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I want to live like Costco people

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Re: I want to live like Costco people

#201

Post by jedberg »

BizarroLand wrote: post #86
qrush wrote: post #6

I just got (at 38) a Costco membership this year, thanks to my in-laws gifting us a membership. There's another huge discount retailer here in Boston (BJs) that I have gone to for years, but Costco is another 10+ min drive away so I've resisted thus far. I will say... I'm still adjusting. - No aisle signs or labels anywhere. I understand the retail strategy here but the lack of efficiency in MY experience kills me. C…

The #1 thing for me at Costco is the gas. I have the credit card, so I get 5% cash back on the first $7,000 of gas I purchase in a year. Being as that, as of now I am spending ~$70/week on fuel, I will not hit the max for the year. But 5% cash back on ($70*52=)$3640 means I get $182/yr by default back to cover the $130 annual cost of the executive membership. Doesn't sound like a good deal until you also factor in th…

There are so many people like you (who only use it for gas) that they are now building Costco gas stations not attached to a warehouse. Massive stations like the ones near the warehouses.

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#202

Post by tristor »

This is kind of a weird take on Costco, but I also somewhat resonate with it. I've always seen Costco as somehow the perfect aspirational ideal of the American middle class. Personally, I love Costco, and my love for it has grown as I've become more affluent, because I can actually attain that aspirational lifestyle. On any given day in my local Costco, I'm probably the highest earning person in the store, but that doesn't matter because I want the exact same Kirkland Signature toilet paper as the next guy. As someone who often obsesses over trying to acquire the best things so that they last longer (BIFL), Costco tickles my internal register of "good enough". I don't think I've ever regretted a purchase at Costco other than occasionally upsetting my wife for getting something that wasn't on the list.

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#203

Post by elzbardico »

legitster wrote: post #41
Aurornis wrote: post #8

> Something about the whole thing always registered to me as, like, lame—too normcore, too boring, perhaps even too cheugy to an informed and taste-driven millennial ur-consumer like me. The kinds of brands I like to buy aren’t what they sell at Costco Good example of how people can build identities through their brand choices and purchasing habits. It’s a foreign concept for many of us who seek out the best product…

> "What's great about this country is America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All th…

American capitalism, for all its defects, was always a mass oriented endeavour in constrast with Continental Europe.

The mantra was sell more, more, more and more, and to do that, you need to sell things to poor people to. A French enterpreneur would be happy selling phones only for the upper middle class and above. In America the idea was to install as many landlines as possible and gain with scale.

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#204

Post by dylan604 »

don-code wrote: post #190
yabones wrote: post #137

I get the allure, but it's not for me and my partner. We live in a small apartment. We drive a small car. The pantry has a good amount of dry bulk & canned food, but we largely shop one week at a time. Sure, we could "lock in" on two or three foods, buy weeks worth of them at a time, and save some money. But like most people we like a bit of verity. It's just not possible to buy such massive quantities of things with…

There was a point where two friends and I each lived alone in an apartment, and I was the only one who had a (2-door) car. We still occasionally did Costco runs. We'd go in and walk the store - the whole store - aisle by aisle. If I saw something like a 2-pound bag of tortellini, but thought two pounds was too big a quantity for me, I'd ask, "does anybody want to split two pounds or tortellini?" One might say yes, so…

Growing up as a kid, we lived in the sticks and the small local grocery store had a limited produce section. My mom joined a little co-op where each person would put in the same amount of cash, but one person would make a trip to the downtown farmer's market. The purchase was split evenly between each member. Each trip a different person made the trip so the variety changed not only by what was available but by the person making the trip's preferences.

This was my introduction to collective buying and at the same time the fact there's a bigger world out there than where one lives.

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#205

Post by nostrademons »

hparadiz wrote: post #176
yabones wrote: post #137

I get the allure, but it's not for me and my partner. We live in a small apartment. We drive a small car. The pantry has a good amount of dry bulk & canned food, but we largely shop one week at a time. Sure, we could "lock in" on two or three foods, buy weeks worth of them at a time, and save some money. But like most people we like a bit of verity. It's just not possible to buy such massive quantities of things with…

The basic membership is $65. If all you do is get a year's worth of detergent, toilet paper, and cleaning supplies chances are that will already pay for the membership. They also have grocery items that are kinda wholesale but not really. Pantry stuff like a bag of nuts that you can go through on your own in under a week that is marked down significantly from the grocery store. Oh also olive oil is another big one fo…

The issue for many apartment-dwellers is storage. You can't store a year's worth of detergent, toilet paper, and cleaning supplies in an apartment.

Costco really incentivizes shopping in bulk, from the huge value-pack sized portions to the focus on frozen & dry goods to the super-sized carts to the anxiety-inducing shopping experience. My wife and I shoot to go no more than once a quarter, just because it's a hassle.

We found our habits (and need for Costco) changed dramatically once we moved into a home and could now put in a chest freezer and pile toilet paper rolls in a corner.

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#206

Post by amalcon »

abfan1127 wrote: post #181
gruez wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The basic membership is $65. If all you do is get a year's worth of detergent, toilet paper, and cleaning supplies chances are that will already pay for the membership. Maybe savings are that large if you're comparing against regular prices at retailers, but if you wait for sales, they're as cheap, if not cheaper than Costco.

you could get the annual supply, then cancel your membership and get the membership refund. then repeat next year. Its within their rules.

The simpler variant of this is to obtain a gift certificate. They are required to let you spend it it, so you can get into the store that way. Bring cash, though -- they don't love that people do this, so they don't always take credit cards on these transactions.

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#207

Post by trollbridge »

Petersipoi wrote: post #102
giwook wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point. What about cars or houses?

> no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking Doesn't the fact that the original quote literally acknowledges "bums on the corner" imply that he wasn't referring to housing at all?

I have found the Coke machines at Costco to always have a perfect mixture.

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#208

Post by nostrademons »

It's interesting how Millennials seem to be embracing boring practicality as they get older. Brands like Costco, Toyota, Ikea, minivans, etc are all staging a comeback as middle-aged Millennials decide they don't have time to deal with hassles or money to pay for overpriced status symbols.

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#209

Post by dylan604 »

foresto wrote: post #200
sidrag22 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I want is an anti-costco. More like a bodega. Still curated, maybe a larger mark-up, but smaller quantities of everything. Half loaves of bread, small bags of frozen veg, enough sugar or flour to bake just a couple batches. This is becoming even harder to achieve nowadays, there is all this variety in size of products and more and more over the years(at least in the midwest) it seems that grocery stores want t…

> the 8 oz will be on sale but only if you buy at least 2 or 3, its incredibly frustrating. Have you tested this by buying just one, and checking the price on the receipt? I ask because someone once told me this was illegal in the US; that a shop was allowed to display the sale price only for a larger quantity, but they had to honor the same price per unit if you only bought one. (I think we were discussing produce a…

The computers are not dumb. If you do not purchase the correct number of items, the discount is not applied. Also, if you do not have a member/loyalty account, you do not get those discounts. They now have a new level that requires you to have their app for "digital" coupons that are on top of the loyalty prices. There are many times where I don't input my number in until the very end, and then see it calculate all of the deductions. Sometimes it's not much, but I've seen it drop $30 from the "member" price discounts.

Re: I want to live like Costco people

#210

Post by ryukoposting »

don-code wrote: post #190
yabones wrote: post #137

I get the allure, but it's not for me and my partner. We live in a small apartment. We drive a small car. The pantry has a good amount of dry bulk & canned food, but we largely shop one week at a time. Sure, we could "lock in" on two or three foods, buy weeks worth of them at a time, and save some money. But like most people we like a bit of verity. It's just not possible to buy such massive quantities of things with…

There was a point where two friends and I each lived alone in an apartment, and I was the only one who had a (2-door) car. We still occasionally did Costco runs. We'd go in and walk the store - the whole store - aisle by aisle. If I saw something like a 2-pound bag of tortellini, but thought two pounds was too big a quantity for me, I'd ask, "does anybody want to split two pounds or tortellini?" One might say yes, so…

This is what I did with 3 roommates in college. We saved a ton of money that way.

After college, I only had one roommate and Costco didn't work as well. The quantities for certain things are just a bit much. Buying 36 eggs for 4 adults made sense. Buying 36 eggs for 2 adults... not so much. I ended up going to Costco for toilet paper and gas, and that's it.

To this day, I'm still the "spouse" on one of those college roommates' costco memberships, LOL.

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