Domingo and I finally went ahead and bought a second freezer for the garage. We were primarily thinking of it as a time savor, so we could reduce our trips to the grocery store. The more we think about it, the more a second freezer appears to be a money saver as well.

Unlike Mommy, who could subsist a month off of PB&J, the kids will get bored with and stop eating even their favorite meals if we make them too often. This necessitates having a wide variety of meats and vegetables at the ready. We prefer not to repeat a dish twice in a week if we can help it. As for the leftovers that don’t freeze well, they become Mommy lunches.

Our current refrigerator/freezer combo is better than anything we’ve had so far, but we still can’t stock up from Costco (or any other store) the way we’d like to. Inevitably, we sometimes realize we’re approaching 5 o’clock and don’t have a dinner option. That means a quick run to the closest, but sadly not cheapest grocery store. It’s marginally more expensive for vegetables, and much more expensive for meats. Fish runs us nearly double. Meats are not only cheaper at Costco, but they come individually wrapped so it’s easier to just make the amount you want and save the rest. It’ll also save us some eating out dollars (and calories). Just last week I was going to make salmon for our dinner once the kids were asleep when I discovered we were completely out. I could muster the energy to cook, or go out, but not both.

After looking around I settled on the 10.6 Cubic foot GE Chest Freezer. It’s on sale ($359, down from $399) just about everywhere, which pushed the price below the “free shipping” threshold at a few different places. Of course the shipping cost was nearly double the sale discount. Of course. I ended up contacting BestBuy, and Home Depot to see if I could get the non sale and thus free shipping price before realizing Lowes had both the sale price and free shipping.

Initial Cost: $389.52 after taxes.
Ongoing Yearly Costs: $39.68 (218 kWh at 18.2 cents per kWh)

Assuming a super conservative estimate of $10 a week savings on food (equivalent of saving on just 1 dinner a week), we’d save ($10 – $39.68/52), or $9.24 a week. After 43 weeks the freezer will have paid for itself. A more optimistic guestimate savings of $20 a week on food means the freezer will have paid for itself in just 4 & 1/2 months.

Posted in Shopping | Tags: Doing the Math