Do you have a warehouse membership card?

[getforfree]

Re: Do you have a warehouse membership card?

I agree. Yesterday we went to costco, got a free pass. The prices are even higher per ounce than I usually pay when I use coupon. And you have to buy a huge package and pay the membership.

[lrjohnson]

Re: Do you have a warehouse membership card?

I had the best experiences with non-food items at Costco. Food seems to be a lot of name brand stuff.

[stngymama]

Re: Do you have a warehouse membership card?

It all comes down to price comparisons. We found that stuff like contact lenses [at Costco] were a LOT cheaper, even factoring in the membership cost.
I'm eyeing the Cuisinart (for Christmas of course ).
It can be really tempting to buy those big packages of snack food..never bring a hungry kid along (esp the dh)!
Anyhow, go as a guest first!

[sweeps]

Re: Do you have a warehouse membership card?

Sometimes Costco offers coupons - for example, buy 1 get 1 free on Electrasol dishwasher tabs. Their custom cakes for special occasions are a fantastic deal. Getting pictures developed there is a good deal. Milk's pretty cheap. But there's a lot of stuff that is hit or miss, and some stuff is ridiculously priced.

[poundwise]

Re: Do you have a warehouse membership card?

In general, I believe that if you are watchful for sale items and use coupons, you'll do better to forget about joining a warehouse club. The exception, in my view, would be if you do not have time, or know that you are not disciplined enough, to utilize sales and/or coupons regulalry. Another would be if you happen to have a large family and use large quanitities of paper products, cleaning products, etc., thus likely making bulk purchases at least as good as any other means of saving.

I am not a member of any club and do not intend to join either SAM'S or BJ'S, both of which are in my area, however, I do have an 'invitation' for a trial 60-day membership at BJ'S, so I may check it out - just in case.

[katwoman]

Re: Do you have a warehouse membership card?

I don't belong to any.

First, none are within an acceptable driving distance and second, I do fantastic with sales/coupons.

If one were within blocks of my home, I would join for the sake of convenience only.

[lrjohnson]

Re: Do you have a warehouse membership card?

Oh, forgot to mention....my area has particularly high prices on gas (news will state the highest price in US and we'll match....or be higher). Costco gas is significantly cheaper....like 20 cents a gallons....

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

Re: Do you have a warehouse membership card?

We buy wine and, once in a while, hard liquors at Costco. Before we joined, we figured the savings on wine alone would pay our membership. Which wines they have is variable, but there is always something acceptable and less expensive than anywhere else I know to buy the same product. Also I bake bread. The cheapest way to buy flour has been at Aldi's or in the supermarkets before the fall & winter holidays. But at Costco I get the high gluten flour (which I prefer for bread) for the same price per pound as Aldi's all-purpose flour. They have a really good price on shelled pecans in the fall.

[ski]

Re: Do you have a warehouse membership card?

It is super easy to buy more than what you need.
We do have a membership to Sams and I think it helps for TP, papertowels, dishwashing detergent.
We went the other day to purchase things for my sons 1 year b-day party and we did really well. I wrote a list and stuck to it, a great suggestion from this website.

[elcheapo]

Re: Do you have a warehouse membership card?

nope, it is not worth for my family

[flash]

Re: Do you have a warehouse membership card?

We do, but it's the numbers thing. Rx is cheaper there, and we get 3% cash back. There are a few things we do use bulk in, too.

Absolutely never stock up at the warehouses for groceries, though! They are good solid get-you-through prices, but if you do the sale/coupon stockpile, you get much better deals. If the warehouse is the only place you shop, still, makes no difference to stockpile because the price probably is not going to vary much over a month.

[Bookie]

Re: Do you have a warehouse membership card?

I have a Sam's card that came free as part of a workplace promotion.

Like others, I use it only for bulk purchases of easily stored items, paper good and the like, and only after careful price comparisons. For small households, it probably doesn't really pay. I know I won't renew when my "freebie" expires later this year.

[story3girl]

Re: Do you have a warehouse membership card?

We got a sam's club membership from my future in-laws for christmas. We use it to buy certain things my fiance insists upon (like individual serving apple sauce), to get bananas and certain other fruit and vegetables when they're not in season here, and to stock up on things like gum, toilet paper, and paper towels when we start to get low and I can't find a sale.

We actually have the price point calculated for gum (which we go through a TON of), so that we always have a bulk box in the cabinet and then buy as much as we can whenever we can get it elsewhere for less than the bulk price. We go through periods where we have an entire cabinet full of gum, and then we go through slim periods and have to buy another bulk box.

[pyotr]

Re: Do you have a warehouse membership card?

Costco, BJ's and Sam's are a waste of money for us. They cost us more than we can ever save because they tend to entice us into buying things in huge quanitities that we would never otherwise buy. Costco and BJ's particularly are good at enticing us into buying the brand-name luxury items like neutrogena shampoos and soaps in large quantities (with coupons) or brand-name cereals like LIFE in double packs with coupons. It's actually much cheaper to buy the generic Aldi cereals without coupons in small single boxes. This was based on a 3years of Quicken analysis of our spending patterns. Once we stopped paying into one of these and started grocery shopping at Aldi's and buying the few other household stuff at places like Lowe's, Target and Walmart, our expenses definitely went down by hundreds of dollars per year.

[lrjohnson]

Re: Do you have a warehouse membership card?

I should be grateful for being untemptable. I may be one of the few people who routinely can go through the line at Cosco with less than $10 in purchases. (The bags of spinach are great deals in my area, and usually I'll get one other fruit or veggie thing-depends on season and freshness. For some fruit items Costco is a good deal, for others, very much not.)