spreadsheet becomes.  You'll begin to notice that sometimes advertised sales aren't the best bargains.  You'll see that some stores' everyday prices are lower than sale prices at other stores.  If you save your information over the course of a year, you'll begin to see that certain times of the year are better times to buy than others.