Using the Dollar Store: Pros and Cons
It used to be the five and dime stores in the good old days but inflation took care of that and now we just have dollar stores. There are many ways in which you can stretch your monthly/weekly budget further by shopping at dollar stores. It really makes sense because the concept upon which the dollar store is based makes it possible for sellers to actually sell the products to consumers substantially cheaper.
The reason that dollar stores are able to sell things cheaper is because they buy items in wholesale or in large quantities, because of overstocked or old merchandise, slightly flawed merchandise (dented tin, incorrect printing on label), smaller, generic brands or foreign brands. Now while some of these may not be of any consequence some things may be important to watch out for:
- Imported goods often do not follow the kinds of regulations for production or ingredients used and you may therefore end up with toothpaste with 10 times the fluoride that the FDA recommends.
- Sometimes it is not important that the goods are damaged in some small way, the misprint of a label for instance is of no consequence, but sometime they may be, so keep a careful eye out for flaws or damage.
- Sometimes food products are close to their sell by date, so don’t buy them unless you are pretty sure you are going to finish it off fairly quickly
- Quality of some items may not be the best.
- Sometimes products are made to look like certain brands although they aren’t. Look out for similar packaging, color scheme, lettering font etc.
- You can get distracted by interesting things that you may end up buying but not using simply because of their novelty value.
Dollar stores are of course great places to get bargains because:
- For many things where the quality is not of paramount importance, they are great: paper plates, pens, balloons, trinkets, children’s craft supplies, cleaning material, kitchen towels. This is just off the top of my head, there is a lot more besides these.
- Generic brands too tend to save you a lot of money and dollar stores preclude the necessity of buying a pricier, branded item.
- They offer unbeatable prices for things like small gifts (think children’s party supplies and give aways), stationery, gift wrapping paper etc.
- You get a variety of things all at the same place.
So really as long as you are a reasonably savvy shopper, you can really take advantage of a dollar store and the frugality options that it offers.
We don’t usually buy food items from the dollar store, except for candy, but get most of our party supplies, favors, and flatware. We probably save about 80% on those compared to walgreens or CVS.
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I agree, the thought of buying food from the Dollar Store doesn’t sound very appetizing, but for other items such a party, office supplies, etc., there isn’t any reason to pay higher prices for the same product at another store.
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I love the dollar store for kids items. Scrap paper and such. The kids can go though a lot of inexpensive fun due to the low prices of dollar stores.
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I love the dollar store, but if I’m needing a gift that resembles a bit of class, I don’t have the time to dig and search through the dollar stores, to possibly find something. I usually will just go straight to the place I know will have the quality I am looking for. However, I still love the dollar store.
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The dollar store! Well, it sounds very attractive, but is it so attractive in reality? To tell the truth I do not think so. Free cheese can be only in mouse catcher I believe. By the way it has already been said that the quality of these products is not very high. May be these shops are very popular among some classes of people taking into account the present economic situation, but in any way these shops can not offer us really good products and servise.
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