Answering Questions- Costco or Coupons

I was asked about the savings difference between using Costco or coupons. I'll answer it here for anyone else that is interested.

The state we live in doesn't have very many grocery store chains and of those chains none will double our coupons (that I'm aware of). Of all the "good deal" kind of stores, Walgreens is about the best there is here and the only one that I can think of that has super good deals (that I'm aware of).

We do have a discount grocery that is cheaper than the rest and you bag your own groceries and can pay cash or check only. I know many gals that shop there but I'm unable to find all of our purchase needs there which requires driving to more stores. And it's not exactly close to my house.

So, with all of that, I have found for us personally it makes more sense to shop as much in bulk at Costco (plus I love the quality there) and then do the rest at the grocery store the best I can with sales and coupons (even though they aren't doubled). I could drive around and go to several stores in order to get better deals I think but my time is precious to me and with gas prices the way they are, I'm not interested in driving far between our spread out stores. I'm a one stop kind of girl. So, in general I go to Costco once a month or less and then a grocery store twice a month.

Those are my reasons for using Costco because if I do things the way I want to do them, Costco does actually save me money in the long run. It did take a bit of time to switch over to buying at Costco because it's a lot of money up front but once I got most of our things in bulk now it's just a matter of replacing them when we run out. If I was willing to drive to several stores instead and if our grocery stores doubled coupons then I would probably save even more money. But for now, this works for me. Shopping at Costco (because most of it is bulk) prevents me from having to grocery shop as often...I go 2 times a month instead of once a week like a lot of people.

I hope that cleared the mud a bit on why I do as much shopping at Costco as possible.