Its tough when you live in an apartment with no storage. You often are paying more because you dont have room for bulk. Costco is great if you have a garage or basement though

What I do is buy meat in bulk from costco and marinate and preseason then cut it up and vacuum seal it with a $30 vacuum sealer and sousivide bags from amazon.

I can then stuff my freezer with ready to cook chicken, steak, fish, etc. I just take it out the night before to thaw in the fridge.

I find that grocery stores offer better pricing on occasion: ribeyes more than half off the ordinary market price, etc. If you have the vacuum sealing technology, you can be selective in your bulk purchases to maximize the financial benefits of timed purchases. Costco comes with a baseline level of quality but is less competitive on price. As you stock your freezer, you have the bandwidth to 'wait it out' until the next sale comes.

My experience is that the grocery stores around me with meats cheaper than Costco is not the meat you want to buy in bulk and save for later use. The quality is fine but the meat has been sitting on the shelf for a couple of weeks and is near or past the best by date, which is why it's marked way below market price. That being said the solution is to buy a whole bunch, cook it he same day and freeze that. Doesn't work well if you want cooked whole cuts (roast chicken, pan seared steak, etc.) but for the more processed recipes (stews, stir fry, etc.)

Skip the thaw step and cook those things sous vide.

And eat microplastics? No thanks.

Do you think the steak is microplastic free? It's not: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/08/micropla....

That's a fallacy - microplastic contamination isn't a boolean, more like a floating point.

You can buy a Cinder Grill instead. Same basic thermodynamic concept, but with metal instead of water+plastic for the stable heat source

You probably know this, but sous vide will cook fine from frozen too. You just have to give it an extra hour or so. Heat baths are cool!

I do that sometimes but I started going for thinner cuts of meat and just grill them in 12-15 mins. Sousvide is nice but sometimes takes too long and you still gotta sear.

For nicer cuts of meat, sure, but for flank steak and such, I find it much easier to just let the meat marinate for 24-48 hours and then grill it.

I'm in a pretty small apartment in Manhattan (albeit with an abnormally large kitchen). I can always get the value of my Costco membership in my first trip there, even without a car. Basic goods like Advil, laundry detergent and dishwasher detergent are miles cheaper than other options in Manhattan.

We find it difficult to use the Costco OTC drugs like Advil among two people before the expiration date.

Expiration dates on some OTC drugs like Advil aren't as important as you might think. [See this.](https://www.healthdigest.com/756305/does-ibuprofen-expire/)

Yeah, I've taken drugs years after their expiration date. It's just not super confidence-inspiring.

i have literally used 20yr expired medicines before and been fine

Many medicines simply degrade, so yeah, you won’t poison yourself, but then it’s just a placebo.

It depends on the medication. There are some that can last for 20+ years with the same effectiveness.

i have taken 15 year old ipecac after eating something i shouldnt have and can assure you it remained 100% effective.

Do you take an uber/taxi/etc? I always assumed that you'd need to buy in bulk quantities to make costco worth it here, which would require a car

I don't own a car and very rarely Uber (basically only to the airport and even that's purely out of laziness). I just carry two Costco tote bags back to the subway. It's not the most comfortable but it's much better than the costs associated with car ownership from my perspective. If I have a purchase too large for the subway, like a TV, it's cheaper to just rent a Zipcar.

1000 kg of potatoes is 1444 litres (1,44 m^3) and fits in a corner in any flat. YMMW if the floor can take it.

My point is that with less space you need to store less different things.

Who doesn't need a bucket of guacamole? I jest, but Costco is awesome, they also have pretty good vacation packages.

Definitely true, but I'll add that you still need to do price comparisons. Even supposed staples like pasta are often substantially more expensive than at nearby grocers.

I don't buy a lot of pasta, so can't speak directly to that example, but in many cases if you compare like quality, Costco will tend to be cheaper or equivalent, I've found. Although maybe for some of the staples there just isn't really that much difference in quality.

There is also the problem that some folks have (cough, me, yes, I'm talking about me) that even if I go into Costco for 3 specific items, I walk out with 5-10 at least. That's another place to watch for cost and try to be strict about sticking to a list.

Unpopular opinion, Costco isn't that great.

- Too many items force you to buy insane quantities that don't make sense even for a 4 person family. The meat, for example, is great quality and value, but it's very hard to make steak or chicken taste good after being frozen, and in no universe should I be eating 4 huge steaks within the refrigeration shelf life. I can never use their giant tub of sour cream or shredded cheese before it goes bad.

- Related to the last point, Costco makes you pay for the square footage in your home to store their stuff, and to really utilize the membership you're gonna want a chest freezer, a whole extra appliance to purchase, run (electricity), and repair. Probably about $50/year in electricity costs.

- Too many of the items that are "great deals" are things most people would probably never buy in the first place when sold at the normal higher retail price. For example, Red Bull is barely over a dollar a can, which is unbeatable, but in no universe should I be buying a 24 pack of Red Bull for any reason.

- Similar to the point above, Costco's deals encourage consumption where the alternative is to not consume anything at all. For example, paper towels are an item where you really should just reduce your usage. Just use dish towels and cloth napkins, toss them in with your regular laundry. There are very few messes where you actually need to use paper towels.

- I know it's not supposed to be a replacement for a grocery store, but I think it's very hard to cook from scratch using whole and minimally-processed foods solely from what Costco sells.

- The low SKU count of the store has never not been infuriating to me. The entire health and beauty section is the worst offender here: good luck having any sort of preference.

- The store wastes your time by making you memorize aisle layout, this is done on purpose to increase aimless browsing time.

- The negotiation practices that Costco uses to keep prices low also causes their inventory to be incredibly inconsistent. One day there will be a pallet of Legos or an interesting brand of trail mix, the next it could be gone or replaced by something else.

- Costco is almost always packed with an uncomfortable amount of people.

- Am I the only one who thinks Costco doesn't have enough cat supplies?? It's all stuff for dogs!! You'd think I should be saving so much money by using Costco for cat litter but...nope, the stuff I buy at Target is about the same cost, they'll deliver it for free in two days, and Costco doesn't sell any form of unscented cat litter product.

- Their lauded snack bar is trash food and I don't believe the common refrain that it's a loss leader. Costco brags about that as a PR exercise. It breaks even at the very least.

- If your Costco is able to sell beer/wine/liquor, that's a pretty nice perk that can pretty legitimately make up for the membership cost over a year, but anyone with a really legit liquor warehouse type of store (e.g., Binny's) isn't going to be massively impressed. Low SKU count is still a problem here, and I don't actually think Costco is that great at curating wines (another PR exercise they like to engage in).

- Don't forget that you have to pay $60 a year just to get in the door. You have to buy enough discounted things to make up for that difference. Sure, it probably makes more sense than Amazon Prime, but that's still a major point to think about.

I think the only reason to be a member is to buy diapers, you'll make up the membership cost very quickly that way. Still, if you can tolerate lower quality diapers, Target's brand is actually lower cost than Kirkland. There are a number of Costco products out there where other store brands offer something at a close-enough price and quality ratio, without having to shell out a membership fee. For many products it might not actually matter that "Kirkland is the best."

I think most of your problem points are for newer Costco shoppers.

I walk in and buy the same stuff every time. I never buy anything I end up tossing anymore. I know where everything is because they don’t change the store much.

Costco isn’t my main grocery store but I’m only in the Costco warehouse 1-2 times per month anyway.

And the lower price of gas makes up for the price of admission for me

The biggest reason I don't like Costco is that it really isn't cheaper than other bulk clubs, or grocery stores for that matter other than Whole Foods or other "premium" stores. Costco has higher prices because they slap organic/non-gmo/free range/etc. labels on most products and the markup isn't worth any perceivable quality increase. The low SKU and frequent rotation of products is also frustrating because I can't count on staples being available, so it also caused more trips elsewhere to find everything I actually need.