Price Watching 101

Save Money on all your purchases by taking 10 minutes out of your week!

When David and I know we have a larger purchase in the future, price watching is our go to hack for saving money!

What should you price watch? 

Kitchen Appliances, Kitchen Gadgets, Electronics, TVs, Cell Phones, anything you want 🙂

Pretty much any item you consider above your large purchase budget is something you should price watch. A Large Purchase Budget is the dollar amount you (and your spouse) determine is more expensive than a normal purchase and shouldn’t be spent spontaneously.  David and I consider our large purchase budget to be $100.  So anything over $100 we make sure to price watch for at least a month.

NOTE: Obviously, you can’t price watch when there is an emergency like a broken furnace or water heater, but for most other larger purchases this strategy WILL save you money.

Step 1: Plan ahead

This is probably the most important step to price watching.  You can’t price watch if you don’t have time to price watch. We knew we were going to be in need of a new refrigerator for our kitchen remodel.  So 6 months out from our remodel we started to price watch.  It also gave us 6 months to save cash for the purchase!

Step 2: Find the item you want to Price Watch:

Finding the exact item (brand, size, etc) you want to price watch might take some time as well.  We read review upon review from many different websites to finally decide on the refrigerator we wanted.  David and I are all about getting a good deal BUT our top priority is quality.  So by looking at lots of product reviews, we were able to ensure that we were choosing a good quality product.

Step 3: Price Watch

The simplest way to price watch an item is using my FREE Price Tracker Spreadsheet. Once we knew which refrigerator we wanted, we priced watched for about 6 months.  So what exactly do I mean by “price watch”?  I mean, David went on a few websites every week that were selling our chosen refrigerator and kept track of the price in an excel spreadsheet like this one.  This way we could gauge what the lowest price was over time.

Step 4: Have Patience

Having patience is very important!  Because you planned ahead you don’t need to rush into anything.  Being patient and waiting for the lowest price will save you the most money.  If you rush into a purchase, you may not get the best price and you will probably regret it later!  So BE PATIENT!!!

Step 5: Purchase

After a few months of price watching our refrigerator, we were able to determine what the lowest price was.  Once we had the cash to pay for it, we waited for the price to drop to that lowest price and we bought it (along with other coupons and deals)!

Price Watching Amazon Items:

Who doesn’t love Amazon??  Amazon is amazing!!! So if you are wanting to price watch items on Amazon, there is a website called camelcamelcamel.com.  This website does what my spreadsheet does, but for Amazon items only.  Here is the description from their website:

”Our free Amazon price tracker monitors millions of products and alerts you when prices drop, helping you decide when to buy.”

Below is a price tracker from camelcamelcamel.com of the gel nail polish curing lamp from my DIY Gel Manicure Post: As you can see it shows what the lowest price was for this item and when it was that price.

Camelcamelcamel.com will send you email updates with price changes and also show you the price history of that item.  So all of the hard work is done for you.  We have used camelcamelcamel.com hundreds of times when purchasing items on Amazon, even lower priced items like toiletries and food. The only negative with camelcamelcamel.com is that you can only look for items on Amazon.  So if you want to compare the price of an Amazon item to the same item on another site you would still need to use a price tracker like my Price Tracker Spreasheet.

David actually sets up price watches on camelcamelcamel.com for items we regularly purchase like toilet paper, toiletries, cleaning supplies, paint brushes and a whole lot more.  This may only save us a few dollars, but over time those few dollars add up!  

I hope this post encourages you to save some money and start price watching!