Use a Grocery Price Book to Slash Your Food Spending

I won't attempt to duplicate the article, or even review it (although I do recommend it).  Instead, I will list a bunch of resources that will help you to get started with your own grocery price book.  So, in no particular order (although my own Grocery Price Book spreadsheet is listed first), here they are:

An Uncommon Way to Wealth Grocery Price Book spreadsheet - This spreadsheet lets you easily enter the items you buy, and then sort them by category, store, or description.  It also automatically calculates the price per pound, ounce, or whatever other unit of measurement you choose.  Recommended by Get Rich Slowly.  FREE

Cheap Cooking - Another, simpler grocery price book spreadsheet.  Doesn't have the functionality of the Uncommon Way to Wealth spreadsheet (of course I would say that!), but it will do the basics.  This spreadsheet was also recommended by Get Rich Slowly.  FREE

HandyShopper (Palm version) - This is a Palm-based shopping list tool with many powerful features. However, it is more than just a shopping list application.  It can be used for almost every kind of list imaginable. What's more, HandyShopper works on Palm OS 2.0 through 5.0, and on all PalmOS-based devices.  FREE

HandyShopper (Pocket PC version) - This Pocket PC version of the shopping list tool is newer and less robust than the Palm version.  It's still in Alpha stage of development, so it's buggy and not fully functional.  However, it is FREE.

Grocery Price Book ebook - This ebook tells you how to save money on groceries.  The author, Lana Dorazio, claims that you can save $180 to $240 a month using her ebook.  It comes with a couple of bonuses: 1) A pre-filled grocery book that has four years worth of grocery prices.  2) 50 of the author's favorite simple recipes.  3) An insider interview with a grocery store manager - they talk about "insider secrets of the grocery business".  I have not purchased or used this ebook/system, so I can't personally recommend it.  However, it's not very expensive.  The ebook is $19.

Some other resources for saving money on groceries, although not necessarily price-book related, are listed below.  Note that I have not tried any of these:

My Grocery Deals - An all-in-one online source for finding good deals on food, matching coupons to low prices, and seeing how much you're saving.  Haven't tried this one.

My List Mate - This software uses databases to let you make grocery lists that include item, price, and unit of measurement, and keeps them separated by store where you purchased them.  When you're getting ready to go grocery shopping, you can make a list of what you need to buy, and includes the estimated price of everything on your list.  Sounds like a great tool for helping to budget when grocery shoping.  My List Mate is shareware and costs $22.95 to register.

I hope these resources help somebody who's "sitting on the fence" about whether to use a grocery price book to get started.  You can use the free resources and get great results.  You can use the resources that cost a few bucks, and maybe make things easier.  Either way, just get started and save a bunch of money on your groceries.

See, even though there are tons of personal finance blogs out there, and a couple of good personal finance blog aggregators (www.pfblogs.org and www.pfblogs.com), I get kind of tired of reading through tons of blog posts to find a useful nugget of information.  If I find one good post for every ten that I read, I'm doing well.  The blog aggregators are decent, but I still have to scroll through page after page of blog post summaries to get one good, applicable, useful personal finance-related post.  The rest of the posts seem to be about the author's opinions and unrelated topics.

The whole personal finance blogger community is about networking, sharing the best and most useful personal finance information.   PFigg is meant to take this sharing of information to the next level.  Rather than the occasional Traveling Carnival of Personal Finance, or reading through a dozen blogs, you can find everything that's new, great, and useful in personal finance at PFigg.com. 

The easiest way to become a PFigg celebrity, or to see your blog articles show up on PFigg, is to add the PFigg bookmarklet to your browser.  Here's how:

Internet Explorer: Rightclick the link below, choose "Add to Favorites".
Firefox: Drag the link below to your Bookmarks Toolbar.  Done.
Opera: Rightclick the link below, and choose "Add Bookmark".

PFigg.com Personal Finance News bookmarklet

When you find a personal finance blog entry or news article that strikes you as particularly good (or if you're a personal finance blogger and you want to get the word out about your latest and greatest post), just click on the PFigg bookmarklet in your Favorites or Bookmarks.  It will automatically take you to the right page to submit a new "story" to PFigg.

By the way, all you other personal finance bloggers, feel free to submit as many articles as you want to PFigg.  Since only the best of them get voted to the front page, PFigg readers still get what they want.

Thanks!
Rose

Hi Rose,

Thanks for checking out my website.  It's always nice to hear that people are finding it useful.  I can certainly sympathize with you about wanting to get out of debt - I've been in the same boat.

Regarding your question about how to work with your husband to get out of debt:
It seems, from what you said, that you are more passionate about getting out of debt than your husband.  It can be tough to get things moving when a husband and wife aren't on the same page regarding their finances.  To help get both of you on the same team and working in the same direction, here are some things that I would suggest doing, in this order:

1)  Check out some personal finance books from leading personal finance authors, and decide which "guru" you want to follow.  Both you and your husband should be totally committed to following whichever guru's plan you decide on, because as you've discovered, both of you need to be working together to make this work.  Some suggestions of good authors are:  David Bach, Dave Ramsey, and Mary Hunt.  There are others, but those are the ones I'm most familiar with. 

For an extreme approach that really works, I suggest Dave Ramsey.  The thing that makes people either love him or hate him is that he advocates getting rid of all of your debt, including cutting up your credit cards…forever.  Still, he's very good at what he does, which is helping people get out of debt.  If you get the chance to listen to his show (you can listen to it live by streaming audio on http://www.wgst.com/), you'll get to hear people call in and scream, "WE'RE DEBT FREE!!"  It is truly motivating to hear the stories of these people who have gotten out of debt.  It's also very revealing and insightful to hear the stories of people who have gotten themselves into debt and don't know how to get out of it.

For a more moderate approach, I suggest Mary Hunt.  Both she and Dave Ramsey have been in debt up to their eyeballs, but her approach is less likely to turn you off.  Mary doesn't necessarily advocate getting rid of credit forever, but she will show you how to stop being a slave to credit while getting out of debt.

David Bach is more of a "learn how to retire wealthy" guy than he is about getting out of debt.  His approach is a little controversial, and can be summed up in about two sentences:  Put your finances on autopilot.  Save money by cutting unnecessary expenses.

2)  Stop being the only person who is in charge of your family finances.  You and your husband are in this boat together, and since he's the one who's less worried about getting out of debt, I'd guess that he helped accumulate more than his fair share of the debt.  He needs to be doing his part with the family finances, because you can't do this alone.

That's the sum total of my advice.  Find a guru who has a *proven* system for getting out of debt, and then follow that system, To The Letter!  Don't justify any deviations from the plan, because their plan is proven, and your version of the plan is not.  Go with what works, and worry more about the "how" than the "why".  Work with your husband on this, and don't take "No" for an answer.  Make a strategy for implementing the guru's plan, agree that you'll both do it, and then hold each other to your promises.

I hope this helps, Rose.  It's the same thing that I'm doing to get out of debt, so I can tell you that it works.

Phil Town is a follower of Warren Buffet's investing strategies, which boil down to one simple rule to follow: Never lose money.

The whole reason behind the "Never lose money" rule, according to Mr. Town, is that if your investment loses even a small percentage of its value, it has to kick it into high gear and increase by an even larger percentage to regain its original value.  For example, a $100 investment that loses 50% of its value has to see a 100% gain to regain its original value of $100.

So, it seems obvious, but how do you go about investing without ever losing money?  The first step in the process is to buy your investment (stocks, in the case of Phil Town's book) at only 50% of its actual value.  If you buy at way-below-value prices, you lock in your profit on the front end.  After all, just as water seeks its own level, the stock price should at some point reflect the actual value of the stock.  So, buy low.

The book goes into great depth on how to select your stocks to make sure that they're good companies, with a solid history and a (hopefully) bright future, and how to know what the actual value of the stock is.  Then, it's simply a matter of waiting for the stock price to fall to 50% of its value.  Buy, wait until the stock price climbs to or above the value of the stock, and sell before it goes back down.  When it goes back down, wait until it hits that 50% price point again, and repeat the previous steps.  Town even gives you some lessons about using technical indicators to time the purchase and sale of your stock.

This book actually got me excited about investing in stocks.  Of course, I'll paper trade first, to see if the system works before diving headlong into it, but it looks great.  What looks even better to me is that Phil Town doesn't seem to have a vested interest in selling you expensive seminars or "bootcamps", in the style of former stock-picking guru Wade Cook.  I find it easier to trust a guy whose only apparent interest is the one-time sale of a book.

I'm working on a spreadsheet that will make the selection process more automated, and take a lot of the emotional aspects out of stock picking.  Don't worry, I'll make it available to you when it's ready.

Also, I'll be posting my progress with Rule #1 investing on my blog, mostly to pressure myself into making regular progress

Your task is to locate and deal with all the negative items on your credit report. Determine which category each item falls into by using the key below:

• 0 = Too recently opened to rate
• 1 = Current, Paid as agreed
• 2 = 30 days past due
• 3 = 60 days past due
• 4 = 90 days past due
• 5 = 120 days past due
• 6 = 150 days past due
• 7 = Account is under a bankruptcy or wage earner payment plan
• 8 = Foreclosure or repossession
• 9 = Charge off account or collection account
• U = Unrated
• O = Open (Open at least 30 days)
• R = Revolving (Has periodic payments and a preset spending limit - e.g. credit cards)
• I = Installment (Has periodic payments and does not permit continued spending - e.g. mortgages or car loans)
• M = Mortgage
• C = Line of credit 

The number and letter codes are combined to specify different account types. For example, O1 is an open account in good standing, while a R5 is a credit card account 120 days past due. Make sure to check the accuracy of any negative item (ending with 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9) and correct it if it's inaccurate. I'll write more later about how to fix your credit report.

To learn more about Mvelopes Personal, as well as the other systems that I recommend, check out the Budgeting section of An Uncommon Way to Wealth.

Click here to download the Mvelopes Interview

My wife is a great scrapbooker. If you don't know what it is, think of photo albums with fancy embellishments. She has recently made a new website, My Crop Room, that she's going to make into the scrapbooking resource for beginners. In doing so, she plans to make a small amount of money.

It may only be a few hundred dollars a month, but it makes us that much more self-reliant and independent. As Martha Stewart would say, "It's a Good Thing." Chalk up one more for the Payne entrepreneurs.

I think that personal finance is such a vague word to many people. The initial reaction is, "I can never learn about all this - it's just too much." My response to that is that it's much easier to figure things out if you just break it down into easy-to-understand chunks or categories. For example, I've divided personal finance into eight categories:

1. Budgeting
2. Credit / Credit Cards
3. Debt Reduction
4. Banking
5. Investing
6. Retirement Planning
7. Estate Planning
8. Taxes

I've completed the Budgeting section, and will begin working my way down the list. These are not necessarily in any particular order, although I do believe that budgeting is the foundation of personal finance.

Anyway, check out the new Pillars of Wealth section, also linked at the top of each page.

Jesse Mecham (of YNAB fame)

Here's the first question:

I would like to understand the cash flow process, we always seem to run out of the green stuff when we budget what are we doing wrong. Why is it always necessary to have to go back to the hole in the wall, I am not a person who spends frivously.

– Melissa

Dear Melissa,

Without knowing exactly how you spend your money, I'd be hard-pressed to give you a specific answer. I can, however, give you an answer that almost surely addresses the "big picture" of your problem:

You're either making too little money or spending too much, or you have a "timing problem". Here's how to tell which of these is the case:

The "too-little-income/too-much-spending problem" is characterized by a gradually rising debt level. If you increased your overall debt by $10,000 in the last year, without taking on a mortgage or similar secured debt, then you are spending $10,000 more than you make (or, earning $10,000 less than you spend).

Let's talk about the "too-little-income/too-much-spending problem" first. I'll be blunt - if you're spending more than you make, then you are spending frivolously. Let's see if we can identify possible ways you could be spending frivolously. Do you:

• have cable television?
• eat out at restaurants?
• make car loan payments
• pay others to do work you could do yourself (such as house cleaning or lawn service)?
• buy new when used would do just fine?
• buy name brands just for the "image" they portray?

There are many more examples of frivolous spending. The best way to determine whether you're spending frivolously is to sit down with someone you consider "frugal" (or less flattering: "cheapskate") and have them review your spending. Take their suggestions to heart, and consider whether it's more important to buy what you want or to be able to live within your means.

Since you've said that you aren't a frivolous spender (and I'll take you at your word), you more likely suffer from a "timing problem". This means that you are constantly "surprised" when a big bill comes due, or when an "unexpected" or "emergency" expense pops up. Here are some examples of these types of bills/expenses:

• Car insurance bill (due every six months)
• Property tax bill (due every year)
• Car repairs (generally unexpected)
• Medical bills (mostly unexpected)
• Christmas gifts (once a year)

Again, there are many more examples than I've listed here. Use your imagination, and you'll come up with plenty of examples from your own life.

"But what about unexpected expenses, like car repairs or medical expenses?" You'll have to take a bit of initiative here, and decide how likely, how often, and how much these bills will be.

If you have a brand-new car that's still under warranty, then you likely only need to save for new tires and oil changes. Maybe saving $50 a month would suffice in your case. If, however, you drive an AMC Gremlin with 195,000 miles on it, and it guzzles motor oil almost as fast as you can refill it, you'll likely need to save much more for repairs.

If you're in perfect health, haven't ever had a cavity, and don't engage in full-contact sports or high-risk activities, you're less likely to have large medical bills. So, you'll put aside less each month for medical/dental bills than a person who eats candy all the time while regularly going for swims with man-eating sharks while juggling chainsaws. Absurd, but you get the picture.

Also, most of these expenses are far less unexpected than you have convinced yourself. For example, you know that your car is going to break down eventually, or that you'll have to pay the deductible when some fool crashes into you in the Wal-Mart parking lot. You just don't know when it's going to happen. If you think about this proactively, you'll be far better prepared when the inevitable happens.

For my recommendations of which budgeting systems can help you to spend less than you make and avoid timing problems, go to the Budgeting page. It's chock-full of budgeting wisdom, tips, and tricks. You'll want to listen to the interviews as well.