Aldi Archives - Lazy Man and Money

Groceries: Warehouses vs. Aldi’s

October 24, 2022 by Lazy Man 5 Comments

Aldi Chicken — Sometimes I get a lot of highly discounted product at Aldi’s

I was going through my phone’s five hundred browser tabs to clean them up and came across this Warehouse Club Grocery Comparision from Chief Mom Officer. I’ve met her a few times at FinCon. She’s in Connecticut, and I’m in Rhode Island, so we have a New England personal finance thing in common.

That article takes on a Herculean task – comparing prices at BJ’s (our local warehouse/Costco chain), Target, Aldi, and Price Chopper. I have an Aldi’s and a BJ’s very close to me, so it caught my attention. Readers know that I’m a big fan of Aldi, sometimes scoring chicken for under 50 cents a pound. With inflation, it’s much more difficult to find those deals. I used to be able to stock up a couple of times a month. Now, it’s hard to stock up on meat, but there’s often a deal on expiring take-home pizza or something else that catches my eye. I find that flexibility is important when grocery shopping.

Chief Mom Officer did all the hard work getting the data for her family. There are a ton of disclaimers because it’s impossible to control for all the variables. We have different size families, different grocery options available to us, different preferences for foods and specific brands, different sales, etc.

Here’s the data:

She came to it from the perspective of getting most of her shopping done at BJ’s. It’s convenient for her and her family. Life is busy; who wants to go to more than one store all the time? Me. I know I’m weird, but I like grocery shopping. I never get bugged for problems, and I love hunting for deals. I can almost go shopping during off-peak hours. I suspect that most people would rather not deal with the hassle.

We’ve tried BJ’s, but we always let the membership lapse. The last time we tried, our kids were very small. At ages 8 and 10 now, they are bigger. However, for some reason, they don’t like to eat food. (They don’t eat things that are not food, which is also important.) They simply aren’t big eaters. My wife is more into vegetarian-type dishes, and I’m a meat and potatoes type. I think warehouse shopping would work better if we didn’t want very different things.

Looking through this CMO’s data, I can see why Aldi works better for us than BJ’s. Our BJ’s doesn’t have gas. If it did, it might be worth the membership alone. Almost everything seems to be cheaper on Aldi’s list. Some things that CMO couldn’t find at Aldi, like apple juice and Ziploc-style bags, are readily available at my Aldi. My Aldi doesn’t have two liters of diet soda (any brand), so I have to go next door to Dollar Tree. That’s a pain, but it also helps when I get a household good that’s not a grocery item, such as the D-batteries on CMO’s list. They aren’t great D-batteries, but we use them very rarely.

One of the problems that I have with BJ’s is that I can’t see buying five dozen eggs. It’s too much for our family and fridge. If that’s BJ’s only option, I must go to Aldi’s or another grocery store. Similarly, we can’t go through a 3-pound bag of bananas before they spoil. At that point, I’m already shopping at multiple grocery stores, so I’m not saving time by avoiding going to two stores. If I shop at BJ’s, I’m still going to need to go to Aldi about twice a week to pick up little things that I forget, but also perishables.

As complex as it has been up to now, let’s ramp it to another level. Consider an item like 1000 feet of aluminum foil is $33 at BJ’s. We use very little aluminum foil, so 1000 feet last a long time. I did some math, and it could last us for more than ten years. So should I care about saving $7 in aluminum foil every ten years or saving $3 on English muffins a couple of times a month? The English muffins are potentially a $72 annual savings ($6 saved times 12 months) which is $720 more in the ten years of our extra $7 aluminum foil expense. My point is that it can matter quite how much you use a particular item on the list.

Our flexibility also saves us money. I was shocked at the price of 12 Honeycrisp Apples. I just buy a bag of apples (Gala, I think), and it’s closer to the price you have the Granny Smith apples ($5) than CMO’s price of $23. I will take that $18 in savings every day of the week. CMO covers some of this in her analysis by saying that there are some things that off-brand is fine and other things that they simply wouldn’t substitute.

Finally, we also have access to a military commissary which can get us specific brands at great prices. We don’t need a lot of specific brands, but if we did, we could use that fill-in gaps. We also have the smallest Walmart known to the world. The selection isn’t great, but the prices are great, and it is another option to fill some gaps. You may not have access to a military commissary, but a secondary option could work for you.

The good news is that you may have enough information with CMO’s data to extrapolate what works best for you and your family. She explains quite well how BJ’s is a better fit for her family. It makes complete sense. If we did some kind of weird family swap, I would probably shop the same way she does. At the same time, I can look at the same data and see that I save so much money with how I shop.

Did You Rob Aldi After Christmas Too?

December 27, 2018 by Lazy Man 1 Comment

I hope everyone who celebrated holidays recently had their best ever. We got back from our annual vacation on the 23rd and proceeded to have 3 Christmas celebrations in a 24 hour span. I had to set my alarm to wake up at 3:30AM so that I could wrap presents.

In the end it was worth it. The kids said it was the best Christmas ever. (However, being 5 and 6, the sample size of what they remember may be limited.)

Of course their favorite gift where these Throw ‘N’ Pop Charmander and Throw ‘N’ Pop Squirtle toys that I picked up for around $8 each on ThinkGeek’s Cyber Monday sale. It’s a strong reminder that a great toy doesn’t need to be expensive.

With it being the end of the year, I thought I’d go with a lighter article and save some of the more thought-provoking ones for the fresh new year.

Yesterday, I found that ’tis the season to find tremendous deals at Aldi. Actually, you can find great deals there year round. However, it seems like their after Christmas deals are better than usual. I’ll let you be the judge.

I went to Aldi to get eggs and some sliced cheese. Here’s what I came back with:

That’s what $41 bought me.

Some of the stuff like Christmas wrapping paper, gift bags, gift tags, and Santa sacks are a deal everywhere after Christmas. My dog doesn’t mind a second stocking of dog chews. He’ll snub quite a few things, but not treats just because they aren’t shaped for the current holiday season.

The bag with the trees is a sheet set. It’s normally $17, but was $7. Maybe they are clearing out the winter stuff early. It’s probably not the best sheet set, but we’ll find $7 of use out of them.

The luggage was the priciest item on the list… $11, marked down from $25. It seems like it might be cheaply made, but the American Airlines one that I’ve had for more than 10 years has lost some wheels and is a pain.

The 2 Tier Wire Basket will save us some counter space over the couple of bowls we have now. Usually that’s $8, but it was on sale for $3.

Finally, I found a couple of good food deals. That alfredo sauce is bacon flavored. I don’t quite know what I’m going to do with it, but I’m sure it’s great. It’s a specialty item that I think typically goes for $3, but for $0.79 I’ll give it a shot. I’ve rarely seen any good deals on fish at Aldi, but I couldn’t pass up the fresh tilapia. Normally around $4.50 each (3/4 of a pound), each package was $3 off, making them about $1.50 each. The only downside is that we have so many Christmas leftovers that I had to freeze them.

If you have an Aldi’s near you, I suggest you give it a look. It seems like they are trying to clear out old inventory, so they can bring in some new stuff.

In case you are curious, here’s my receipt:

Double Deal Monday!

July 24, 2017 by Lazy Man 2 Comments

Regular readers know that I rarely post twice in the same day. The only thing that happens less often is me posting about a deal. There are a lot of deals out there and so many deal sites do a much better rounding them up than I ever could.

However, today I’m going for a daily double as I’m going to do both those rare things. Fittingly, I have two deals to share.

The first deal is one you might have already seen. Amazon has put their Echo on sale for $130. However if you add two of them to your cart and use promo code “ECHO2PACK”, they should come up at $160. That’s only for today (7/24/2017), so if you are reading this on some other day… sorry… but move on to the second deal that is available all week.

The $160 price for 2 is $80 a piece (that kind of math is why they pay me the big bucks). I got mine when they first came out taking advantage of the special promo to nab one at $99. For the first time since then, it seems Amazon is making them available cheaper (albeit only if you buy in a little bulk). If you have a big home that can make two of them then great. If not, you can probably put the one you don’t need on Ebay and get around $80 back. If you can’t get $80 back, then the real deal is just to wait and pick up a new one on Ebay for $75. Oh and if you use my Echo link, I may make a few dollars from Amazon at no cost to you.

The second deal is from Aldi. If you don’t have that chain of grocery stores near you, you have my sympathies. Also, you might still want to read on, I predict there might be a flood of these on Ebay.

Aldi has a Crofton Expandable Salad Storage Box and a Crofton Expandable Bento Box each for $3.99. What are these things? Crofton is an Aldi-owned brand. In this case it looks like Crofton bought a bunch of product from Cool Gear and stuck a new label on it… oh and GREATLY lowered the price.

For example, the *cough* Crofton Salad Storage Box looks exactly like this Cool Gear one. Same color and everything. You could pay $13.02 for that product which everyone seems to love, but I’d rather pay $3.99 for something with a different label.

The *cough* Crofton Bento Box looks exactly like this Cool Gear one. There aren’t as many reviews on this one, but if you are at Aldi, you get to hold it in your hand and try it out. I did and may have bought one or two (or maybe not if my wife is reading this). Again, I’d rather pay $3.99 than $15.

What I like best about these is that the middle is a freezer tray. They claim it will keep your food cold for 4 hours, which should be long enough to get to work or for a kid’s lunch. They are both dishwasher safe (top shelf only) and microwave safe (just in case you are the type to microwave your salad).

I’m trying to be more conscious of how much single use plastic I use. I’m hoping that the Bento Box will help me send the kids to school with a lot less wrapping to throw out. We’ll see if it works out.

Rich Chicken, Poor Chicken

March 23, 2017 by Lazy Man 12 Comments

Today I’d like to tell you the story of two people shopping at grocery stores for some chicken. One person runs through the grocery store quickly buying the items he needs (including chicken) and gets out of there paying little attention to money. The other person takes a little more time, not a lot, to pay attention to any particular deals. We are going to focus on their chicken purchases today. We’ll call them Rich Chicken and Poor Chicken*.

I’m going to play the part of Rich Chicken, the person who spends a little more time to find the deals. Last week, Rich Chicken found the chicken deal of lifetime! Even though his wife had warned them that they had too much chicken, Rich Chicken does what Rich Chicken does… buys chicken.

What does a deal of a lifetime look like? This:

You can click on the image for an even bigger one to get the details on the pricing. Pay no attention to the dates, I’m writing this article long after the chicken had been frozen in our chest freezer. The sell-by date was the next day.

The big picture (pun intended) is that each of these packages of chicken are on sale $5 off… and they are only around $7 to begin with.

I’ll give you the details so that you don’t have to squint on that picture. Before the discounts on the packages I would have spent a total of $21.35 for 14.33 pounds of chicken in the three packages (including the devil chicken package at the bottom). That would have been $1.49, which is a great price for boneless, skinless chicken breast under normal circumstances.

After the $15 in discounts ($5 per package), I spent $6.35 for 14.33 pounds of chicken or around 44 cents a pound.

Maybe you are thinking I just changed the discount from $1 to $5 with a magic marker at home. Nope, here’s part of my receipt:

Poor Chicken Shopping

Now let’s look at Poor Chicken. Maybe he’s in a rush (aren’t we all sometimes?), but let’s presume he’s just not mindful of his shopping spending. Maybe he’s got a bunch of other things on his mind. For whatever reason, he doesn’t see this chicken deal in plain sight. Many other shoppers missed the deal as well. There were plenty of packages available that I didn’t buy and I waited a few extra minutes to see people pass it by.

A couple of days of later, Poor Chicken decides he wants chicken for dinner. Unfortunately now, he’s at a different grocery store. This chicken isn’t on sale. Typically, I see boneless, skinless chicken at $2.99… more if it’s organic. He might only buy a pound or two now, so it isn’t that big of deal. However, let’s assume that over some time he buys (the convenient amount of) 14.33 pounds of chicken.

Poor Chicken spends $42.85, while Rich Chicken spends $6.35. For some people that $36.50 isn’t that big of deal. This is an extreme example as well. However, all these mindful shopping decisions add up. I can’t even begin to estimate how much that is when you multiply it across many shopping trips over a lifetime.

There’s a lot of debate in personal finance about whether it is better to make more money or save more money. I think there’s room for both. A penny saved is a penny earned, which is a penny that can be invested.

* The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), chickens, places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.