Recession Me

Costco sells a 70 ounce box of Kellogg’s Frosted Mini-Wheats for $8.49, or $0.121 per ounce.

Safeway sells a 24 ounce box of Frosted Mini-Wheats for a new low price of $4.49, or $0.187 per ounce. Wow! So, Costco is saving me $4.62 per box, compared to the Safeway per ounce price.

If I consume 2×70 ounce boxes per month, my annual savings is $110.88.

Safeway is selling a 96 load jug of Tide 2x Ultra for $17.99. That’s $0.187 per load.

That’s better than the per load price at Costco and Target for HE detergent.

However, we’re not talking about a lot of money being saved here. For 96 loads, the Safeway sale price will save you 38 cents total. Not per load. Not per ounce. 38 cents for the entire jug.

However, if you purchased the Tide HE laundry detergent at the regular price of $21.99, or $0.229 per load, you lost out on $3.65 compared to the Costco per load price. Sure, that’s more than 38 cents, but we’re talking about saving a grande cup of coffee. You would save a lot more money by skipping that premium cup of coffee once a week for a year.

Costco sells a 10 pack of Brita filters for $41.99. The math is really easy for this one. $4.199 per filter.

Target sells a 6 pack of Brita filters for $29.69, or $4.948 per filter. If you change your filter every two months, that’s six filters per year or an annual savings of $4.50 by buying in bulk from Costco.

Costco sells an expanding mix of Asian foods. In addition to Ling Ling potstickers and jasmine rice, I have also seen edamame, shrimp won ton soup, and steamed pork buns. During my latest visit, I spotted a 32 ounce bottle of Lee Kum Kee Premium Oyster Sauce for $6.89.

So, how competitive is the cost of Asian food at Costco compared that from an Asian supermarket?

99 Ranch sells an 18 ounce bottle of Lee Kum Kee Premium Oyster Sauce for $3.99, or $0.222 per ounce. The Costco per ounce price is $0.215. To be fair, I should be looking at the price of the 32 ounce bottle at 99 Ranch, but I could not find it stocked on their shelves. I could only find a large bottle of the LKK Panda Brand Oyster Sauce at 99 Ranch.

99 Ranch sells all varieties of Berkeley milk for $3.79 per gallon.

I can taste the difference between different brands of ice cream and yogurt, but milk is pretty much milk to me. So, one gallon of homogenized milk for $3.79 at 99 Ranch or two gallons for $3.99 at Costco? Even if you cannot finish a gallon in a week, two gallons at Costco seems to be the way to go.

Costco sells Kirkland Signature homogenized milk 2×1 gallon for $3.99 and Kirkland Signature nonfat milk 2×1 gallon for $3.19. You have to buy 2 gallons at a time. No mix and match, unless you visit the Hawaii Kai Costco where you can purchase individual gallons. However, the pricing will probably be different.

Safeway advertises Lucerne Milk 2×1 gallon for $4.28 for whole, 2%, 1% and fat free. You can mix and match if people in your household prefer different types of milk, so you are not committed to buying 2 gallons of the same type of milk.

Finally, Piazza, a Palo Alto supermarket, offers Our Dairy Milk for $2.00 per gallon with coupon. You don’t have to buy two. In fact, you are limited to a maximum of 2 gallons. In this comparison, Costco has the lowest prices for milk. If your household can finish 2 gallons of nonfat milk per week, you will save $0.81 per week over Piazza’s advertised special and $1.09 over Safeway’s everyday low price. In a year, that represents a savings of $42.12 to $56.68.

How special are advertised specials? Usually, I just toss the marketing flyers straight into the recycling bin. However, this time, I decided to take a closer look. I buy laundry detergent from Costco under the assumption that more = cheaper. But is it?

Costco sells a 170 oz jug of Tide HE Liquid for $20.99. Actually, the true measure is loads and not liquid volume because liquid laundry detergent can come in varying concentrations. The more concentrated, the less needed. So, Tide sells for $0.191 per load from Costco.

At Target, Tide 2x Ultra HE Clean Breeze sells for $0.219 per load. Of course, neither of these two products were on sale.

Safeway will sell you Tide 2x Liquid for $0.177 per load with Club Card and coupon.

Rite Aid has tagged Tide laundry detergent with a Red Hot Specials badge. At $0.187 per load, this deal is not as special as the one from Safeway, but hotter than the price from Costco and Target.

Longs Drugs also has Tide on sale for $0.170 per load if you have their ExtraCare card. So, the winner is Longs Drugs, which beat Costco by just over 2 cents per load. If you run one load of whites and one load of coloreds each week, that’ll come to 104 loads per year. Saving $0.021 per load nets $2.18 for the entire year.

Apple sells the iPod Touch 8GB for $229.00 and the 16GB for $299.00.

If you don’t want to pay full retail, Costco sells the 8GB for $214.99 and the 16GB for $274.99, which is a few cents more than Amazon. I was really surprised that the iPod Touch 8GB was selling for more than $200 because it really isn’t too different from the original iPhone 8GB. Imagine that. If you upgrade from the original iPhone to the new iPhone 3GS, your 2-year-old phone has a residual value of $200. That shows how much of a game changer the iPhone really is. The touchscreen of the IPod Touch/iPhone is so intuitive that when I recently picked up an iPod Nano and iPod Classic at the Apple Store, it took me about 30 seconds to get reacquainted with the scroll wheel, which feels less than cutting edge at this point.

Another Target v. Costco showdown. This time, Target is having a sale!

Target sells an 8-oz tube of Crest Whitening plus Scope toothpaste for $2.99. Regular price $3.79. Is this sale item a bargain or not?

Costco sells 5×8-oz. tubes of Crest Whitening + Scope toothpaste for $12.99. If you buy 5 tubes from Target, the sale price is $14.95 while the regular price would have been $18.95.

So, even when Target has a product on sale, Costco’s regular price beats it, but only by $1.96 provided you are willing to buy in bulk.