One of the best examples of how it’s expensive to be poor.
We got a BJs (regional wholesale club) membership around the time our first was born. It was worth it just for diapers and wipes. Hell, when he was on formula, a giant jar at BJs cost the same as a medium jar at the supermarket.
A lot of things were like this, but the best examples were the ones that take up the most space and either get used (comparatively) slowly or go bad relatively quickly. Like paper goods. Frozen anything. Fresh meat, produce, dairy.
But if you don’t have the space to store that stuff (and especially to stock up when there are coupons/sales), you’re missing out.
I’m thinking of buying a chest freezer just so I have a bunch of frozen pizzas on hand so we have no excuse to order delivery when we get home too tired to cook. On that use case alone, the freezer would probably pay for itself by 6 months, including electricity.
Can’t do that if you’ve got a 600sqft studio.
Sometimes one big purchase might be worth it to get a membership for. Like tires. How much you’d save on a set of tires would be less than the cost of a first-year membership, especially if you got a Groupon. But if you don’t have the space to store wholesale goods, it’s probably not even on your radar.
That happened to me on vacation, and why I was a member of the Houston Museum of Natural History (I think that’s what it was called), despite only being there one time and living like 1200mi away. For my family of four to go and park, tour the museum, see a planetarium show, etc, it was cheaper to become a member, even if we’d never be coming back during its term.






A Gebra named Al, I think. I remember reading that in class in like eighth grade.