It's kinda funny this thread should come up today, since this afternoon my mom & I went to Sam's Club (like a costco) and renewed our membership card for the year ($40).

Every week I set aside about $25-30 in an envelope just for Sam's Club. We go about once every 3 months. I usually spend about $200 each time. A few tips for going to a warehouse place...

1) Start a grocery price book. Just a simple notebook you divide into sections like Dairy, Sauces, Frozen, Health & Beauty etc. Keep a pencil and calculator with it (I bought a cheap datebook organizer for mine) Everytime you go to a store (grocerystore, or a wally's world, Target or whatever), find the normal products and brands you buy at each store, write down a code for the store (K = kroger, W = wal-mart, SC = sam's club, M = mompopstore etc), date, name of product, size, price, and PRICE PER UNIT (whether that is oz, gal, per piece, whatever works for that item). The IMPORTANT part is the PRICE PER UNIT.

Once you have a reasonably decent idea of what you normally pay for the items per unit, and it's more common sale prices, then when you go to a warehouse store you'll know if buying that jumbo sized box of Splenda is really the bargian they want you to think of it as. The more items you can get into your price book, the better it will help you with supposed 'sale prices' from store to store, and with different sized items.

For example here is an example of an entry in my price book....


Paper/Plastic

K - 7/06 - Kroger brand Gallon Zip bags - 30 ct - $3.49 - .11¢ per bag
W - 7-06 -Ziplock brand Gallon Freezer bags - 30 ct - $3.18 - .10¢ per bag
S C - 2/07 - Ziplock brand Gallon Freezer bags - 152 ct - $9.68 - .06¢ per bag

As you can clearly see, the price for the OFF BRAND zip bags were the highest price per unit, the Wal-mart price Ziplock BRAND better and the cheapest overall cost even over off brand, and the Sam's club price the best per unit cost!

This is not always the case....

Snacks/goodies

W - 8/06 - Poptarts - 8 ct - $1.67 - .20¢ per tart
W - 8/06 - Poptarts - 12 ct - $2.18 - .18¢ per tart
M - Poptarts - 8 ct - $1.26 *sale price - .16¢ per tart
S C - 8/06 - Poptarts - 36 ct - $6.43 - .17¢ per tart

As you can see the sale price at my local store is cheaper than Sam's club, about comparable with regular Wal-mart prices for a more reasonable size. It also shows you whether buying the 8 ct or 12 ct saves money or not.

2) Any product you use alot, and that will keep (paper/plastic products, canned goods etc) you can store in your home, and is worth the seemingly higher prices for a better PER UNIT cost. I have quite a set of racks in my basement. I could be snowbound for 3 months and still have cleaning products, toilet paper and canned goods! lol

3) If possible share a memebership with a parent or sibling. If a parishable product is too large for either of you to use up before it goes bad, you can split the cost of it and share it, and still get the benefits of the lower per unit cost. Today my mom and I split the costs of a case of baked beans and campbells soup. So we each got an amount of both we could actually use, but didn't have to pay as much.

4) Be prepared to spend a great deal more time for a while when you're starting your price book, and updating it. However once you've got the basics, it gets much faster, with only calculating new price per unit's at other stores, or figuring out if your local 'sale' is really a deal compared to another store.

If you're willing to spend the extra time doing all that, then it does save you money to belong to a warehouse store. We've cut our grocery bill in half between the price book and the Sam's Club membership. With Sam's club we can log in online to check prices and things before we shop, but their website is a PAIN to navigate, it's usually faster to just go to the store. But if we wanted to deal with the website, we could have our items shipped to us, or have them ready and waiting at the store for pick up.

Trust me, a price book is the way to go, whether you ever get a membership to a warehouse club or not.