Being frugal

Now a days, it is not easy to feed a family of 7 cheaply. I've been trying for a while to be frugal. I may not always succeed, but I do try. With grocery prices climbing and the fact that it now costs just as much to buy a gallon of gas as it does to buy a gallon of milk, I'm looking for ways to cut costs. To do so, I've started keeping a price book. I tried this once before, and it actually worked out pretty well. I got out those old sheets I had, only to find that there was only room for 3 different stores. This doesn't work for me, as I shop at 6 different stores, depending on what is on sale and what it is I need to get. So, I made my own. It's a pretty basic, straight-forward sheet. This is it:For this to work, all you do is take your receipt, write down the item and mark at which store you got it by putting in the price of the item under that store. That's it. It's that simple. If it is on sale, you just put a check mark next to that item so that you know that is not the normal price. This way, you can watch the sales and see if the sale price is cheaper than what you would buy it at a normal price. I actually keep it listed alphabetically, so my tomatoes (no matter if they are canned or not) go under T, strawberries, fresh or frozen, go under S, butter, under B. (You get the idea). I also have a household book that I keep it in so it is easy to access. I'll keep you updated on how it goes. Who knows, maybe this way, I'll save enough money to buy that Bosch mixer I want in about a year.