How to Save Money: Buying in Bulk
“I want to make pork chops, but the pork chops at the local store are so expensive! Where do you get yours? What do you do?” – Karen in Georgia
My wife Julie was recently talking with Karen about meal planning, and Karen asked the questions above. It spurred a great conversation about what we are doing to save money on our monthly grocery bill. The simple answer is: we are experimenting with buying in bulk.
Before you get visions of rows and rows of shelves stocked with canned goods, rice and sugar (a la Doomsday Preppers or Extreme Couponing), we are not going that extreme. We are trying to buy in bulk for certain commodities like meat. If you have been in a grocery store recently, you probably have noticed the rising cost of meat. Swine flu, bird flu, herd size, environmental factors and trends in the market have all influenced the supply and demand for meat. As we learned in Economics 101, when the supply contracts, prices go up. One way to combat these rising prices is buying in bulk.
Why Buy in Bulk?
We are experimenting with buying in bulk to hedge on our grocery bill each month and save money. We are newbies, to be sure, and not experts on this subject. Doing some research on the net, I read posts by others more qualified to talk on the subject. Trent Hamm at The Simple Dollar blog has a good article titled The Ultimate Guide to Buying in Bulk. He has eight keys to buying in bulk in his post:
- Price per unit is king.
- Never bulk buy an item you haven’t tried before.
- Never bulk buy perishable goods unless you’re going to go home and process all of it immediately.
- Stack coupons and sales when bulk buying.
- Ensure you have adequate storage space before you buy.
- Don’t pin yourself against the wall by running out of non-perishables.
- Don’t bulk buy everything at once unless you have an enormous bankroll.
- Split up bulk buys with friends and family.
Looking at this list, these keys are really common sense. I can see how coupon fever could hit when you are in a store, and suddenly you bring home 15 cans of evaporated milk (that never get used). The way to overcome those urges is planning before you go shopping! Planning is a topic for a future post, however.
Save Money: Price per Unit Case Study
For this article, we are going to look at pork tenderloin from Sam’s Club as seen in the photo above. We usually break this pork loin down into smaller packages consisting of pork chops and a pork roast, depending on how you cut the meat. The cost for this pork tenderloin is around $1.78 per pound.
I tried to do a price comparison using websites of local grocery stores (i.e., Aldi, Cub Foods, Walmart), and the only website that allowed me to see price was Walmart. I found the following costs:
Store | Item | Cost | Cost per Pound |
Walmart | Sadler’s Smokehouse Sliced Hickory Pork Loin Glazed with Sauce, 32 oz | $12.98 | $6.49 |
Walmart | Hormel Thin Cut Bone-in Smoked Pork Chops, 15 oz | $5.23 | $5.58 |
Sam’s Club | Boneless Center Cut Pork Tenderloin | $15.66 | $1.78 |
While this is not completely scientific, it does illustrate the point. Buying a larger quantity might cost you more up front, but the cost per pound is lower overall. In addition, you can get several meals out of that one item depending on your needs and how you break up the bulk product.
Breaking Bulk
When you buy in bulk, you need to spend some time to break the item down into smaller, meal-sized portions. For the pork tenderloin case study, you will have to deal with the entire nine pounds if you just bring it home and plop it into the freezer. Having nine pounds of frozen pork thawing out is not ideal (unless you are planning a big meal or planning to eat a lot of pork)!
I recently processed a nine pound pork tenderloin into three packages of chops and a four pound roast, and I made a quick video showing how packaged the meat using freezer paper, masking tape and a Sharpie to label the packages. As a special bonus, I included a quick recipe on how I usually grill pork chops. Check it out!
Your Turn
We are just starting to experiment with buying in bulk to save money on our grocery bill. We have wondered about buying even bigger quantities of meat including a half a cow or half a pig. That might be an interesting case study, but we really to need to evaluate our storage space in the freezer. Have you done this before?
What stories do you have about buying in bulk? Do you have any suggestions or resources? We are always looking to learn, do and grow from people all around us….including you!
Also, this is the second video I have uploaded to the Small Scale Life YouTube Channel. I have more on the way, so please subscribe, share the videos and stay tuned for updates!
I buy the same pork, slice it all into thick cut pork chops, then package it using a vacuum packer. It lasts much longer in the freezer and I don’t end up “finding” stuff in the bottom of the freezer that is freezer burned trash nearly as often.
PS I heard you on Cappy’s podcast and am now subscribed to yours. Looking forward to listening to more of what you have to say.
Thanks for the follow.
Yeah, we have a smaller chest freezer right now, but when we move to the a rural area, we will get an upright freezer (like a fridge, but a freezer). I am REALLY interested in getting a 1/4 cow and/or a 1/2 pig! I am going to talk to Nature’s Image Farms in Ohio this week about raising free-range pigs and poultry, and I will discuss some of those topics. No one wants freezer burned stuff! It tastes like garbage!
Thanks for coming on over. I will be posting a link to Cappy’s podcast here on the site, but this is a lot different site. I don’t talk about politics at all (I could, but I won’t try to). I am having too much fun with my side projects and little media empire at the moment. I need to be not fragile before I even think about it!
I am working on testing prototypes for the P-51 Wicking System…I am going small for growing greens in my basement initially. I think the concept is a good one, and you can see the system on my driveway on my YouTube channel or in the 8/17/16 Garden Update. Simple to build, I am getting some awesome cukes and peppers from it.
Scaling it up might take some doing. I can see a 10′, 20′ or even 30′ raised wicking bed, and that is what I was driving at with Cappy. I will create posts and videos about it because I firmly believe that getting started with storing food for tough times, or even when times are so tough (head nod Jack Spirko). I want to hit that question about growing your own food for a disaster a bit better. The main concept, however, is to start NOW. Waiting for the disaster to strike is wrong and shortsighted. You’ll starve before things really get growing. Even fast growing crops like greens and radishes take 30 days!
More to come on that. Thanks for the follow! I’ll make more “cause that’s what I’m gonna do!”
Tom