Is Costco worth it?

[Anonymous]

Where do you all live that you're able to take advantage of the gas? I live near the one in Pentagon City. No gas station there or in the new one in Alexandria. Where is the closest gas station? According to the Costco website, it's in Fairfax.

[Anonymous]

We are BJ's Wholesale members and love it. We had a family membership to Costco but that family member who worked for Costco moved and we signed up with BJ's instead. I wish we had done it earlier. They have actual name brands and not just Kirkland's (Costco's brand) for everything, and smaller portion sizes (i.e., not enormous packages of everything) which is really great for buying produce because we can actually use it before it goes bad (unlike Costco and their 5 pound bags of everything!). PLUS, they take coupons, which is a HUGE huge huge advantage in my book. They also do their own store coupons (they post them at the front of the store weekly) and allow you to double coupons (i.e., you can use 2 or 3 or 4 coupons even if you only buy 1 of that item). I saved over $40 on our last ~$400 trip.

It's worth it alone for us to stock up the freezer on meats (chuck roast, stew beef, ground beef, chicken breasts) because the per pound price is usually below the best sale price I can find at any normal grocery store and for toiletries such as paper towels, toilet paper, razor cartridges, shampoo, etc.

[Anonymous]

But Costco bakery beats Sams or BJs or most grocery stores by a mile.

[Anonymous]

I haven't been back since diaper years. I'm game but I understand the parking situation at Pentagon is tough. Anyone have any tips for how to beat it?

[Anonymous]

I shop at Costco for a family of four. I love their baby wipes and diapers. I also buy milk, frozen chicken breast, ground beef, ground turkey, sirloin hamburger pattys, gifts (especially at Xmas, their books are so cheap too), kids clothes, squeeze applesause, canned tomato sauce, other canned goods, batteries, fill up at their gas station now, photos printed, wine, coffee (cheaper than Walmart for Dunkin Donut), splenda, fresh pesto, fresh chicken/cheese ravioli, trash bags, swiffer wet wipes, flushable wipes. We have an extra fridge that we use for the frozen meats. The chicken is individually frozen so easy to pull 3-4 out for a meal, the ground beef we separate in 5-6 1lb freezer bags, ground turkey is in 4 separate packages already. We can shop every 4-5 weeks for the month and pull out the meats we need for meals. The rotissierre chicken is great too. Sometimes I'll buy 2 and remove all the meat and freeze half the meat for another meal (enchiladas, white chicken chili, etc).

[Anonymous]

What are the typical prices for meat per pound at Costco/BJs?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Costco is basically screwed because of Amazon and Wal-Mart. They need to either open more stores or start selling more stuff online.

If Costco could deliver me my produce/meat/milk/eggs weekly, and our paper goods monthly/bimonthly, my life would be complete. They already have warehouses all over, all they would have to do is get a delivery truck/online order system. They'd blow Amazon out of the water!!

And Wal Mart just sucks. It's no match for Costco.

[Anonymous]

I love shopping at Costco so for me it's not about the savings. It's great for parties. I just think it's fun for some reason.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I haven't been back since diaper years. I'm game but I understand the parking situation at Pentagon is tough. Anyone have any tips for how to beat it?

Go during the mornings on weekdays or park in the garage on weekends and walk. Avoid it after work on Fridays, and mid-day Saturday and Sunday.

Costco has saved us money for sure, we're a family of 2 with the Executive membership (rebate covers membership costs.) I also share my membership with my out-of-state parents and never had any issues with customer service.

The savings for us come from buying their organic items and booze. Trekking to DC to get spirits is annoying though, but their Kirkland Vodka is made at the same distillery as Grey Goose at a fraction of the cost. Their coffee (whole beans in the silvery blue bags) is fantastic. We had a taste test comparison to Starbucks and it was a Costco win hands down.

We also occasionally buy bigger ticket appliances (Vitamix, Kitchenaid mixer, dehydrator, etc.) from there. Shop smart and know your prices, it's easy to come out ahead there.

[Anonymous]

No. You buy more than you need, some products get stale.

[Anonymous]

If you wear eyeglasses or contacts, it is worth it. Costco is far from my house (25 min drive), so I go about once a month. But I saved about $200 last year on eyeglasses and contacts.

The food is not that much cheaper than the farmer's market or Trader Joe's. I buy organic, and there are not a lot of choices at Costco. I like their pens and paper products, which are a lot cheaper than Office Depot. I bought a set of pans I love and some Pyrex stuff that was cheaper than most places.

When the kids were small, I couldn't buy produce there because it always spoiled before we ate it. Now that I have two teenaged boys, wow, they go through food fast. But I don't think it's a whole lot cheaper than Trader Joe's, which is where I do most of my shopping.

BTW, I boycott WalMart and Sam's Club because of the way they treat their employees. I'm not ready to abandon Amazon yet, but I have been trying to buy things from other websites, bypassing Amazon because I've heard bad things about the way they treat their employees. I do feel better shopping at Costco because I know they treat their employees reasonably well. It makes a difference to me.

[Anonymous]

No brainer for me: gas alone is usually about 20c a gallon cheaper than regular gas stations. We don't use a lot of gas - say about 50 gallons a month which makes it 600 gallons a year. So we save $120 annually just on gas.

We have Executive membership which costs $110 annually on which we get a 2% rebate on everything we buy other than gas. We usually get a rebate check of $60-80 annually which makes our net cost a maximum of $50 a year.

Also, the quality of products including meat, fish and veggies is excellent and most of the generic Kirkland products is very good. Best of all, Costco's return policy is amazing: you can return anything other than certain electronics for any reason without any time limit and get a full refund. Some electronic items have a return policy of up to 90 days.

I am an unabashed fan of Costco.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it still worth it if a) you live in a small space and don't have room to store a years' worth of TP/garbage bags/frozen food; b) your local Costco doesn't have gas; c) you're vegetarian? In theory it sounds great, just not sure the math would still work in our favor under these conditions.

And 10:28 I'm not sure what's eye-roll worthy about that. I think it's great that Costco treats their employees well and all else being equal, that makes me want to spend money there instead of Amazon.

Probably not. I would say the storage space is the biggest issue, mostly for paper and dry goods. If you're organized, you can dole out the dry goods into portions and use them gradually - but you need to have space to keep the extra until you need it. We also buy all the paper goods we can there, and 12 rolls of paper towels at a time takes up a lot of space. We are not a vegetarian family but haven't yet gotten good at taking advantage of their meat pricing (it's our first year of membership) and I think there is probably substantial room for saving there as well, so that might hurt your value too. And, of course, you need to be able to freeze a lot of it.

Thanks, this is helpful!

[Anonymous]

Costco in NE DC has gas but there are always lines.

Certain things are cheaper. But there is always the risk of impulse spending in large amounts.

Good prices on glasses!

[Anonymous]

Is there some code or other secret about getting gas? I've tried a few times in the way past and always got some error message. So I skip the gas line.