When I’m thinking about spending money on something, I ask myself, “Am I working for that?” For example when a bottle of water at the movie theater costs $4, I question whether I work as much as I do to overpay for a bottle of water? No. So I use the water fountain instead. In another example, I REALLY don’t want to work any more than I have to to buy toilet paper, tissues, and paper towels! How lame to trade any more our time and energy for such things than is absolutely necessary. Accordingly, I’ve dug into paper products, and here is what I’ve found.
Toilet Paper.
Historically, toilet paper rolls consisted of 4.5″ x 4.5″ inch sheets; however, manufacturers have been shrinking the length. Many brands now sell 4.5″ x approximately 4″ sheets. Some vendors disclose price per square foot, but most break the price down by sheet count, that is if they break down the price at all. Thus, when using the sheet count method, you have to figure in the possibility of about an 11% differential in sheet size.
I recently bought Presto toilet paper, which is Amazon’s in-house brand. Amazon priced Presto in bulk at 27 cents per 100 sheets, with the sheets measuring 4.5″ x 4″. I compared that to a small package of toilet paper I randomly selected at Target. Target did not disclose the sheet count price or square footage price. My calculator cleared up Target’s obfuscation to show a price of 53 cents per 100 sheets: 196% of the Presto price! Even if the sheets for the Target sample were 4.5″ x 4.5″ versus Presto’s 4.5″ x 4″ (I did not measure the Target sample sheet length), paying 96% more for 11% additional square footage of toilet paper still would be a bad deal.
The average person uses up to two rolls of toilet paper per week according to the all-knowing internet. Seems about right to me. Let’s play with that assumption.
For Presto, I paid about 85 cents per roll:
3 (people in our household) x 2 (rolls/week) x .85 ($ per roll) x (52 weeks a year) = $265.20 annual toilet paper expense.
Target sample at 196% of Presto price per roll:
3 (people in our household) x 2 (rolls/week) x 1.67 ($ per roll) x (52 weeks a year) = $521.04 annual toilet paper expense.
$40,522.68 opportunity cost of overpriced toilet paper:
Annual savings on toilet paper: $255.84. $255.84 invested annually for 30 years in an S&P 500 index fund, with an average annual return of 9.8%, grows to $40,522.68. Need I say more?
Tissues.
For tissues I found a distribution between approximately 1 cent and 3 cents per sheet. Already, you might be thinking, “Wow! people pay up to THREE TIMES as much as they need to for tissues into which they blow snot and then throw away!?!” Once you get past the basics of a tissue not being too rough and not disintegrating in your finger tips, a tissue is a tissue. I purchased Kleenex brand tissues on Amazon for 1 cent per sheet.
Kleenex tissues at 1 cent per sheet:
3 (people in our household) x 3 (tissues used a day) x 365 (days in the year) x .01 ($ per tissue) = $32.85 annual tissue expense.
Competing tissues at 3 cents per sheet:
3 (people in our household) x 3 (tissues used a day) x 365 (days in the year) x .03 ($ per tissue) = $98.55 annual tissue expense.
$10,406.27 opportunity cost of overpriced tissues:
Annual savings on tissues: $65.70. $65.70 invested annually for 30 years in an S&P 500 index fund, with an average annual return of 9.8%, grows to $10,406.27. Ten grand or expensive tissues? I’ll take the ten grand.
Paper Towels.
For environmental reasons, we limit paper towel use at our home to one roll per month. We use and reuse a washcloth, a sponge or a mop whenever possible, but sometimes–think dog accidents–a disposable paper towel is the best choice. Similar to toilet paper, paper towels are more difficult than tissues to price. Construction quality can be noticeably different with paper towels. How about absorption capability? Strength of the sheets? Then there’s the sheet size issue. The main takeaway is to try not to use paper towels. You’ll save money and help our planet.
P. Gustav Mueller, author of The Present