My household has went up and I'm realizing how quickly food and nonfood consumables get eaten up. Will sams club actually save me money or should I stick with my budgeting and couponing? I haven't been in a sams club in over a decade. Costco pissed me off with their aggressive and sneaky advertising via tiktok shills.
If you know what to buy it can absolutely save you money, especially if you're into doing something like meal prep. Places like Sam's Club and Costco make most of their profit from memberships, not from product markups. Some products each place sells are famous for actually losing money (like rotisserie chickens), but they accept losses on those products because they make up the losses through other products, because something as convenient for families like a fully cooked rotisserie chicken for $5 gets people in the door in the first place.
There's a famous story of the founder of Costco who said he'd "fucking kill" the current Costco CEO after the latter dared to suggest increasing the cost of the $1.50 hot dog, and he told him he needed to "figure it out."
i also recently started buying my laundry soap from them as well which i was iffy about because its pretty expensive but once you realize that jug of soap is going to last you for literal months if not the whole year you start to see how worth it it actually is. stuff like paper towels and toilet paper is good too.
I shop at Sam's primarily, and I can verify the paper towels and toilet paper are underrated. All the people I know who shop at Costco all say the Kirkland brand is damn good.
if you have kids or just enjoy chicken nuggets a bag of tyson nuggets is cheaper than normal stores and larger as well. overall the way i handle sams club and club type stores in general is just browsing what they have either online or in store then comparing whatever i look at with how much it would cost at the store i normally buy it in along with how often i actually even use that thing.
I always compare buying stuff at other places (like Walmart) to a place like Sam's: can I buy this thing more cheaply at Sam's? If so, I get it at Sam's. If Sam's doesn't even sell it, then I'll consider buying it outside of Sam's (if I can't get it on Amazon).
finally i cannot compliment their baked goods and prepared meals enough. some are very hit or miss but if you have a family to feed and you want a nice quick meal buying a rotisserie chicken is an easy solution along with some cinnamon rolls if you want a dessert.
Sam's also has legit cinnamon rolls, and used to sell apple fritters (but doesn't sell them where I shop anymore). They also have massive platters of baked goods like cookies which are great for parties.
How's the gas savings? I heard a lot of praise about that. My usual store where I get discounts is going away so I'll be looking into this. It would mostly be for nonfood consumables. The store is pretty far from my house but the gas could make it worth it because it's close to my job so I gotta go that way anyways.
Where I live it's ~20-30 cents lower than the local average, but there's a geographical factor that's playing into that number so it might be more even elsewhere.
Where I'm at, places like Sam's/Costco more or less direct the gas prices of the area. The places near Sam's/Costco are much cheaper than places that aren't, while still being more expensive than Sam's. Just today I filled up my gas (not at Sam's): if I had filled up at Sam's, it'd be about 55 cents cheaper per gallon than where I ultimately ended up getting gas.
A household member was recently told to try going gluten-free, so I have been subject to these dietary attempts at reducing wheat and carb intake. The one upside from this was being forced to try a cauliflower crusted pizza. THEY'RE FUCKING GREAT (if you are partial to a crispy and thin crust)...
I usually abhor a frozen pizza, but I always grab several boxed of frozen cauliflower pizzas at Costco now. They spice up real good with a little extra romano or parma cheese shreds and your most treasured toppings.
I can't eat standard pizzas because of something to do with pizza dough which makes me physically ill (I'm definitely not gluten intolerant though), but I have found that these pizzas are much better than I anticipated and don't give me the same issues that regular pizza dough does:
The alternative is a standard cauliflower crust pizza with only cheese, which I'm not a fan of.
