If your goal is to become a new shopper by the time the new year rolls around, you’re at the right place. My New Year, New Shopper series is bound to help you learn the ropes to becoming a smarter, more organized shopper by January 1, 2010. If I can do it, anybody can.

One of the most important keys to saving money at the grocery store- the place where Americans can most easily shave off money from their budget- is to know how much things cost and at what point the price is so good an item should be stocked up on. It’s easy to go to the store each week and buy what’s on your shopping list without giving a lot of thought on how much you could save if you tried. People are so busy that they just often don’t think about saving money at the grocery store until the end of the month when they’re wondering where the money went. By creating a price book, you can become aware of how much things cost and how much you can save by purchasing these items at their rock-bottom sale prices. Combine these sales with a coupon, which we’ll go over another day, and you can sometimes get these items for mere pennies!

In my first post in this New Year, New Shopper series, I asked you to get 2 5-subject notebooks. Take one of these now and label it “Price Book” if you haven’t already done so. Also gather any grocery receipts you have from the past 2-3 months, if possible, or at least the past month. This will give you a great idea of how much you have paid for items your family uses on a regular basis. You’ll then be able to write down how much the items are when they go on sale at your local grocery stores until you see a pattern and can determine what the lowest possible price that item will be reduced to. For instance, during the summer BBQ sauce will go from a winter-time price of (example) $2 per bottle to a low of $.79 per bottle. What does that tell you? To buy every bottle of BBQ sauce you’ll need for the entire year at $.79 per bottle! OK, let’s start to create a price book. This is just my way; there are tons of ways to do this, differing in degree of difficulty. Figure out a way that works for you! The key is saving money.

First, decide how you’re going to label your book and make your categories: meat, dairy, frozen, bread, household…you decide how it will be easier for you to read it, and create enough space to write down every item your family will use in each category. Then write down every item off of your receipts, along with other items your family buys on a regular basis or you know you will buy. If you don’t have a price for those, take the book to the store the next time you shop to get the prices. You need this as a starting point.

Once your book is created, go through the book each week and write down the prices of the items in your book at the stores closest to you. Within a few weeks you can look at the book and know when to stock up on each item.

Example: Label a page “Frozen Food”. Take each receipt and write down every frozen item on those receipts onto your page. Write down the price you paid and where you bought it. When you go through your sales ads each week, write down the price of that item at the stores that are within a reasonable driving distance to you; after 6-8 weeks, you’ll notice what price is the lowest, and you will know when to stock up on that item.

It’s easy to create a price book, and you can even do this in an Excel file in your computer if you’d rather keep up with this electronically. However, you may wish to keep a hard copy of this list somewhere with your coupon organizations system in case you’re traveling or your computer malfunctions.

This is one of the easiest, yet most important things you can do when you want to save money on groceries. After a time, once you’ve been doing this as long as me, you’ll have prices committed to memory on most items and won’t need your price book very often. I still find myself referencing mine for seasonal items and meat that I don’t often buy, so it does help!