Saving Money at Costco

For once, I actually saved Money at Costco! No really, I managed to go to Costco, buy food and leave with out spending all of the money I had. Costco is one of these places that you go to with good intentions, "I'll just buy a year's worth of toilet paper and then I'm outta there," and then, you notice, that a huge box of note paper is only $6.99, and that bag of Chex Mix big enough to serve a middle school is on sale for $3.99, and twelve canisters of salt are only $4.99,! Before you know it you've spent three hundred dollars and your pantry is stuffed with enough table salt to clear a Cleveland street in February after the biggest ice storm of the century.

Check this out. I went to buy meat and chicken for the Labor Day Weekend and I walked out pretty much with that. I spent less than sixty-four dollars and bought enough chicken, steak, and turkey burger to last long past the weekend. It was a miracle. The Costco check out clerk said it was the smallest bill of the day. My secret? I bought no beverages and concentrated on mostly unprocessed foods. Oh, and I bought nothing that wasn't food, despite the fact that they had a 320 gig hard drive for only ninety-nine bucks!

I have an unofficial way to check myself when I go grocery shopping. I figure out how many adult dinners (main course only) that I can make out of the food I buy and then divide the total of my bill by that number. Anything less than $10.00 a meal is cheaper than eating out... I live in LA, it's pricey to eat. So if I buy $100 worth of food, and I can make 20 dinners out of it, then my meals are worth about $5.00 each. I think that this Costco trip made(at best guess)26 adult meals consisting of quality meats for about $2.50 a meal. Try it next time you go to Costco and maybe you'll leave with some of your money left in your pocket.