Does Stockpiling Cost You Money?
Many people like to stock up on items, especially when buying in bulk from budget-friendly discount warehouse stores like Costco and Sam’s Club. But what if the savings of buying in bulk was offset by using more product? Does stockpiling cost you money?
The reasoning behind my question boils down to use patterns when you do or do not have a backup of a product sitting on a shelf waiting for you. Consider the following:
Shampoo / Body Wash
Imagine taking a nice hot shower, and picking up your bottle of shampoo and/or body wash. You feel it’s about half empty, about the time you’d tip it upside down to make it easier to squeeze out the product. You flip open the lid and squeeze.
Would how much you squeeze out into your hand be influenced by whether you have another sitting in your bathroom cabinet? If you knew you had another bottle in the bathroom cabinet, maybe you’d squeeze a generous handful. On the other hand, if a bottle in the shower is all you had, maybe you’d squeeze exactly as much as you need to make sure it lasted until the next time you go shopping.
Ketchup
You dump a pile of hot French fries out of the air fryer and grab the ketchup bottle from the fridge. Do you squeeze a gigantic pile onto the plate remembering how much you love ketchup with fries knowing you have another bottle in the cabinet? Maybe you end up throwing half of it away when you’re done. Or, do you squeeze just a little because this is the only bottle you have thinking you can always add a little more if you need to?
Laundry Soap
If you have another package of laundry soap on your shelf do you fill the cup to the recommended line? If the current package was all you had, would you reduce the amount of soap knowing the recommended amount of soap for a regular size load of laundry is way too much?
These are just a few examples of products we use daily, that one may or may not use more of knowing they have a stockpile. The answer to does stockpiling cost you money is certainly dependent upon the person being asked the question. The goal of this exercise is not to definitively say having a stockpile of a product makes you use more of it, but simply to make you think. So the next time you’re in the shower, making fries, or doing laundry think about how much product you’re using and why.
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Brock is a software engineer by day and personal finance blogger at night. He is a fitness junkie and enjoys grilling and smoking meat. Married with two children, Brock strives to improve his skills as a husband and father, and is always on the lookout to stretch his family’s budget as far as he can.