Saving money by buying big
*Editor’s Note : Well this post is more about finance but I guess everyone who hits the gym frequently knows how costly a monthly membership can be yeah? So I have written this article (inspired by Scooby) to let everyone knows how you can save money while maintaining a great lifestyle. More posts will be coming up as part of the series soon!*
There are very few of us who aren’t on the lookout for ways to cut the bills and save a little extra money. With noise of the impact of financial crisis still echoing, around the empty offices and housing lots, we now have loud creaks coming from the economic recovery. That’s increasing worries about a new phase of stagnation.
No wonder families across the country are trying to keep their costs down. No-one wants to get bitten twice. And that means looking to all kinds of tricks and tips to trim money off of expenditures across the board.
One often neglected approach to saving money is the power of the big buy. We all know that, for the retailer, selling big quantities is advantageous. Unsold stock is a pain – and a loss maker. So the good store-owner is always on the lookout for ways to encourage their shoppers to buy more.
On top of that, selling more of something is just a lot more efficient than selling lots of little packages – it’s called the economy of scale and bulk purchasing power by the economists. But those principles can be applied as much to household budgets as they can be to the larger corporate economy.
The one drawback of buying big though, at whatever level, is the need to pay more upfront to pay for whatever goods you want. If you haven’t got the cash in the first place, any savings you can potentially make aren’t that useful. But that can be sorted.
The way around this is to be very tight with your budget for one month – hopefully you should then be able to build some slack into it. Put all of that extra money aside, to go towards a bulk-buying fund. Once that’s in place, you will be able to start ordering big, and so save big too.
The simplest way to leverage scale in your buying is with the BOGOF offers, which are liberally scattered amongst the super-store’s aisles. Buy-one get-one-free is only a start though – you need to leverage up the big savings of these offers to make a real difference. That means snapping up as many as you can from one store – and then moving onto the next one. If you only purchase BOGOFs in your grocery shopping, you are making 50% savings across the board.
Another way of getting economies-of-scale on your side is to buy the basics in bulk. If you can get to a discount warehouse, or a wholesaler, you can make huge savings by buying a month’s, 6 month’s or a year’s worth of basic goods. Things such as flour, rice, potatoes, detergents and toilet tissue can be stored long term, and so bought on the biggest of scales.
But you don’t need to do all of this purchasing on your own. Try getting together with friends and neighbors, to form a club to maximize your buying power. The chances are, when it comes to basics, you’ll all want to buy similar things. With the weight of numbers behind you, you can slash your bills even further.
That cooperative approach can also be taken by those who are buying in expensive commodities, such as heating oil. When you have an individual account with your heating oil company, there’s an element of cost in your bill related to the transport of the oil to your tank.
But if there are several of you in your local area off of the gas grid, and so in need of heating oil, forming a buying syndicate is a great idea. Transport costs are lowered, and the suppliers love a big order – so again you save. So don’t neglect the power of ‘going large’ in your quest to knock back your bills. It’s the best way for the little guy to flip things back into their favor.
