Buying in Bulk vs. Stockpiling

Having a large family, a lot of people assume I buy in bulk. But I rarely do. I don't even own a membership to a warehouse store! Instead, as a serious couponer, I usually do something called "stockpiling". Which means when something is free or at rock bottom prices, I will get as many as I can at that price. It is usually cheaper to do it this way and end up with 10 regular jars of salsa or spaghetti sauce than it would cost me to buy the same item in bulk-especially at the warehouse stores that don't take coupons.

And I have also found that it is usually more economical to get the smallest size product with a coupon and get more of it than to buy the largest size. (If spaghetti sauce is on sale for $1 and your coupon makes it free, it's much better to buy 10 of those than to use your coupon on the larger size which might be $2 after your coupon.)

Now, having said that, sometimes buying in bulk can be a good deal. When I got this week's ads in the mail, I looked over the ad for the hispanic store and noticed some really good deals this week. So, I did a little bit of both at that store. Chicken is on sale this week for $.29 lb, sold in 10 lb bags. We use a lot of chicken, so this is an awesome stock up price for me. So, I will be stockpiling chicken this week. They also had watermelons for $.10 lb, so I grabbed one of those since the kids have been asking for watermelon for a while. I might get one more towards the end of the sale.

Now, for the bulk deals, they had a pack of 5 dozen eggs on sale for $2.99. This comes to about $.60 a dozen, so that's a good deal to me. All purpose flour was $5.99 for a 20 lb bag. I have never bought flour in bulk before, but my girls are doing a lot of baking lately and with the newish bread machine, we are always running out. So I thought I'd give it a try. Breaking down the cost, it comes to about $.30 lb. I usually buy a 5lb bag of flour, so for 5 lbs this comes to about $1.50. That's a pretty good deal to me since the only time I usually can get a 5 lb bag of flour for $1.50 or less is around Thanksgiving and Christmas. I actually have been buying it at $2 and up lately for 5 lbs.

My conclusion, for me and my family, stockpiling will almost always be cheaper, but I stay open to buying in bulk on items that I cannot get a better deal on otherwise. And hopefully, we won't run out of flour for a little while. :)