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!