Sam's vs. Wal-Mart

I'm sure that most of you already know this, but just in case there are others out there like me, I thought I would post this...

I noticed online that Sam's Club has a Click n Pull Feature. Basically you select the items you want (this includes groceries), put them in your cart, place your order and go to the store to pick them up. There is no additional charge for the service. I didn't have a Sam's card, but this feature appealed to me ALOT because I feel like it will same me time in the store. So I wrote down a lot of the prices shown on line and when I went to do my grocery shopping last week at Wal-Mart, I did a comparison (before I got a card, I wanted to make sure that I would save enough money to pay for my membership). I broke everything down to the same unit (rolls, ounces, bags, sheets, etc). For every item except bananas (which costs the same), there was a savings. For some things, the savings was small, like a penny a dryer sheet, but when you multiply that by 200 sheets, that is $2.00. On some things the savings was huge, like gallon size zip loc bags. That equated to about $8.00. Two more surprising items were canned diced tomatoes where I save 33 cents a can and a loaf of bread where basically, you get the second one free. At Sam's, it comes in the 2 loaf package (and we can't use two loaves that fast), so I am going to see if I can find some one who will go in with me. It isn't a huge savings, only about $1.50, but still that is money that I get to keep. I only did it on items that I already use and the same brand. Also, so far, only on items that were listed on the online service, but I am guessing that if that cross section of items were all cheaper, then other items that I commonly buy are probably cheaper too.

For my first vist to Sam's, I saved $24 (over half of the $40 for the membership). I went through on the items on my sheet and averaged how often I thought I would buy them in a year and on just those items, I would save over $350.

I have a spreadsheet all set up in Excel and if any one would like to see it, send me a dmail and I will send it to you.

Hope this helps some one else.