ioseftavi, I would be interested in your nyc costco tutorial! I live in LIC and have wanted to become a member of costco, but how do you get the groceries home? Would be interested to know what are the best buys, vs what to avoid.
We're close to LIC as well. We use a granny cart from costco
like this. We generally take that plus two big reusable shopping bags. We live less than a mile away, so we walk it. We can generally carry around $300 worth of stuff this way, and we go to costco once every 4-6 weeks.
We'll be doing a full post on
our journal probably in the near future, but the biggest savings I can quickly locate, looking at one of our old spreadsheets:
all prices stated per-unit, NY LIC Costco prices listed first. Product quality are all comparable/identical:
NY Boneless beef loin ($8/lb vs $15/lb)
Frozen strawberries ($1.44/lb vs $4/lb)
Shredded mozzerella for pizza ($2.40/lb vs $4.96/lb)
Chicken sausage ($4.48/lb vs $7.52/lb)
Movie tickets for date night ($8.50/ticket vs $14/ticket)
Almonds ($4.32/lb vs $8.96/lb)
Annie's Mac and Cheese ($1/box vs $4.29/box)
Bacon ($3.50/lb vs $7/lb)
Toothpaste ($1.72/tube vs $5.29/tube)
That's a small sample, but Costco prices pretty much generally beat the hell out of whatever your local NYC grocer charges.
The other thing that most people don't consider is the convenience of costco. Going shopping less often (but getting more) is more convenient, not less. Yes, it's a bigger pain in the ass when you go. But our fridge and pantry are better stocked, for longer, with the stuff that we know we use week in, week out. All we need to get from our local grocer is whatever fresh ingredients we need - maybe some herbs, or a specific bit of fruit or veg, or a few beers if we want to have some with dinner. We generally go to our local grocery 1-3 times per week to just grab a couple small things that we need in addition to whatever we plan on cooking - and the majority of our meals are made from scratch, with costco ingredients.
The other thing I'd stress is the second-order effects. Having a fridge/freezer/pantry full of good quality food (especially base ingredients like meat/flour/rice) means that we are dramatically less likely to go out to eat or order food.
Hope this helps. Plan on doing a 'HOW DO I EVEN COSTCO WITH 600 SQ FT'?!?!?1 post in the next few days/weeks, so keep an eye on our journal.