Knowing Your Rock Bottom Prices

One of the best tricks I have developed over the past year is knowing the rock bottom price of items when they go on sale. By knowing the lowest price an item will go on sale for you can avoid over paying. There use to be many times when I would walk into a store and see an item I would frequently use on sale for $4.99. I would automatically think that just because it is on sale that it meant that it was a great deal. This is not always the case. On the post I am going to tell you about how I figure out if a sale item is a good deal, and how I figure out what the rock bottom price is.

* I would like you to note that my rock bottom prices may not be the same as your personal rock bottom prices. *

This is a huge thing you have to remember when you are out and about shopping! ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS compare the sale price of the item to the regular price of the item. 

Once I was out shopping and saw that my favorite brand of peanut butter was on sale. I went over to the sale tag and saw that the price was only lowered 10 cents. Are you kidding me! This is not a sale to me! I put the peanut butter back and decided that I would wait until a larger sale came available before I purchased it. It is always very important to know what the original purchase price of an item is so that you can determine if the sale is worth while to you. 

Like I said before, knowing the original price and the lowest sale price possible of your items is very important to cutting costs in your weekly shopping trips. What I personally like to do is make sure that I know the price of every item that is put into the shopping cart while out. This way I can make mental notes of the price I paid at that current time. This is very beneficial because the next time you are out shopping and standing in the aisle trying to figure out if $2.50 per jar is a good price for salsa, you can remember back to the last time you purchased the items and what they price was you bought it for. That way you can decide if the item is really worth the purchase at that particular time. This is also a great tactic for finding lower prices. Before I started budgeting and living more frugally I thought paying $1.00 per roll of paper towels was such a great deal. Now because I have developed price standards I pay no more than $0.40 per roll. 

This is also a tactic that is very valuable to your budget to learn. It has taken me a lot of time and energy to learn how to properly stockpile and to learn the optimal times to purchase large quantities of products. Once you have figured out the lowest rock bottom price you are willing to pay for an item, that is when you can match your coupons with your already low prices to make a heck of a deal. Recently I scored a greal deal on canned tomatoes. Canned tomatoes are a staple item in our pantry and we use probably around 2 cans per month in different recipes. They were on sale at my local grocery store for $1.00 each. A great deal already if you ask me. But to make the deal even sweeter I had some coupons for $1.00 off when you buy 2 cans. That made the cans only $0.50 each after sale and coupon! This is when I knew it was time to stock up. I only had 9 coupons so I purchased 18 cans for $9.00 out of pocket. That is a 9 month supply of canned tomatoes. (Make sure you check the expiry on the cans before purchasing!) I wish I had more coupons because I probably would have bought a whole years supply! So, moral of the story here is that it is important to know your rock bottom prices so you can optimize sales and coupons to buy the items you need for your family at a reasonable price.