We begin today by acknowledging that, for obvious reasons, we all prefer to shop at local, independent retailers. But if you bear with me for a bit, I think you'll see why this is an important piece of information that could save you a lot of money. It's from the Insureblog. [Disclaimer: I found Insureblog when they posted a trackback to a post on MYOB. Insureblog found MYOB because our post, Bad Ideas is an "Editor's Choice" on the Carnival of the Capitalists this week. While we appreciate the mention, we don't link to other blogs just because they link to us. We link to other blogs when we think they have something that can help you. This post is a good example.]
Mike Feehan is the author and he points out that you can save money buying generic prescriptions at Wal-Mart. Even if you have prescription coverage, your co-pay is going to be more than the $4.00 that Wally World charges for generics. Obviously, if you have a $10.00 co-pay the $4.00 price is going to save you $6.00. On a prescription that you refill monthly, that's $72.00 per year.
OK, that's great. "But I don't shop at the big boxes", you say. Fair enough. Neither do I. But, here in St. Louis, one local grocery chain isn't just matching Wally's $4.00 generic price, they're actually filling generic prescriptions free, so I suspect that similar things are happening in other markets too. If so, you can support your fellow independent retailer and still save some money. Just keep in mind that nobody's making any money at $4.00, so if you have a local store offering this price, make sure you do some of your other shopping there, too.
As mentioned above, our post Bad Ideas is featured this week on the Carnival of the Capitalists. The COTC is hosted this week by The Startup Blog. The Startup Blog is brand new, so there's not a lot of material there yet, but according to their initial post, "This blog will feature news, trends, strategies, and advice for startups and entrepreneurs." You might want to check it out.
There's also an interesting post in the Carnival called The Introvert's Guide to Selling from the Business Pundit.
To go along with the grocery store not just matching the price but giving it away as policy any vacuum purchased at our store will never pay for a belt or the labor to install it. To see the face of a customer when we ask if they purchased there machine from us and we do not charge them for it as the Master Charge commercials put it "Priceless". We also have made deals on the fact we tell them when we are showing a Vacuum that they will never pay for a belt. Even when a complete service is done we do not charge for the belt.
Posted by: Ralph Garcia | October 30, 2007 at 11:05 AM