The Secret to Getting More For Your Money
Shopping and finding out how to get the best savings can be a little overwhelming at times. Who doesn’t want to know the secret to getting more for your money? I know I do! As you shop and grow you pick up a lot of money saving tips along the way. One overlooked tip is actually calculating your cost per use vs cost per package.
Depending on the item it can be more beneficial to buy items individually, rather than in bulk. Who knew, right? Paul from our Walmart Clearance, Glitches and more Facebook Group, gave us some great info to share on how you can figure out cost per use.
Lesson from Paul
“As we’re all here to save money, I thought I’d share this, and hopefully teach someone something. It really annoys me that Walmart, or any retailer does this.
We are almost out of paper towels so I went to Sam’s Club, unfortunately they didn’t have what we wanted, so we turned to shop at Walmart Online.
Cost Per Use – The Math
As a child my mom taught me cost per use, or in this case, cost per sheet/roll. I’m over fifty and now it’s a lot easier for me to check. In this case, you take the price of the package and divide that by all the sheets in the package. I then multiply that by 100, to make regular currency math.
Let me show an example:
Four rolls for $5.22, with 165 sheets per roll would look like this:
4 x 165 = 660
$5.22 / 660 = $0.00791 x 100 = $0.79 per roll
Now to share what I just learned:
Walmart has two packs of Great Value Ultra Strong 6 Pack split sheets of paper towels.
The first one is $8.42 per package, the second is $8.47 per package. A five cent difference between the two? Right? WRONG! The cheaper package, the one with the huge banner DOUBLE ROLLS has 120 sheets per roll, the other is 160 per roll.
The cost per 100 sheets for the five cent cheaper package is $1.144 ($8.24 / (6 x 120 =720)
The cost per 100 sheets for the “more expensive” package, more expensive by five cents is $0.882 ($8.47 / (6 x 16 = 960).
For five cents more you get 240 sheets, or two 120 sheet rolls.
In my math, looking at all the different packages of paper towels, I also learned that some of the smaller packages were cheaper per roll than some of the larger packages (which is actually quite common with baby wipes).
Summing it up
When we’re at the grocery store and I’m going through this with our daughter we’ve occasionally been asked by other shoppers to explain it to them. If you’ve never done it before, it only takes a little bit of patience. When I was eight, back in the 70’s, it was all pen and paper, now everyone has a calculator on their phone. At home I just open a spreadsheet and do the math in there so I can see all the different products at once. Then when I’m done looking at toilet paper, I can change it to ketchup, or capri-suns, or whatever.”
Thank you so much Paul for sharing this information. If you are looking for more ways to save money, we have a list of great articles that you will find helpful – Saving Money – Pro Tips & Tricks.
