Is getting a Costco or Sam’s Club membership worth it? Does a wholesale club membership really save money?
It’s not as cut and dry as you might think.
For some people a wholesale club membership is a no-brainer, but for others it’s a huge waste of money.
How about for YOU? Is a Sam’s Club, Costco or BJ’s club membership worth it to you? Here are some ways to figure out for yourself if it will save you money or be a waste of money.
Do the math
It’s easy to get tricked into thinking that buying in bulk is a better deal if you don’t do the math. My Sam’s Club makes it really easy to compare prices by putting the price per unit (per oz, per item, etc) right on the price sign.
As you compare the club prices with traditional grocery stores (or stores like Winco and Aldi), you’ll see that some items are in fact a great deal, while others are much more expensive than what you would otherwise pay.
I am careful to buy only the items I know are actually a deal at Sam’s Club. I get almost everything else at Winco, which has lower prices on most items. If you want to shop at one store and get everything you need, you’ll probably spend more at a wholesale club store.
Beware of impulse buys
Impulse shopping is extra dangerous somewhere like Sam’s Club or Costco. You need to control your impulse shopping so that you’re not spending all the money you should be saving by getting a great bulk deal.
If you’re craving chocolate as you’re cruising through the store, you can’t just grab a little bag of M&Ms. You either get a box with 50 little bags or a giant 5lb bag, both which have a much higher price tag than the little treat you would have grabbed at the regular grocery store.
Impulse buys at the Target dollar spot or the Walmart clearance section are much easier on the wallet than spontaneously springing for a new patio set.
If you find yourself buying things you would not have purchased at a regular store, things that weren’t even on your list, then having a wholesale club membership might not be a good idea for you.
Watch the expiration
Buying in bulk may not be a good investment for your family if the product would go bad before you could consume it.
At Costco, milk is sold in two gallon bundles. If you won’t drink two gallons before it will go bad, then it’s not worth the savings (unless you get familiar with my tips for what to do with milk that is about to expire)!
If a club membership is worth it to you in other regards, there are ways to avoid wasting food. For example, when I open a huge can of pineapple tidbits, I use what I need then freeze what’s left in a couple of quart size freezer bags. Knowing what you can freeze and how to not let your produce go bad will solve a lot of your problems!
Consider the cost of a wholesale club membership
Be sure to take into consideration the price of the membership when figuring out if it’s a good investment for you.
Here’s how I look at it:
We have a membership at Sam’s Club which costs $50 per year (If you’re new you can get a Sam’s Club membership for just $25 right now!).
That’s roughly $4 a month. I need to save more than $4 over what I would pay at traditional grocery stores to make the membership worth it.
We more than pay for our membership just in the savings on milk. Where I live, milk at Sam’s Club is around a dollar less per gallon than it is at regular grocery stores. The savings on milk alone is enough to cover the cost of the membership. The 16 oz container of fresh baby spinach is also at least a dollar less than I find anywhere else. The cheese, string cheese, sour cream, and cottage cheese are all much cheaper too.
I like to pay for our membership out of our regular grocery budget just to remind us that there is a price to the savings we get with our membership. Plus, it’s what makes the most sense for us since we most often use our membership to buy groceries.
Get a deal on a wholesale membership club if you can
Obviously, the better the price you can get on the price of a wholesale club membership, the more likely it is to be valuable to you.
If you’re a new member (or your membership expired more than 6 months ago), you can sometimes find great deals on Groupon, Zulily and Living Social . I’ll keep this post up-to-date with the current deals available for Sam’s Club and Costco.
Here’s the current best deal:
- Right now you can get a a Sam’s Club membership for just $25! This is 50% off!
So will a club membership save you money?
The only one who can know if a membership club will really save you money is you. Don’t make assumptions based on what friends, family, or even well-intentioned bloggers choose to do.
Whether or not a club membership is worth it to you or not may change depending on your season in life. We have not always had a membership, but right now it really makes sense for us.
Taking everything into consideration, if a wholesale membership club is worth it to you, don’t be afraid to go for it!
If it doesn’t make sense for you at this point in your life, don’t feel like you’re missing out.
How about you?
- Is a wholesale membership club worth it to you? Why or why not?
- What club membership do you have? What makes it worth it to you?
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Ever since we moved closer to an Aldi, a club membership makes a lot less sense though I agree– the gas savings as mentioned by Wealthy Wishing (or in your case, the milk savings!) can make it worth it. Definitely important to do the math! I’ve even found that sometimes I can save the most at normal grocery stores thanks to coupons and cash back apps/rebates.
The discounted gas at Costco alone can pay for the $50-55 membership if you drive a lot. You just have to be willing to wait in those crazy lines! (At least here in the Toronto Area). Within the store, you still need to know your prices and be sure not to waste any food. Thanks for the info!
For us it is worth it. There is a BJ’s 2 minutes from the college my son attends. He lives at home and commutes. They have a gas station attached. It is the cheapest gas around. He always fills up there. That alone makes it worth it. My family also uses my membership. My parents don’t have one near them so when they visit me, I take them so they can stock up. BJs also allows coupons so I save more that way.
For the past 2 or 3 years we have carefully considered before renewing our SAMS club membership. We do renew at my husband’s health fair for work – when we get a $20 discount and some other free food perks for renewing at the health fair. So, that actually makes the decision easier. Our SAMS club is about 10 minutes from our home. So, it’s easy to visit and we don’t “overshop”. We go with a list and have several items that we purchase regularly. The 1 pound tub of organic spinach for under $4 can’t be beat unless I find marked down greens at Kroger which are close to their expiration date. The other item which always sways our opinion is the real maple syrup for $10.50. We only eat real maple syrup and go through about one of the 32 oz. containers every 4-5 weeks. The final element are the markdowns. When SAMS has items that they mark down to crazy low prices, I stock up. I don’t buy junk food. But, sometimes it is great food for a really low price. For instance, organic tea was recently heavily discounted to $.91 for box of 100 bags. I bought 5! We probably save our membership in buying the super markdown items every year. Ultimately, we will probably continue to get the membership unless we lose the extra $20 savings through my husband’s work. Then, the expense will be harder to justify.
My mom and I share our Sams membership. Gas alone pays for us. Tires, dove body wash, fresh produce, cascade gel packs,trash bags, TP and paper towels to name a few. Our Sams is a mile from us. Iove the idea of the lg quantities so I can shop 2-3x year and be done.
I’ve shopped Sams for most likely 20 years. Only club type place here. I’ve always found it easy to justify the membership as several things we routinely use are much cheaper there. It’s about 90 minutes away though so I only get there a couple times of year now. I really stock up when I go.
My membership expires in a few weeks. I’m debating whether to renew. With their changes, dropping the business membership ($35) and requiring Plus for early entrance, I’m just not sure. I need to get into the store very early in the day so would have to spring for the $100 membership. Not happy. On the other hand, I order a few things off the website in between trips. The new free shipping on those items would cover the increased cost.
I shop with a pretty strict list. I’m not an impulse buyer. In fact I usually under-buy and regret it later. I do allow for a few food treats, usually specialty cheeses, though I don’t go crazy and do watch my prices.
Another reason for my debate is all the new ‘store brand’ items. Last time I was there so many things I usually prefer name brand were gone and replaced with store brand. I tried a few, wasn’t impressed, so won’t buy again. This has dramatically reduced my “always buy’ items. I don’t buy a huge variety of items so less items means less savings. Add in the distance and time to the store and it becomes harder to decide if memebership is still worthwhile.
Toilet paper is one area where I save money at Sam’s Club. I broke the price down by the square foot to make sure I was getting a good deal, and regular price at Sam’s is still a better deal than Walmart, with coupons. I usually try to wait until it’s an instant savings item, though, which makes it an even better score. Our Sam’s Club is quite a trip – about an hour – so we go once every few months. BUT, I got a great deal on an upgrade to Sams Plus for a year, which lets me order online and have most items shipped for free. I’m not sure I’ll renew the Plus membership, since I’m unlikely to get as good a deal on the renewal, but for now, I’m taking advantage!
I think we definitely save money with our Costco membership. We have learned the items that are actually good buys for us and tend to keep buying those. We are also VERY aware of making sure that we use what we buy. So we either buy items that have a long shelf life or that we can freeze and use over time. I would estimate that very little of what we buy gets thrown out.
We’ve also used Costco for some bigger purchases that have definitely saved us money. My wife and I took a wonderful vacation to Cancun last year for our ten year anniversary, and the resort deal we got through Costco Vacations was 20% cheaper than anywhere else we found, and the place was awesome through and through.
I used to have a Sam’s membership that was paid for by my husband’s then-employer, but some of the items I bought when I had kids at home (peanut butter being one) I don’t need very much of, now. Also, we shifted more and more to organic, which Sam’s wasn’t great at, at least then it wasn’t; I don’t know about now. And of course, a membership would no longer be free to us after he changed employment.
I always carried a price book. I found cooking oil in the 48 ounce bottles in the store brand at my grocery store beat the per ounce price of the huge jugs of name brand at Sam’s. That was one of the surprises I found; there were some others.
The final straw for me was my frustration at things that would disappear. I would faithfully buy my husband’s coffee there, only to have that brand go off the shelves, never to reappear, and a brand he hated show up instead. That happened on several items, and after a few shopping trips in which I came back with one small box of items, and considering I had to drive a distance to shop there, I let my membership go. I now work near a Costco, but I haven’t decided if I will try that or not.
I have a Costco membership specifically for pet prescriptions. You don’t need a membership to use the pharmacy, but members save even more money.
I’m super nerdy when it comes to grocery shopping and budgeting for such (I’m sure you can relate), so I actually wrote a whole post where I compared the three grocery stores I shop at most (Smith’s (Kroger), Sam’s Club, and Walmart) in their regular prices on the products I buy most.
And I was actually pretty shocked because naively I had assumed–like you said–that buying in bulk would almost always yield the greatest savings (unless I used coupons at the other stores). It was a good exercise for me though, because it taught me what a “good” price actually was so I would know when to snatch up a lot of something in bulk. (Now I can totally see why some extreme frugal people even keep a binder of prices (or app in their phone) that they take shopping with them!)
If you’re curious about the post I did when I did the comparisons, it’s here:
http://www.toloveandtolearn.com/2017/11/08/grocery-store-face-off-smiths-vs-walmart-vs-sams-club/
We let our Costco membership go last fall after I had an issue with customer service. We don’t have Sams or BJs around here. So far I don’t miss it – in fact my Mom took me on Mother’s Day weekend and they didn’t have half the things I needed (things that I consider to be “Costco standards!).” The only thing I truly miss is the big bags of frozen potstickers – they were a staple in my house and the smaller bags cost about 3x as much. Between Target.com and Amazon, I’ve been able to get the majority of things we used to buy for the same price or better, without paying an additional membership fee.
We recently let our Sam’s Club membership expire. It’s a 25-minute drive in a town that we very rarely go to so we only go 3-5 times a year. We were able to save on toilet paper and parchment paper. My husband also got his coffee beans there and energy drinks when they were on sale.
When we lived where they had Costco & Sam’s club we got the Costco membership because they had a larger selection of organics. They also carried the Lindsay Natural’s black olives that we enjoy for $1 less a can. We go through 2-3 cans a week, the savings on that alone paid for the membership. When we move in 3 weeks we plan to check out the local Costco and see if they’ve got the items that we enjoyed there previously. If they do we’ll get a membership again.