These Sam's Club items basically make a membership pay for itself. We did the math.

"Shopping at Walmart is one way to save money, but the best prices are usually at the company's warehouse chain, Sam's Club. Like Costco, which Sam's is modeled after, the retailer charges shoppers a membership fee to access the ultra-low-markup bulk goods. At $50 to get in the door, the annual fee can deter some shoppers: Are the deals really worth it?"

"The question is increasingly important for US households focused on stretching their dollars, a consumer climate that has favored value-conscious retailers like Costco and Walmart. To find out, we used a shopping list from a similar analysis we did at Costco, in which we compared the unit prices of national brands sold at both Costco and traditional retailers. We used store brands for cheese and bacon."

"Annual consumption rates were based on ChatGPT estimates of how much of each item a typical two-person household would use in a year. We then excluded discounts and adjusted pricing to account for the different pack sizes available in clubs versus traditional stores to determine the difference in annual spending. Everything on the list was cheaper at Sam's Club than at the traditional stores we checked."

Sam's Club is a Walmart-owned warehouse that offers bulk buying at low unit prices for a $50 annual membership. A price comparison of national brands and selected store-brand cheese and bacon against traditional retailers found every listed item cheaper at Sam's Club. Annual consumption estimates for a two-person household guided calculations of yearly use and spending. Discounts were excluded and prices adjusted for differing pack sizes to determine true annual cost differences. A payback score per item quantified how one year of savings offsets the $50 fee, with some items providing multi-year-equivalent savings.

Read at Business Insider