Jan 22, 2026
Whether you’re already a member or considering joining, buying in bulk at a warehouse club like Costco can lead to significant savings. The key caveat is discipline: to truly save money, you need to keep impulse purchases to a minimum.
Costco is a membership-only warehouse-style retailer. It’s the third-largest retailer in the world by revenue, (1) and nearly one-third of U.S. consumers shop there. (2)
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Costco offers two tiers of membership. For basic access, there is the Costco Gold Star Membership, which costs $65 plus taxes per year. Alternatively, for extra benefits, namely 2% cashback, a $10 monthly Instacart credit, service discounts and exclusive offers, you can opt for an Executive Membership, which costs $130 plus taxes per year.
In theory, the membership cost should be easily offset by spending less on groceries. Online lender CashNetUSA provided some examples of where consumers can save money, noting, among other things, that chicken thighs are 44.3% cheaper, Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes are 39.3% cheaper and pork chops are 25.7% cheaper at Costco than its competitors. (3)
When food and travel writer Pamela Vachon compared the cost of shopping at Costco versus a regular grocery store for CNET, she found you could save more than $1,000 annually. That’s just on groceries and doesn’t include items such as gas, electronics and cleaning supplies — meaning your savings could be much higher. (4)
Four under-the-radar Costco finds
To stretch your hard-earned dollars further, it can pay to seek out items you might not immediately think to buy at Costco, such as generic allergy medication, protein powder and breaded chicken breast fillets, along with bigger-ticket purchases like appliances.
Allergy medication
In general, you can save money by swapping out name-brand drugs for generic versions with the exact same active ingredients. This is the case with allergy medication from Costco’s in-house brand, Kirkland.
The medication, Kirkland Aller-tec, could potentially save you up to 90% of the cost of name-brand allergy medication — and it comes with a one-year supply to save you multiple trips to the drugstore.
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Protein powder
High-protein diets are all the rage these days, but protein powder can be expensive. Depending on the brand, a four- to five-pound container can cost $35 to $50 at Costco, compared to $60 or more elsewhere, according to Reader’s Digest. (5)
Breaded chicken breast fillets
While many Costco shoppers are aware of potential savings on meat and poultry, they can also find savings on pre-prepared options such as breaded chicken breast fillets.
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Some shoppers say Costco’s Kirkland lightly breaded chicken breast fillets taste as good as Chick-fil-A, despite costing much less.
Appliances
If you’re in the market for a major appliance, Costco may not be the first store that comes to mind. However, in some cases, you could potentially save money by buying a washer, dryer, stove or other major appliance there.
According to Reader's Digest, you can typically save between $50 and $150 on your purchase, and sometimes even more. (6)
Costco will also deliver the appliance to your home, plug it in and take away your old appliance free of charge, which can offer significant savings over other options. It also offers warranty extensions backed by Costco’s customer service team.
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Small savings can make a big difference
You can make these savings worth even more if you don’t spend that money elsewhere.
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For instance, let’s say you’re able to save $1,000 per year. That’s just over $83 per month.
If you put those monthly savings aside — instead of spending them on impulse buys like a year’s supply of wine gums that was “too good to pass up” — and make it part of a regular deposit into a portfolio that earns an average of 7%, in 20 years you’d have saved more than $40,000.
That may not sound like much, but if you withdrew 4% of that amount in your first year of retirement and then increased the withdrawals for inflation each year thereafter, it could translate into an extra $144 per month over a 30-year retirement. In other words, today’s grocery savings could help fund your grocery bills in retirement.
Alternatively, you could simply put the money into a high-interest savings account to help you weather small emergencies — and, in time, with the power of compound interest, build a larger fund to weather larger emergencies. Either way, your Costco savings could be a valuable addition to your financial planning.
Article sources
We rely only on vetted sources and credible third-party reporting. For details, see our editorial ethics and guidelines.
National Retail Federation (NRF) (1); New York Times (2); SavingSpot (3); CNET (4); Reader’s Digest (5, 6).
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Vawn Himmelsbach is a veteran journalist who has been covering tech, business, finance and travel for the past three decades. Her work has been featured in publications such as The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, National Post, Metro News, Canadian Geographic, Zoomer, CAA Magazine, Travelweek, Explore Magazine, Flare and Consumer Reports, to name a few.
