My fiancee wife (Thanks mom for the correction!! I hope Emma doesn’t find out!) and I are the only two people living in our apartment, and we often find it really hard to justify buying in bulk. Take yesterday for instance, I went to Costco to buy Neosporin (antibiotic gel to put on when you get hurt) and I saw an expiration date of June, 2009. There is no way that the two of us will ever need to use Neosporin that much in the next 14 months (and if we do, we are in trouble) but unfortunately I already paid for it.
Now that I have 2, I will probably end up giving one away but an idea crossed my mind when I was thinking about this. Why don’t we team up with our friends and go buy in bulk? I’m sure some of my friends would want Neosporin too, so we can always buy 2 and then split the $8.99!
This idea is actually not new, as people do this all the time like share the rent on an apartment or buy a time share of a vacation property. All we are doing is extending this to smaller items like groceries or medical supplies.
I’m sure there are tons of things that we can share with other people so just put on our thinking caps! Join forces and buy in bulk!
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
I did this with my girlfriend the other day when I bought a bigger jar of ibuprofen. There’s no way I would finish it myself, but the smaller bottle was much more expensive on a per-pill basis. It just made sense to split the bigger bottle.
The concept is definitely sound where it makes practical sense. It could be quite a hassle to figure who bought exactly how much of what though on one receipt. Some things would also be tough to split, such as a jumbo size jar of peanut butter.
It really would be the way to go though for those things that make sense.
Transaction cost maybe prohibitive on relative term for small purchases…
Michael: It definitely make sense and good to hear that I wasn’t the only one who’ve done this
Just remember to label the bottle of pills properly and remember to write the expiration date!
Fiscal Musings: Yup common sense always helps with these
LiteDeals: I know something like this or the time it takes to do this always come up with these types of ideas but we always end up wasting so much of our time anyway that I still think it’s worth it!
“but we always end up wasting so much of our time anyway that I still think it’s worth it!”
- Ah…you said it
Another way I have figured to get bulk price is to have a lot of kids 
Litedeals: Hmm.. I’m not sure that your wife and kids will like that comment!!!
I prefer to buy one tube of the generic at any drugstore and pay about $1-1.50/tube. Same medication, different brand name, better price.
Co-ops take the same approach you are talking about here. Although, I don’t know if co-ops are generally less expensive than bulk stores. You are still buying in bulk but you also leveraging the co-op bulk buying power as a consumer.
COSTCO LOVES BULK and that is why businesses go to them
-Mike