Thursday, June 30, 2011

Eat free samples at Costco. Save money.

The dudes behind Costco are smart.  Their business model is this:

You eat free samples
You get hungrier
You buy more food

As smart as those dudes are, I have a little trick that we can use to outsmart them.  My business model works like this:

You eat free samples
You get hungrier
You eat more free samples

For those that didn't see what I just did there, let me explain.  Costco wants you to eat free samples to get you to buy more food.  I want you to eat free samples to get a free lunch.  Now, if you're smart enough that you didn't need that explanation, you're probably thinking, "but it costs $50 annually for a basic Costco membership and $100 annually for an executive membership.  This isn't free at all!"

First of all, everyone knows that the $100 annual executive membership has a $50 reimbursement guarantee.  You see, with the executive membership, you're mailed a check for 2% of your total annual spending.  If that check is for less than the $50 difference between the executive and regular level membership cost, you can bring it back to Costco and they'll give you that difference.
This man eats for $0.04 per meal.  His shopping list says, "samples".

Second of all, if you eat Free-Sample-Costco-Lunch (FSCL, prounounced "fiscal") every day, you're only spending $50/365 = about $0.14 per meal.  Extend this to dinner and it's $0.07 per meal.  Include breakfast and it's about $0.04 - $0.05 per meal.

If that's not convincing enough, let me give you something to compare this to.  Bologna, my favorite deli meat(?) runs about $5.00/lb.  A loaf of bread is about $3.00  For simple math, lets say a pound of bologna and a loaf of bread last 1 week.  This means your lunch costs $8.00 per week, or a staggering $416 per year.

Annual cost of bologna sandwich:     $416
Annual cost of FSCL:                       $50
Annual cost savings:                        $366

Follow my plan and you'll save $366 per year.  Keep this up for 10 years and you can afford a 1 month mortgage payment on a 3 bedroom split level in New Jersey.  Yay, finance!