We’re halfway through our five part series on teaching kids to spend. (If you’ve missed any, start here with post 1.)
Today we’re talking about buying in bulk.
This activity and conversation doesn’t focus on stores where you can only buy in bulk (like Sam’s Club or Costco). Rather it’s just an experiment on larger vs. smaller sizes at the same store.
Like the previous times, we headed to Target and J chose five items to compare — Claritin (it’s allergy season, yo), Tide, Viva paper towels, Chobani yogurt and Heinz ketchup. He wrote the item, the price for the smaller size and the number of units, then the price for the larger size and the number of units.
We did all the calculations at home for price per unit, but just so you know, it’s price / units.
So for example, the smaller package of Claritin was $17.99 and there were 20 pills. $17.99/20 = $0.8995 or $0.90 per pill. The larger size was $23.99 and there were 30 pills. $23.99/30 = $0.7996 or $0.80 per pill.
Results
The larger size won in all cases except Tide, where the results were a tie.
So does that mean we should always just buy the larger size? Well… not necessarily.