Saving on Dog Food

The Wednesday Morning Weekly.

A friend of mine recently told me he likes the deals where he can get 50% off dog food purchased at PetSmart — along with free shipping. But they can be hard to come by I guess because he hasn’t done them in a while.

In this article I share an alternative.

I asked him how many pounds of dry dog food his two dogs go through each month. He said 50 pounds per month. I asked him how much he pays for the dog food — he buys it from PetSmart — and he said $85 per month for a 50 pound bag. This turns out to be a cost of $1.70 per pound. I also asked him about the grade of dog food and he said it was mid grade.

I have bought the same Aldi dry dog food for my dogs for the past 10 years: Heart to Tail Premium Dog Food. I pay $13.49 for an 18.5 pound bag which turns out to be 73 cents per pound. I guess this Aldi dog food would be considered a mid grade dog food as well. None of my dogs have had issues with it — no bad breath nor gas, etc.

So, without any deals, my friend is currently spending almost $1 more per pound than I am at $1.70/lb vs. $0.73/lb — or about 2 1/3rd times more than me.

At 600 pounds of dog food per year, it is costing him around $1020 per year, assuming no coupon deals. If the Aldi dog food works for him & the dogs, then he’d only be spending about $437 per year. So if he could make the switch he’d be saving $583 annually. ($583 invested annually over 30 years at 7% is around $55,000.) And he wouldn’t have to bother with hunting for the coupon deals as well — and the 1/2 off deal doesn’t even save quite as much compared to just buying it from Aldi.

I understand Aldi dog food might not work for everyone but figured I’d share. My friend is fairly frugal like myself and he said he’s going to trying mixing in 10% of this Aldi food to start to see how it goes. If it works well maybe the following month he can mix in 20% and work his way up? I dunno. The more that is mixed in, the more that is saved.

Some info from the back of the package:

This is just one frugal hack among dozens of others to help cumulatively save THOUSANDS of dollars per year. The idea is to utilize as many of these dozens of hacks as possible to improve one’s financial situation, without sacrificing any quality of life.