Pete C. > wrote:

>$50 a year should not be significant to anyone making over minimum wage,
>that's less than $4.17 per month.

Which is about 2% of the average American's food spend, so you'd
have to be saving that much for Costco to be cost-effective.

When we were Costco members, we could never get our Costco spending to
be more than about 20% of total grocery acquisition. The membership
was only cost-effiective if we were also buying other items such as
electronics, kitchenware, etc. But Costco does not necessarily have
low-price leadership or good selection on these non-food items.

Another problem is distance -- for us Costco requires 20 miles of
motor vehicle use to make one round trip, whereas essentially all our other
grocery shopping does not require driving anywhere. Each auto mile
has about a 50 cent cost for us, when you add everything up and average
it out.

Costco is also time-consuming and unpleasant. The only upside is the local
one is next to a bird sanctuary.

Steve