Creating Price Standards

Just as learning your rock bottom prices, I find that creating personal price standards is also a very important trick to have at your disposal when out scoring great deals. By creating these standards you are going to save money in the long run and develop an immediate answer for the question 'is this really a good price?'.

It is very important to make a note of the price you pay for things on a regular basis. This is a great way to build a foundation to starting to build your price standards.  By making a mental or physical note of these prices you will develop a long running list of the prices you paid for the item in the past and you will be able to determine what a good price standard is for the particular item. For example: If you have purchased pasta sauce the past four shopping trips and the prices were as follows; 1) $1.50 2) $0.77 3)$1.00 4) $0.99. One would be able to determine that the price standard should be around $1.00 per jar of pasta sauce. It is important to develop this skill within your every day shopping to make it much easier to determine if an item is a good price or not. Personally I give and extra $0.25 above my price standard on most items. Again to use the pasta sauce, if my price standard is $1.00 and it is on sale for $1.25 then I would purchase it, but if it is over $1.25 I would not. Now, you may be asking yourself, but I need the pasta sauce. What if I can't find a sauce within my price standard? That's where comparable shopping comes in handy. With having price standards set in place in my every day shopping it has made me try new or different brands that I might not have purchased before I started practicing this technique. Say my regular brand is out of my price range, than maybe I try a different, cheaper brand or a store labels brand. This way you get to try new things and maybe might even find a new regular.

Setting price standards for yourself and other family members is important to every grocery trip you take. If you want to save money and stick to a monthly budget, than you have to set this rule in place to help you optimize your money and make it stretch as much as possible.

• Pasta Sauce ; $1.00 each 
• Bread ; $1.25 / loaf
• Canned Soup ; $0.50 / can 
• Frozen Canned Juice ; $0.50 each 
• Orange Juice (1.75L) ; $1.25 
• Cereal (depending on size) ; $2.00 - $4.00 
• Yogurt (12 pack) ; $3.00 
• Margarine ; $0.99 each 
• Sugar ; $2.00 bag
• Canned Tomatoes ; $0.75 each 
• Bagels ; (6 pack) ; $1.00 
• Broccoli ; $0.88 each 
• Bell Peppers ; $1.00 each 
• All Purpose Cleaners ; $1.00 each
• Toilet Bowl Cleaners ; $1.25 each 
• Paper Towels ; $0.40 per roll
• Deodorant ; $0.99 each 
• Shampoo / Conditioner ; $1.00 per bottle 

Now, don't read this list and say that those price standards are not possible to achieve, because I am here to tell you that they completely are! These are the price standards I use for the above items.