Costco photo by Gene Jackson.
Is it possible to go to Costco without wondering: Is this really worth it? The crowds, the Zipcar to Third Avenue and 38th Street, the existential despair of seeing your future in jumbo-sized cereal boxes, the inevitable 12-pound bag of frozen salmon filets you’ll never get through, the paradox of spending more to make sure you get your $50 membership’s worth.
That annual fee, of course, is the biggest question of all. Brooklyn College finance professor Charles Stone estimates that Costco prices have traditionally been roughly 10 percent less than average retail, which means you’d have to spend at least $500 a year to make your $50 back. For some people, that’s not hard to do, what with all the crap they wind up buying while they’re there.
But it just so happens that Target has rolled out a new line of “value basics” called Up & Up, which seems like a direct strike against Costco’s store brand, Kirkland. How do the two compare? Read the rest of this entry »
