The Costco Shopping Habit That Might Be Costing You Hundreds Of Dollars

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With never-ending aisles of interesting deals and giant boxes of your favorite cereal, shopping at Costco is one of life's little pleasures. There's just something about buying in bulk that can be an effective and even freeing way to shop. You can plan out a massive amount of meals, and there's a consistency to the products you buy. But for the unprepared, shopping at Costco could cost you a lot more money than you're saving.

Mostly, this comes in the form of overbuying. It's okay, everyone has been there. Sometimes our eyes can be too big for our tummies, and that 5-pound block of Kirkland ground beef might seem like a totally reasonable thing to buy in the store, but if you don't proportion it properly and freeze what you don't cook, the next thing you know, you're dumping pounds of spoiled ground beef into the trash. Simply put: It's easy to overbuy at Costco.

And what if you don't have the freezer space? What if your favorite Costco items are disappearing and you want to stock up? At times, it feels like you need to sit down and make a master plan before a Costco run.

If you've noticed you're throwing out a lot of stale or spoiled food from Costco and want to make a change, start by taking note of the food storage containers you have in your home. If you're going to be storing cereals and grains, grab some leak-proof, BPA-free glass containers (like these from S Salient). Coincidentally, Costco offers quite a few high-quality choices to store your bulk food items, so you can put "food storage" on your shopping list, if needed.

It's okay to bulk-purchase any nonperishable food items, including soda, canned tuna, canned tomatoes, canned beans, peanut butter, cooking oil, spices, and dried rice and pasta. If you bulk-buy any perishable foods, you should plan to freeze ground meat or unused bread. These will keep in their original packaging in the freezer, or you can put them in plastic bags. Alternatively, you can pick up a giant roll of tin foil to wrap and store unused portions safely for months (make sure to double wrap in foil). If you have the freezer space, there are so many frozen items you should definitely stock up on.

Of course, you don't have to jump in with both feet and spend a lot of money equipping yourself with new storage containers or vacuum sealers. But considering how much cash you could be losing by throwing out old food products that have gone bad, learning how to make your bulk purchases last longer certainly seems like a wise investment.