Wal-Mart Shopping: What is the Real Cost?

After reading all the stories over the last couple of days about how Wal-Mart is entering its last days and that the "Wal-Mart Era" is over, I started thinking about life before Wal-Mart. I remember having to travel to 5 or six stores every time we went shopping. I remember living in a town without a Wal-Mart and having to travel up to 30 miles away to find a K-Mart. This got me thinking about the way that grocery stores used to display their cost savings. They would go to a competing store or two and buy the same items at each store and then place them all in a shopping cart at the entrance so everyone who came in would be able to evaluate the savings associated with a particular store. Well I have taken this to the extreme over the last month and here are the standards and results.

Challenge:

Do my family's regular shopping over a two week basis. Using Wal-Mart for two weeks and then using other outlets as dictated by location and advertised prices. Each two week period would begin on Saturday with a grocery shopping trip and the initial shopping trip would be the exact same items. Store brand items or the lowest priced item available will be purchased. Travel time and mileage will be considered for the entire two week period.

Grocery List for the two weeks is included below:

Produce: Two Heads of lettuce, 3 lbs of onions, 3 lbs bananas, 1 bag apples, 1 lb pecans, 4 cucumbers, celery, carrots, 3 lbs tomatoes, 2 green peppers

No Deli Prepared Items

Bread: 3 loaves sandwich bread, 1 pack hot dog buns, 1 pack hamburger buns

Canned and Packaged Goods: 8 cans green beans, 5 cans diced tomatoes, 2 cans tomato sauce, 1 can refried beans, 4 cans black eyed peas, 4 cans whole kernel corn, 1 can Ro-Tel, 1 grated parmesan cheese, two boxes scalloped potatoes, 2 lbs of elbow macaroni, 2 lbs thin spaghetti, 5 lbs sugar, 5 lbs flour, 5 packs pudding

Frozen: 2 lbs broccoli, 2 packages vegetable medley, 10 pizzas, ½ gallon chocolate ice cream, ½ gallon vanilla ice cream, 4 lbs chicken breasts

Drinks: 24 pack Pepsi, 12 drink mix packages, 100 tea bags, ½ gallon crangrape juice, 1 gallon milk

Meat: 5 lbs ground beef, 3 lbs pork chops, 5lbs chicken leg quarters

This ended the fixed list for both shopping Saturdays.

Total time for shopping at Wal-Mart including travel time was 96 minutes. Wal-Mart is located 7.2 miles from my home. This included a short conversation with a group of friends. No side trips to any other part of the store were made on grocery shopping day. Total price for the shopping trip was $86.91. All in all this was a good trip. We used the self checkout line in order to speed ourselves through the crowds.

In order to complete the same shopping trip two weeks later it took 156 minutes and trips to Winn Dixie, Dollar General, CVS and the Flowers bread outlet. This time include 34.8 miles of travel. The cost including 2 gallons of gasoline was $85.32. The price of individual items is why there were so many stores involved. The trip was more confused and required careful planning and the inclusion of a cooler chest to make sure that items would spoil in the heat. It is still hitting almost 90 degrees everyday here even as we start October.

In order to bring this to a real life situation we shopped regularly during the first two weeks and then duplicated it in the second two weeks. This is made easier by the fact that I have twins that allowed us to shop for one during the first two weeks and almost exactly duplicate it in the second two weeks. Our daughter who shopped at Wal-Mart got $104.57 worth of clothing and sundries. While not completely happy with the selections especially in jeans she got more than her sister who spent $112.18 at Target, Old Navy and JC Penney.

During the two week period we made 6 trips for fill in groceries that included bread, milk, washing detergent, dishwashing detergent and another bag of apples. The cost for these items at Wal-Mart was $18.16. The cost at three different stops for the items was $12.71. Additional items were purchased during these trips but were not included in the survey. These are items that would have been purchased in any case. The cost of these items compared very closely at Wal-Mart and the competing stores.

Conclusion

Wal-Mart offers a decent value and in this case a clean environment. The selection is high and prices while not always the lowest on individual items offered more convenience for a large shopping trip but was a time waster and out of the way for small trips.

Using smaller more item specific shopping was better accomplished at those stores designed for that purpose. By paying attention to store specials the savings for strictly shopping at other stores was 6.3% over shopping at Wal-Mart, but figuring time and travel the savings were eroded.

Wal-Mart has a place in my family's life. It is not the only store we shop and we will not do all our shopping there but it does have more things in one place than any other. The smaller stores we shop use almost exactly the same suppliers so saying we are not shopping Wal Mart because of political or green reasons is just fooling ourselves. As a family we are unable to sustain the level of political or green shopping that many advocate because of economic reasons. The last sentence means that shopping politically or green is expensive! We will cover that in another article.

Plan your trips, make lists and you will provide for your family very well regardless of your budget.