Mar 28th, 2008
Frugality in Practice: The Thought Process of Buying Soda
I don’t smoke, I rarely drink alcohol, and I don’t watch any television (as in none). I try to be in bed by 9:30 (although I fail at this a lot) and be up by 5 (I fail at this about as often as I fail at the bed by 9:30 thing). So really, my final vice is… Diet Pepsi.
I typically buy Diet Pepsi at Costco in a 36 pack during my once-a-month Costco run; however, one of the local grocers has the same 36 pack for the same price of $8.99. At the local grocer I can use a Visa card that gives me a 2% cash rebate on supermarket purchases where at Costco I’m left with American Express’s 1% Costco once-a-year rebate coupon. So while at Costco this past month, I decided to pass on the soda there and get it at the local grocer because (1) I would get the increased (although still very small in terms of cash) rebate from the Visa card and (2) due to the closing dates of the cards I would be able to hold off on paying the bill for a couple of weeks longer than if I used the AmEx card.
In the meantime, a different local grocer came up with a special of five 12 packs of Diet Pepsi for $14.00. Compared to the 36 pack’s per can price of about 25 cents, the 60 cans in this grocers special ended up at a bit over 23 cents per can, so I made plans to head there.
In the meantime, the Costco coupon book came with a $2 off coupon for a 36 pack of Diet Pepsi, which would result in a net price of less than 19.5 cents per can! However, the coupon isn’t in effect until April.
So in the end I still went for the five 12 packs to tide me over until the Costco coupon is valid in a couple of weeks. Then I’ll get a few from Costco to last me for awhile… at which time the pricing dilemma begins anew!
[...] blog. In any case, I’ve written on them multiple times, and here we are, once again. In fact, the example used for this post is the same as in an earlier post: Diet [...]