Give warehouse clubs a try

[Gabe]

Buying in bulk at warehouse clubs can help lower your budget, but it’s not the best money-saving option for everyone. You won’t save much, if anything at all, if you have to travel far to get to the store, are single and won’t consume products before they go bad or if you aren’t disciplined and [...]

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[mauimagic]

Yup - I totally agree - must be used wisely. DH and I used to call it our $100 store because we never got out without spending that amount.

This past year we could not afford to renew our membership so decided to just go without. We have saved money because we've needed to become smarter shoppers in our town (Costco is 50 minutes away). If we really feel a need for their Asiago shredded cheese, coffee, Caesar salad dressing etc - one of our friends will pick up what we want on one of their regular trips. I repay their kindness with a home cooked treat.

I really miss the gifts and holiday goodies, but that will pass!!

[tnkyfrugalgal]

My husband and I belong to Sam's Club and have for over 20 years. But since it is just my husband and I (no 2 legged children nor 4 legged ones either) we have considered through the years of dropping our membership. In the beginning years of our membership we used to buy quite a bit from Sam's. But for various reasons in more recent years we are not buying as many items as we used to so we have considered dropping our membership. Is it worth it for what we do buy now? So far, the answer is still yes. Our Sam's Club is just a 15 to 20 minute (depends on the route we take and traffic) drive away from our house. It's located in an area of our town where there are a lot of stores including a regular Wal Mart (the type before the Super Center ones) in the same parking lot as Sam's. In this same area there is one very large shopping mall plus several shopping strips full of every store you could think of plus all kinds of restuarants in this area. This makes it easy to combine other errands with running to Sam's Club. Some of the items we have always purchased from Sam's includes 25 pound bag of rice (Okay, it does take us several months to get through this but beans and rice is a staple of our diet by choice.) olive oil, large bags (not sure how many pounds) of pinto and great northern beans, American cheese (5 pound package already sliced), block or loaf of cheddar cheese or maybe mozzarella cheese, and some spices. In recent years we are also buying snack crackers (the ones with cheese or peanut butter on them), large bottle of honey, 2 pound package of raisins, and hot chocolate mix. There may be more things but I can't think of them right now. We also have bought tires from Sam's. Our Sam's club will put them on your car for you. You also get a lifetime guarantee for the tires. That is as long as you own the car which they were first put on. I am not completely sure of the guarantee as my husband handles things with the car. I do know while we were out recently someone told us our front tire was low. My husband took a look at it and decided to go to Sam's to have it checked. We were just about 2 minutes away from Sam's anyway. As it turned out both front tires had nails in them (probably picked up in our church's parking lot because a new roof was put on the church recently). Because we had bought these tires from Sam's club originally, they replaced them free of charge. So you see we still find our membership fee to Sam's Club worth every penny.