This weekend is a first of its kind, as far as I know. Anyone can get into Sam’s Club free of charge with no upcharge or additional fee on in-store purchases. This is good this weekend only through August 8. I plan to take advantage of this, stay tuned to find out what I might buy.
First, I don’t have a Sam’s Club membership right now, but did for two of the last three years because I bought infant formula there. I ordered a 6-pack case online for less, with membership included, than what I could find formula anywhere else. That alone justified it. But, a Sam’s Club or Costco membership isn’t generally worth it for my family because of how we shop for groceries.
Is a Sam’s Club Membership Worth it?
There are four types of grocery shoppers (this article only covers three, but I have since broken out “stockpile shopper” into coupon shopper and super saver shopper and teach the differences in my classes) and we are sales flyer shoppers that use coupons on top of store sales. With this shopping approach there are very few items my family uses at Sam’s Club that I cannot get cheaper elsewhere, if I am willing to wait for the sale with a coupon. However, some folks don’t shop that way. They are what I call everyday shoppers. They walk in, buy what they want or need when they need it and hope to get the lowest retail price by choosing their store carefully. For those shoppers, then Sam’s Club or Costco might make sense. Especially since they don’t accept manufacturer-issued coupons, although they occasionally have store coupons.
The only way to know for sure if a warehouse club membership is for you is to price compare 10-15 items your family routinely buys between a warehouse club and a low-price retailer like Aldi, Target or Walmart (don’t compare to a grocery store, since they will absolutely have much higher everyday prices), figure out if you will truly save money each month, then convert that monthly savings to an annual savings, and then add in the membership cost. If you still think you’ll come out ahead, then it makes sense for you.
All in all, it all depends on how you shop and what you buy.
What Carrie Buys at Sam’s Club
Do you want to know what I plan to price this weekend at Sam’s Club and may buy? 93% lean ground turkey, which used to be under $2/lb whereas Aldi sells it for $2.09/lb, yeast for baking (which I plan to freeze so it’ll last for a looooong time), plus we need eggs and milk so I’ll pick them up there. I will probably skip all the produce, since I don’t expect Sam’s Club to beat Aldi’s prices, but I’ll keep my eyes open for any deals there.
Your turn: Will this free pass get you in the door to Sam’s Club this weekend?
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About Carrie Rocha
We use Sam’s a ton since we have kids at home and it is easier since we need fruit and veggies weekly. They are pretty close to Aldi on fruits, and we can go to just one store to get it all.
We normally get:
Chicken at about 1.97 a pound in 6 pound packages
93% Turkey at ~2.00 a pound
Strawberries ~3.70 for 2 pounds
Milk ~1.90 for a gallon
Peppers ~.90 per or getting the log red peppers for 5.50 for the big bag
Cereal
Apples
We use Sam’s for ground turkey (at $1.89/lb it’s much cheaper than ground beef and “better” for you), bread is consistently 2/$3, milk is almost always cheaper even when it’s on sale at Rainbow and 18 ct. eggs are a good price there. They used to have a really great price on tortilla shells but now they are packaged differently and you don’t get as many. That’s the one thing about warehouse clubs is sometimes they don’t carry something anymore. We have also found good prices on things like mattresses and TVs. They have a 100% buy back guarantee as long as you have a receipt which never expires. I think that’s great!
I use Sam’s for my no name claritin/zyrtec type drugs. Cheaper than even the better Walgreens and CVS sale combined with coupon. (Except for the occasional free sale.) I think it is like $15 for 300 pills or something like that. As I take it daily year round, it is cheaper.
I buy 5lb bags of carrots – $2.54; celery hearts – forget the price right now, but cheaper than the regular stores; 10lb bags of big potatoes for about .30/pound; yeast; vanilla; chicken breasts; lean ground beef; turkey bacon. Sometimes we’ll buy fruit. Depends on what the price is. I recently bought blueberries and have bought strawberries and grapes and apples. I have also bought eggs and milk there occasionally.
Oh, forgot about the drugs. I bought the Benadryl equivalent , 400 pills for around $4 and ibuprophen was about the same.
Found my price list – celery hearts are $2.27; 15 lbs of potatoes for .30/lb; canola oil, 5 quarts for $7.98
They also have 2/$4.98 of the Frito Lay Family Size Chips. Not always cheaper, but good for feeding the teens.
When we had a membership, we used it for milk, cheese choc chips and redi-whip- the low price on that was the icing on the cake! (or should I say the topping on the sundae?) bad puns aside, we still beg bags of the good 60% cacao chips whenever we hear of someone going. Haven’t found an equal deal on those yet.
I will say that I prefer spending the little bit more (at Costco, but still) for my produce than Aldi or sales at the other chains because 99% of the time lasts and is better. I have found on these strawberry deals this summer, the price is great, but they are YUCK! Not worth it then…
I have NEVER found good produce at Aldi’s. Every time I have gone, it is sparse and looks awful. I like Sam’s club for the Taquito’s (one of my son’s all time favorites!) because you cannot beat the price on those anywhere else! the are usually close to $7.00 at Rainbow/Cub and you get 20 or maybe 30 in a box. At Sam’s, you get a box of somewhere around 60 for 11 or 12 dollars… MUCH nicer pricing!! I also like their fresh meats.
I agree with Shannon on the produce at Aldi’s. I like to pay a little more and get good produce. I prefer Costco over Sam’s but do not have a membership to either store. I can’t shop there because the products are too large for my consumption. I think its great if you have a big family to feed. I do like to go there with a friend and browse around maybe once or twice a year.
I third Shannon and Tami about the produce. I’m just NOT sold on Aldi’s because of the quality of the produce I’ve gotten there. Sam’s Club strawberries have never failed us – we love them so much more than grocery store strawberries.
I love the Colby-Jack cheese chunks there – we can eat a TON of that and go through it faster than I can find it on sale at the grocery store, usually. And I refuse to do store brand cheese, at least for Colby Jack, because it just falls apart. I also love the big bottles of Vanilla, and we supply my mother with her maraschino cherries from Sam’s. We also buy juice boxes there – with three kids, we can go through a ton, especially in the summer because they are so easy to just keep in the car for when they get thirsty. I also often stock up on generic meds – Tylenol, Ibubrofen, Alleve, infant Tylenol. We started our membership at Sam’s specifically for the infant formula, but we’ve let it go this year, just because of how well we’ve been doing thanks to PYD! But for a free day like this, I might go stock up on some staples!
Does anyone have any opinion on the gas prices @ Sam’s? They never have it posted, so I’m always SO curious how good of a deal Sam’s customers are getting!!
We pay for our membership in gas savings alone. They are .06 to .15 / gal cheaper than Holiday which is a block away. My husband travels by car for work so we go through a lot of gas. They usually only change the price of gas in the morning (per the guy that works there) so when all others are raising it during the day, Sam’s will stay lower.
OK, so my family and I made a trip to Sam’s Club today to get a few things that I was excited about. Well, first the ground turkey is now $2.17/lb and it is $2.09 regular price at Aldi, so I was sad. Their milk has gone up a lot too and was $1.99, so I waited and got it on sale at Rainbow for a penny less. The only true deal I found for things my family uses was brown gravy mix. Last winter I started to buy envelopes of it to use along with homemade meatballs I make ahead and keep in the freezer and mashed potatoes from the freezer for a quick meal. Where I pay $0.33 per envelope their container came out to $0.04 per envelope. That’s a steal. Oh, plus we got a slug of eggs because we eat them like mad and some vinegar ($0.10 cheaper than generic at Walmart)
But, we ended up leaving everything at the store and walking out empty handed because my check was declined. Weird, as I know there’s money in the account so I called the customer service # while I stood in teh store. I was told that my bank is not part of the Telecheck network, therefore the $12.19 and I was trying to pay could not be verified as actually being in my account and therefore I’d have to use an alternate form of payment. I wasn’t about to use the ATM and pay a bunch of fees to get cash for $12 in groceries, especially when brown gravy was the only real deal, so we left everything there and came home.
I usually go to Sam’s once a year and pay the 10% upcharge because they carry really nice paper cups with lids. I use about 5 per week instead of going to Caribou, Starbucks or the local coffee places, and make my own tea or coffee before I leave the house. It saves me quite a bit of money on impulse beverage purchases. I also keep a few in my car, they can be very handy.
Sam’s also has a really good price on those air cans for dusting. I have a black keyboard and air blast it every day to get rid of dust and hair.
So over the weekend I was able to pick up those two things without the upcharge. It wouldn’t have been worth it if I had to go out of my way, but I was in the area.