Shopping at warehouse and wholesale shopping clubs is fun! You can go and stock up on all kinds of food and cool stuff. The idea of saving money and getting your shopping over with all in one fell swoop sounds great, but wait just a minute. There are a couple of things wrong with this and if you aren't aware of it, you'll end up blowing a whole bunch of money instead of saving it.

Problem #1

The idea of warehouse stores is that you buy in bulk. Good idea. The problem is if your family is like most families, just because you bought ten times the amount of potato chips than the amount you need doesn't mean that you will have those potato chips ten times longer.

It most likely means that you will eat those potato chips ten times faster than you usually would. Right? I thought so. Because of this, many times buying in bulk isn't such a good idea. Now, buying your baking supplies, beans, rice, and cleaning supplies in bulk is good.

I don't know anybody who pigs out on ten times the amount of dried beans or flour than they would usually eat. I also don't know anyone who is going to do ten times the cleaning they normally would.

So, go ahead. Buy those things in bulk, but beware of buying those snacks and convenient food items in bulk. You not only will eat ten times faster, you'll gain weight ten times faster.

Problem #2

The next problem with warehouse stores is the pricing. You go into those stores and you see everything packaged for bulk sales and you just know you are getting a good deal.

Not so fast. The owners of those warehouse stores know that's exactly what you're thinking. So what do they do? They raise the price. Gone are the days when you could go into a store and buy "family" size and save money. The people who set the prices know you have been trained into thinking it's cheaper. Guess what? It's not.

Start doing some price checking and you'll see what I mean. Before you buy anything at a warehouse store, take along the prices of products that you buy on a regular basis from your regular grocery store. With these prices in hand, compare each and every price at the warehouse store before you put anything in your basket.

Keep both of these "problems" in mind before you buy a membership for any warehouse store. If you are a family who can control how much food you eat, buy in bulk and actually make the food last as long as you need it, you're okay with Problem #1. Even so, make sure do that comparison shopping before you fork out any money for a membership or you'll end up losing a lot of money with Problem #2.

Javier Hernandez

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