Welcome to another edition of Frugal Friday on a Tuesday. Since the world shut down almost a year ago, I have done basically everything in my power to stay home as much as possible. Weirdly enough, I feel safer at a theme park than I do at the grocery store, mostly because I know at the theme parks there are people at least attempting to enforce the safety standards and masks are required. (Orange County has a mask mandate, but Polk County where I live does not.)
Now that I’m making an effort to meal plan and cook most of our meals from home again, that means more grocery shopping, but the stores stress me out to no end. Through most of quarantine before we went back to work, we were relying on Instacart for grocery delivery. The problem with Instacart* is that most items are more expensive than buying in store, there are fees, and you have to tip. What’s worse is if the store is out of what you asked for, you are now potentially stuck paying for a higher priced substitution if you didn’t specify that they shouldn’t replace it. *Referral link. You use this to sign up for Instacart and I get credit.
Enter Walmart Grocery Pickup. Everything is the same price as in store, and if they’re out of something, you get the higher priced substitution at the price of the item you asked for. This week I got eighty trash bags for the price of forty! Plus, it’s so much easier to sit down at my computer with a list than weaving through aisles looking for things.
Then I just drive to Walmart, park in one of the spots, check in on the app, and pop my trunk. They load everything up for me with zero contact. Then I just get home and have to carry the groceries in. (Admittedly, I had to have them put the last order in the passenger seat because my trunk was full of Ikea boxes, but most of the time it works!)
Walmart Grocery has even gotten into the grocery delivery game with Walmart+. (Why does everything have plus in the name now?) It gets you free delivery on your grocery orders of $35 or more. You do have to tip on delivery, where you don’t on pickup, so it does cost a little more than pickup. It’s $12.95 a month or $98 a year. It also gets you free two-day shipping on anything purchased from Walmart.com. Instacart Express is only $9.99 a month, so it is a little more expensive, but I think you save with the items being the same price as in store with Walmart.
Honestly, the only downside I’ve run into with Walmart is that it’s rarely available for same day pickup or delivery. I usually have to plan a day or two in advance. I can live with that in exchange for never getting charged $12 for hamburgers because the store was out of the $5 hamburgers.
If you use my link to sign up for Walmart Grocery, whether you use the free pickup or pay for delivery, you get $10 off your order! Then I get $10 off my next order! It’s a win-win for everyone, and if grocery stores stress you out the way they do me, I think you will really like Walmart Grocery.
