optimized living

I’ve heard lots of good things about Costco, and finally had the opportunity to visit yesterday. Through work, Costco opened up from 7PM to 9PM yesterday for any employee to visit and shop. Lots of huge items of food (like 5 gallon buckets of soy sauce) that seemed to be priced at levels a bit less than grocery stores. I see two drawbacks to joining Costco:

• You do not buy enough during the year to justify the $45 membership fee for the Gold Star Membership. Without running any hard numbers, my guess is that you have to spend around $150 per month at Costco to justify the $45 per year. Without kids, that may be difficult. It also depends how close the nearest Costco is to your home.
• By having larger amounts of food, you tend to waste items. When there are 20 dish sponges, there is a tendency to throw out a sponge even when slightly dirty. This is easy to avoid though if you are conscious of the problem.
• Costco only accepts American Express and debit cards. Luckily someone warned me of this and I have an American Express card.

At the end, I ended up with the Gold Star Membership. Through the promotion with work, I was also able to receive a $10 cash card to use at Costco. So before you join, you may want to look around and see if you can get some kind of deal on the membership. Costco also has promotions that are attached to American Express.