Costco

[caseysmom]

We have costco and sam's club memberships, mostly for our business but I do most of the shopping for home there also.

I love there meat and produce and I love not worrying about getting things on sale at the grocery store, I always feel like costco has fair prices and I love their dog food, I feel like it is comparable to california natural at a fraction of the price. I get my gas there also.

I get a box of contacts for 15.99, my optometrist sells them for 35.00.

[Catlady711]

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.

[Catlady711]

I decided not to get a membership today, though because the lines were HUGE!!!!! I mean, at least 10 people long in each line, and everyone had a cart full of stuff. I don't know if it's just that particular Costco, or all of them, but I will probably check out a different one in the the area tomorrow, and see if they are a little less busy. I don't want to save a little money but then have to wait 45 minutes to get through the line.

Don't necessarily be intimidated by long lines. At Sam's club today (which is a very busy day for them) the lines were like 7-10 ppl long, but they have many cashiers, and some have a hand held scanner, and while one person is ringing up someone, the one with the hand held scanner is scanning the cart of the person 3rd in line, keeps things moving very quickly! We only waited about 10 minutes to check out mine AND my mom's stuff. Plus Sam's club has a website like I mentioned above. Not sure if Costco has same benefits as a Sam's Club though.

[joycenalex]

catlady, will you come to the store with me, pretty please? you have skills!

[smokey the elder]

My area has BJ's Wholesale Clubs. They have a large variety of good stuff, very good meat, produce and heat and eat meals. Their house coffee brand is really good! My only nitpick is that they are understaffed, but they did recently put in self-checkout stations, which makes it better. Just don't go on a Friday after work before a snow storm!

[borzoimom]

When I owned my store, it was great to get what I needed in large bulk. That way I didn't have to go to the store all the time.
Since then however- with just the two of us, although it would be nice, the fact is its just worth storing such bulky items. If I had a small child/teenager, it would be worth the 50 dollars a year for snacks and drinks etc. At this point in my life- its not.

[catnapper]

Wa have a Sams Club membership. We also have a Costco by us and had an introductory membership but prefered Sams Club.

Once I get money back in line, I intend to go and buy my replacement diamond wedding band from them -- their jewelry is beautiful at a far better price than elsewhere for the same quality.

I buy anything from new mattresses, to my computer ($500 less than both Best Buy and Circuit City for the same thing) to gallons of iced tea. I also buy diapers, femine hygene products, deoderant, etc. I typically don't buy the 100 rolls of toilet paper or gallons of ketchupo (but considering how much ketchup my family goes through I might have to rethink that! ) Oh -- I also bought my glasses there! Of course they screwed up and had to remake them, but I liked them once they were fixed.... plus I saved well over $100 on them.

[Catlady711]

catlady, will you come to the store with me, pretty please? you have skills!

ROFL

It's not skills so much as just plain legwork. It's not hard to get a price book going, it's just a pain taking the extra time writing all that stuff down. You can always figure out your unit costs at home if you're just getting your price book started and not actually comparing prices yet. Although I don't recommend taking any small impatient children OR husbands with you when doing this. Impatience ends up costing money with hasty purchases or costing you your sanity with someone who 'just wants to get out of here'.

I learned about the price book method from this website about frugal living. I don't by any means do all the frugal things mentioned in their website, I do many of them when I can. I balance things out between how much I'll save vs. the time/trouble it is to save a few pennies. If I can spare the time/trouble I'll do it. There are some tips they have that are outright ridiculous, but most tips are really helpful. You have to use your own judgment when evaluating them.

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