The price tags on most food items in Walmart have a nice orange label that shows you the cost per oz. I like the orange tags because they make comparing similar items easy.

A couple weeks ago we ran out of laundry detergent, so I made an emergency trip to Walmart (the emergency was caused by a poopy diaper that exploded onto my kid’s clothes).

When I grabbed a jug of sent-free All laundry detergent, I noticed the orange tag was missing. Technically, this wasn’t food, so I guess Walmart didn’t feel the need to add the orange label, but it made me suspicious. I did some quick math an discovered that buying three 100oz containers would be about one dollar cheaper than buying one 300oz container.

I didn’t have pencil and paper with me so I didn’t get the exact prices. That’s why I went back yesterday to investigate what I call:

“The Walmart Bulk Scam”

Most of us believe buying bulk is cheaper than buying smaller individual items. I bet Walmart knows that, and that’s why they started charging more for the larger containers.

Here are a couple more over-priced bulk items I found:
(I was careful to compare the same chemical – I didn’t compare ultra-concentrate to regular, I only compared different sized containers of the exact same product.)

Detergent
Gain 2xConcentrate – 100oz for $10.00 (so every 50oz should cost $5, but wait)
Gain 2xConcentrate – 150oz for $15.97 (They’re sneaking in an extra 32 cents per 50oz)

Dish Washing Soap
Palmolive Original – 16oz for $1.00 (If you bought three 16oz bottles you’d have 16 * 3 = 48oz for only $3)
Palmolive Original – 38oz for $3.48 (But Walmart will sell you only 38oz for $3.48. That’s 10oz less for an extra 48 cents.)

Paper Towels
This one’s a little more difficult because I had to break this product down by price per sheet, that’s because the paper towel 2-pack had 144 sheets per roll, and the 8-pack had 84 sheets per roll – I think that’s another trick they use to keep us from figuring out they’re overcharging us for bulk items. I multiplied the number of rolls by the sheets per roll, and divided the price by the number of sheets:

Bounty one-ply 2-pack (w/ 144 sheets per roll ) $2.84/(2 * 144) = .009 per sheet
Bounty one-ply 8-pack (w/ 84 sheets per roll) $8.86/(8 * 84) = .013 per sheet

That doesn’t look like much until you multiply it back out. If I bought the same amount paper towels by buying the 2-pack and by buying the 8-pack. (2016 is the least common multiple)
7 2-packs = 2016 sheets = $19.88
3 8-packs = 2016 sheets = $26.58

That’s almost $7 more for the
exact same quantity if you buy in bulk.

And yes I will use 2016 paper towels – remember this all started over a poopy diaper explosion.

The Bad News

Walmart keeps switching which products they overcharge you for. When I first noticed they were overcharging for bulk, it was for bulk All laundry detergent. By the time I went back to Walmart with paper, pen, and calculator, they had fixed the price of All but now they were overcharging for Gain. That means we have to keep a close watch on what they’re charging us.

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For those of you who like statistics, here’s how I conducted my survey:

I sampled 15 items from the two isles in Walmart’s food section that didn’t have the orange price-per-ounce sticker. I sampled no more than two items in one category (for example, I picked two laundry detergents, two dish soaps, etc). The only exception was for paper towels. Since the math was more involved, I sampled three different products, two by the same brand, Bounty.

I actually found 4 overpriced bulk items, but two were Bounty paper towels and I didn’t want to include two price breakdowns for paper towels (The results of the other Bounty paper towel comparison were: For two-ply paper towel packages, the 8-pack was the most expensive, the 6-pack was the least expensive, and the 2-pack was in between)
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Next, I’m going to check out the pharmacy section to see if Walmart is over charging for bulk items like shaving cream and shampoo.

No wonder Walmart is doing so well even though the rest of the country is struggling. When consumers are trying to save money, most of us buy bulk, but apparently that might not be the best decision.

Walmart, you have one week to hire someone who knows how to use a calculator.

Have you ever had your blood pressure taken or heard a nurse say something like “100 over 40″ (I don’t actually know if that’s a good blood pressure or not . . . someone with 100/40 blood pressure might be dead for all I know)?

I propose that we begin a Budget Pressure system. This would be a simple and quick way to assess financial health. The basic ideas is that there are two key pieces of financial information that reveal how well a person handles their money.

Here’s the equation:
Consumer Debt / Percentage of your take-home pay you’re saving per month.

Consumer Debt is credit card debt, car loan debt, or rent-to-own stuff debt. Basically, it’s how much money you’ve borrowed to buy things you don’t really need, or things you could get by with a lower-quality product (like a cheaper car).

I searched the web and here is the average American’s Budget Pressure:

$20,000 / 1%

So, the average American is $20,000 in debt and only saves 1% of their monthly take-home pay.

Here’s our Federal Government’s Budget Pressure:

9.6 Trillion / -12.5%

So, our Federal Government is 9.6 Trillion in debt and is spending 12.5% more than it takes in each year (Yearly budget divided by budget deficit: 4 trillion / 600 billion = 0.125 = 12.5%)

Is anyone really surprised by the recession? Granted, I don’t believe it’s appropriate for the government to constantly save money, because it’s not theirs to save it’s mine, but I’d be okay with an emergency fund of some kind.

Here is what I would consider a healthy Budget Pressure
0/10%

Here’s my family budget pressure: 0/5%

What’s yours?

What Was Jesus’ Budget?

That’s the motto of my family’s finances. It means we try to live as humbly as possible because it forces us to trust God more. . . and that is a beautiful way of saying I’m a tight-wad.

One of the reasons I was excited about moving into a house, was I thought we could save money on car maintenance; our new house has a garage where I could do minor repairs.

When I was at the auto parts store picking out oil and a filter, I noticed one of the sales people watching me. He smiled (in retrospect, I think I remember saliva dribbling out of the corner of his mouth). “You doing an oil change?”
“Yep.”
He handed me a mountain of coupons. “We’ve got a special.”

I was flattered by his thoughtfulness (that’s probably why I ignored the saliva). He even helped me carry my oil out to my car.

On the way home, I started thinking. (I’m not much of an in-the-moment thinker. I’m more of an after-the-fact thinker, and my thought is almost always “Good grief, what did I just do?”)

I just spent $15 on oil and filter.

For the last 10 years I’ve paid the quick oil change places $17 to do the work for me. Plus, they would top off my other fluids, dispose of the oil for me, and once in a while you can find a $5 off coupon and get an oil change for $12. But wait, this deal gets better. While your waiting, you can read a couple chapters of a good book rather than getting covered in oil. Granted, you have to put up with the sales pitch where they try to talk you into flushing your transmission fluid, radiator fluid, and changing the air in your tires, but if you’re strong (or cheap, like me) you’ll be able to say no.

Oh well. I’ve got my work clothes on, so I’m off to get covered in oil . . . my wife just cleaned our bathroom, so pray for me.

Post Oil Change UPDATE
Good grief, what did I just do? I could have returned the oil.