If there's no volume discount, does buying in bulk still make sense?
If they don't spoil, you can still get some marginal benefit if buying in bulk means you avoid the need for a trip to the shops to get a replacement. If the item is a commodity that you will use eventually you are unlikely to lose out as the prices tend to remain fairly stable. There's also the inconvenience factor, I like to have plenty of some items so I'm not caught short, consider how important your furnace is in mid winter, or the inconvenience of running out of an item right when you need it. Let me add a counterpoint.  I don't know about you, but for some psychological reason, when I know I have an abundance of something I tend to be less frugal about the way I consume it.  For example: When there is a six pack of cokes in the fridge I feel like I am more prone to not drink them up so quickly so I have some for later on. However, if I knew I had 3 more cases in the pantry, I seem to go through a lot more of them. As with everything else, it's a question of trade-offs. Pros For Buying In Bulk Cons For Buying In Bulk Inventory cost. You need to purchase more shelving/cupboards to stock the goods.  This is a real cost. The psychological effect of having more means you are more likely to use more, thus costing you more. Deflation of the cost of the item should occur over time in a well-functioning market economy.  A $10 item today might be $9.50 in one year in real terms. There is a real opportunity cost associated with overbuying.  Granted, an extra $100 in your bank account won't be earning too much if you have to spend it one month later, but it does mean you have less financial independence for that month. Risk of spoilage.  There is a nonzero risk that your goods could be ruined by flood/fire/toddler/klutz damage. You need to decide which of these pros and cons are more important to you.  Financially, you should only buy what you need between shopping trips.  In reality the convenience of holding goods in storage for when you need them may outweigh the costs. To Rich Seller's point, we live 1/2 gallon of gas and 30 minute round trip from the supermarket.  For the items that are non-perishable, such as bathroom or facial tissue, paper towels, shampoo,soap, toothpaste, etc, there's value in never running out of it.  (@JohnFx - your point is well taken. When my daughter was a toddler, I found her covered in band-aids. One tiny scratch, 9 band-aids. My wife asked why I was concerned, we had hundreds in the pantry. I can see how some items might just encourage over-use) I agree with Rich Seller.  Avoiding a trip to the store is a benefit.  Not only do you save the time and hassle, but there's real money saved if a car trip is avoided: I maintain a spreadsheet for all of my car expenses – depreciation, maintenance, insurance, license & registration, gas, etc. Combined with starting & ending odometer readings for the year, I can see exactly what it costs me to drive one kilometre.  Granted, some costs are fixed simply by virtue of having the car, but gasoline is a variable cost avoided when a trip is avoided. It could be a sunk cost.  If you buy 5 gallons of vegetable oil it costs $50.  Until you use up all the vegetable oil you dollars are tied up and cannot be spent on popcorn or any other good. So weigh if the convenience is more important than having the cash on hand for other purchases is another factor to consider There is a trade-off. It can be worthwhile because you save those extra trips. (On the other hand, don't you need to go shopping all the time for perishable items anyway?) On the other hand, having those items on stock implies inventory costs (the space they take up might be limited, the money they represent is sleeping and cannot be put to other usage, some of them might break...). This trade-off gives you the economic order quantity. Your stock levels over time based on that would look like a saw-blade. In addition, you might want to keep a safety stock for emergencies (if you use them faster than expected, if there is a supply shortage...). Instead of buying in bulk, I invest the money in equity mutual funds, for an expected return of 12%, which is more than inflation. So, I make more returns. But at the cost of a slight risk, which I'm comfortable with.
You're correct. Amazon literally doesn't give a shit if they don't make profits for a while on this business. Hell it's potentially possible that their 1P business is still in the red and just used for the platform. Amazon isn't looking at whole foods for profit in the short term or even on a 5 year time horizon. They're looking to expand their presence into the fresh market, give people a local touch point to pick up online orders, and get more people into their platform.   It's completely likely you'll see some form of price decline.   Edit: just wanted to add, this is far from new. Only select items. First - I agree, beware the Goldfish Factor - any of those items may very well lead to greater consumption, which will impact your waistline worse than your bottom line. And, in this category, chips, and snacks in general, you'll typically get twice the size bag for the same price as supermarket. For a large family, this might work ok. If one is interested in saving on grocery items, the very first step is to get familiar with the unit cost (often cents per ounce) of most items you buy. Warehouse store or not, this knowledge will make you a better buyer.  In general, the papergoods/toiletries are cheaper than at the store but not as cheap as the big sale/coupon cost at the supermarket or pharmacy (CVS/RiteAid). So if you pay attention you may always be stocked up from other sources. All that said, there are many items that easily cover our membership cost (for Costco). The meat, beef tenderloin, $8.99, I can pay up to $18 at the supermarket or butcher. Big shrimp (12 to the lb), $9.50/lb, easily $15 at fish dept. Funny, I buy the carrots JCarter mentioned. They are less than half supermarket price per lb, so I am ahead if we throw out the last 1/4 of the bag. More often than not, it's used up 100%.  Truth is, everyone will have a different experience at these stores. Costco will refund membership up to the very end, so why not try it, and see if the visit is worth it? Last year, I read and wrote a review of a book titled The Paradox of Choice. The book's premise was the diminishing return that come with too many things to choose from. In my review, I observed how a benefit of Costco is the lack of choice, there's one or two brands for most items, not dozens. If you give this a bit of thought, it's actually a benefit. "Like most other things, this is ""sometimes,"" but not always true. Sometimes banks will be willing to sell at a discount, sometimes they will hold out for ""full price."" But if you want a discount, this is a good place to ""look.""" No. Busts are very infrequent, and if an equity were illiquid enough to be affected, the bust cost would be enormous. For a liquid equity, the amount of busted volume is insignificant except during a flash crash or flash spike.  Then it would be reasonable to redownload. 83(b) election requires you to pay the current taxes on the discount value. If the discount value is 0 - the taxes are also 0. Question arises - why would someone pay FMV for restricted stocks? That doesn't make sense. I would argue, as a devil's advocate, that the FMV is not really fair market value, since the restriction must have reduced the price you were willing to pay for the stocks. Otherwise why would you buy the stocks at full price - with strings attached that could easily cost you the whole amount you paid? If the stock has low liquidity, yes there could be times when there are no buyers or sellers at a specific price, so if you put a limit order to buy or sell at a price with no other corresponding sellers or buyers, then your order may take a while to get executed or it may not be executed at all. You can usually tell if a stock has low liquidity by the small size of the average daily volume, the lack of order depth and the large size of the gap between bids and offers. So if a stock for example has last sale price of $0.50, has a highest bid price of $0.40 and a lowest offer price of $0.60, and an average daily volume of 10000 share, it is likely to be very illiquid. So if you try to buy or sell at around the $0.50 mark it might take you a long time to buy or sell this stock at this price. First, I want to point out that your question contains an assumption. Does anyone make significant money trading low volume stocks?  I'm not sure this is the case - I've never heard of a hedge fund trading in the pink sheets, for example. Second, if your assumption is valid, here are a few ideas how it might work: Accumulate slowly, exit slowly.  This won't work for short-term swings, but if you feel like a low-volume stock will be a longer-term winner, you can accumulate a sizable portion in small enough chunks not to swing the price (and then slowly unwind your position when the price has increased sufficiently). Create additional buyers/sellers.  Your frustration may be one of the reasons low-volume stock is so full of scammers pumping and dumping (read any investing message board to see examples of this).  If you can scare holders of the stock into selling, you can buy significant portions without driving the stock price up.  Similarly, if you can convince people to buy the stock, you can unload without destroying the price.  This is (of course) morally and legally dubious, so I would not recommend this practice. "Yes... but it is a matter of balancing risks.  It is wiser to keep a small amount of ""ready cash"" as an emergency/buffer -- and to suffer the gradual loss to inflation...  Than it is risk becoming ""stuck"" in an emergency with zero dollars in any (low or no cost) source of funds -- those kinds of ""emergencies"" ($500 or $1,000 ""unexpected/unbudgeted"" expenses) are fairly frequent and virtually inevitable.  You lose vastly MORE money when you are forced to borrow those amounts (interest -- even **low-rate** loans -- is virtually always higher than the average inflation rate)." You're implying that Whole Foods' margins on many items is [in the 30% - 40% range.](http://i.imgur.com/xUG4lOw.png)  That's much higher than I would have expected.   My guess is they'll be scrapping the most expensive product lines, though - the whole trade organic, for example. Volume @ 0 doesn't mean that there are no buyers and sellers, it just means that there hasn't been any trades done yet. What you need to look for are the bids and offers (for selling and buying, respectively). For further expiration and NTM or IT options there will almost always be a bid and an offer (but it may be very wide). Now, in case where there is 0 bid (no one is willing to buy), you may still have a chance if the option has some value in it. For that - you need your broker to try to shop it to market making firms. Now, depending on who your broker is, this may or may not be possible. Alternatively, if you have DMA (direct market access) to the options exchanges, you can try to put in an offer of your own and wait for someone to execute against you, however do not expect to be traded with unless your price is out of line with the cost. However, in wide markets, you can try Lampost options (they may give you price improvement) or try to offer very close to the bid. You may save yourself a penny or two and perhaps get a rebate if you are using BATSO or NASDAQO markets (if you have DMA and pass-through exchange fees). I think your comment sounded a lot more reasonable and aware of how it goes than the writer; and yes it does makes sense that for little investors like retailers, there is not really a point to consider it, as you said. I don't think it redeems the article at all. "My simple rule to avoid impulse buys is that if you see something you want, you can get it.... but not today; go back and get it tomorrow (or wait even longer, for big-ticket items). This way you'll have time to think about it rather than just doing it. That won't address all your wasteful spending, but it's a good way to avoid ""why did I think this would be a good idea?"" type situations." Consider the case where a stock has low volume.  If the stock normally has a few hundred shares trade each minute and you want to buy 10,000 shares then chances are you'll move the market by driving up the price to find enough sellers so that you can get all those shares.  Similarly, if you sell way more than the typical volume, this can be an issue. "WF has trust in certain customers.  I doubt that they will lose that trust by lowering prices, and they will probably gain other customers as well.  The thing you should probably do before making your judgements is to realize that the CEO of Amazon is probably a pretty smart person and he has access to information that you don't.  So maybe you should lean on the side of ""Wait and See"" before making any judgements to a certain move." You're right to keep the oldest one.  That's an asset to your credit rating. Since you're already responsible with your credit, a dip in your credit rating doesn't really matter unless you're looking for another loan, like a mortgage. I personally like the cash-back rewards because they're the most flexible, so you have a good thing going with that card. Do those reward cards give you perks on all of your purchases?  If they do, then look carefully to see if you can do noticeably better with another card.  If not, it may not really be worth it. Regarding cancelling one of the cards, I wouldn't, and here's why.  Your cards can get compromised, and sometimes more than one gets compromised at the same time.  I was glad that I had three cards, because two of them got hit the same day.  Hence, having three cards hit on the same day is possible, and you'll be glad that you have the fourth.