Reasons to shop at Walmart

Wal-Mart is a very controversial topic for some people. Growing up in the midwest near the home-headquarters for Wal-Mart, you would hear nothing but good things. However, things are a little different in the Northeast, where it can be viewed as the root of all evil in putting down the little guy. While I understand both points of view, I request that you put those aside in reading this and focus on the economics of the situation.

I do as much shopping as possible at Wal-Mart, and have since I started buying my own groceries the 2nd year of college. The question that came to my mind was how much have I saved in doing this? So, I recently set out investigating answer to this….

I found the following good news article relating to this topic at the link below.
http://walmartstores.com/FactsNews/NewsRoom/8594.aspx

At this website, you can go to another link where you can find a pdf document with the details of a complex study done by the Global Insight Group showing that shoppers can save $700 per year by shopping at Wal-Mart. Wow!

So, let’s look at what that has meant for me in the past several years since I have been shopping at Wal-Mart (2005-2009). Multiplying $700 per year times the 5 years would yield a total savings of $3,500.

Assuming that I placed this money in my Roth IRA account and invested it until retirement at the age of 65 years old (and assuming the 80 year historical average return of 12.4% in the stock market), this would result in a nest egg of $600,854 at the end of the 41 year period. Applying the effects of inflation to this sum (assume 3.2%), this would yield $165,159.

This is quite amazing if you ask me!

Student

About the Author Jacob A Irwin

Hi folks! My name is Jacob. I am the owner and operator of My Personal Finance Journey. I started this blog in January of 2010 and have enjoyed the journey ever since. Since finishing up graduate school in Virginia in 2014, I have been working in biopharmaceutical development in Colorado. You can read more about me and this site here. Please contact me if you have any questions!

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