That's entirely missing the point. How much would you pay to have an extra 30 minutes with your kids or significant other? Or an extra 30 minutes on your hobby

That's entirely missing the point. How much would you pay to have an extra 30 minutes with your kids or significant other? Or an extra 30 minutes on your hobby project? Or generally speaking doing anything other than buying paper towels at a wholesale market. That's how much your time is worth. And our time is limited. Our kids are only living with us and wanting to play with us for scant few years. We're only young and healthy and able to do active things for scant few years too. The value of that time is more now than later. If you're telling me that you would rather spend that 30min driving to Costco, dealing with parking, lugging that big pack of paper towels to the checkout stand, waiting in line, and driving back, all to save $2.50... that says a depressing amount about how much you value your life and the people you spend it with. EDIT: Or you are actually so poor that the trade-off is "buy low price or don't don't eat next week," in which case I respect it. But then you wouldn't actually be shopping at Costco since it isn't the lowest prices.