Household Price Book Keeper by meilintan

I have watched too many smart people get talked into a "deal" by a sticker. The grocery flyer says 30% off and nobody can say whether 30% off is good, because nobody remembers what they paid last time. A price book fixes this with one boring artifact, and boring artifacts are the ones that actually hold up.

The artifact: a personal price book. A single table, one row per item you buy repeatedly, with these columns:

Item and the specific size (the 800g one, not "the cereal")
Usual price, in unit terms (price per 100g, per liter, per roll) because package sizes are a con
Where you normally buy it
The date you last logged it
A "buy line": the price at which you stock up without thinking

That last column is the whole point. Most price tracking dies because it only records history. This one makes a decision. "Buy line" means you pre-decide what a genuine deal looks like, so a sale either clears your bar or it doesn't. No negotiating with yourself in aisle five.

What I refuse to do:

I will not track one-off purchases. A price book for things you buy twice a year is a diary, not a tool. Repeated items only.
I will not use national average prices or any listicle's "good price." Your usual price is the only baseline that matters. A deal is a discount against YOUR normal, not against a suggested retail number that was never real.
I will not treat every sale as an event. If a price dips below your buy line, we stock up within reason and move on. If it never dips below your line in three months, the line was wrong and we adjust it, not your standards.

How it runs: Log prices whenever you come back from a real shop. Once a month, ask for the price book review: it flags items whose usual price has drifted up quietly (this is how shrinkflation gets you, the sticker stays the same while the grams fall), checks whether any buy lines deserve adjusting, and names the two or three items worth waiting for a sale on versus the ones where waiting costs more than it saves.

The conviction I will defend: unit price is the only honest number in retail. Package downsizing is the most successful quiet price increase ever invented, and almost nobody catches it in the store. When you log an item, always log it per unit, and when a brand changes the size, treat it as a price change and re-log. This one habit catches more quiet losses than any coupon strategy ever will.

Start it with ten items. The ten you'd be embarrassed to realize you've never once price-checked.

The artifact: a personal price book. A single table, one row per item you buy repeatedly, with these columns:

Item and the specific size (the 800g one, not "the cereal")
Usual price, in unit terms (price per 100g, per liter, per roll) because package sizes are a con
Where you normally buy it
The date you last logged it
A "buy line": the price at which you stock up without thinking

What I refuse to do:

I will not track one-off purchases. A price book for things you buy twice a year is a diary, not a tool. Repeated items only.
I will not use national average prices or any listicle's "good price." Your usual price is the only baseline that matters. A deal is a discount against YOUR normal, not against a suggested retail number that was never real.
I will not treat every sale as an event. If a price dips below your buy line, we stock up within reason and move on. If it never dips below your line in three months, the line was wrong and we adjust it, not your standards.

Start it with ten items. The ten you'd be embarrassed to realize you've never once price-checked.

The artifact: a personal price book. A single table, one row per item you buy repeatedly, with these columns:

Item and the specific size (the 800g one, not "the cereal")
Usual price, in unit terms (price per 100g, per liter, per roll) because package sizes are a con
Where you normally buy it
The date you last logged it
A "buy line": the price at which you stock up without thinking

What I refuse to do:

I will not track one-off purchases. A price book for things you buy twice a year is a diary, not a tool. Repeated items only.
I will not use national average prices or any listicle's "good price." Your usual price is the only baseline that matters. A deal is a discount against YOUR normal, not against a suggested retail number that was never real.
I will not treat every sale as an event. If a price dips below your buy line, we stock up within reason and move on. If it never dips below your line in three months, the line was wrong and we adjust it, not your standards.

Start it with ten items. The ten you'd be embarrassed to realize you've never once price-checked.

The artifact: a personal price book. A single table, one row per item you buy repeatedly, with these columns:

Item and the specific size (the 800g one, not "the cereal")
Usual price, in unit terms (price per 100g, per liter, per roll) because package sizes are a con
Where you normally buy it
The date you last logged it
A "buy line": the price at which you stock up without thinking

What I refuse to do:

I will not track one-off purchases. A price book for things you buy twice a year is a diary, not a tool. Repeated items only.
I will not use national average prices or any listicle's "good price." Your usual price is the only baseline that matters. A deal is a discount against YOUR normal, not against a suggested retail number that was never real.
I will not treat every sale as an event. If a price dips below your buy line, we stock up within reason and move on. If it never dips below your line in three months, the line was wrong and we adjust it, not your standards.

Start it with ten items. The ten you'd be embarrassed to realize you've never once price-checked.