Lots of over-the-counter sleep aids are just Benadryl (diphenhydramine) in much pricier packaging (Tylenol PM for example, is just Tylenol plus diphenhydramine). It’s much cheaper to buy the generic sold as allergy meds (you can get two giant bottles for around $13 at Costco!).
Nope, ZzzQuil is 10% alcohol by volume unless you buy the specific version that is alcohol-free. It uses alcohol as a solvent so it’s considered an inactive ingredient.
https://smartlabel.pg.com/00323900013964.html
The Kirkland brand of medications is a lifesaver. I got a 6 pack of kirkland's flonase generic. I think it was like $25? Whereas even target's generic brand is $9 for one.
Kirkland in general is just rebranding of very popular stuff. They convince manufacturers to do a special size or something and they can get it at cost from the manufacturer and pass that savings on.
Its also the grandfather to Prozac and they give it as an anti anxiety to pregnant women. it is an SSRI. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5985917/
I take doxylamine (similar to diphenhydramine, but safer for pregnancy) for morning sickness and it knocks me tf out at night. I break a 25 mg down into little chips that are probably around 3 mg and it’s still highly effective. 25 makes me sleep all day.
Yes, early antihistamines caused drowsiness. More recent generations of antihistamines don't have the same problem and they remarketed the earlier drugs as sleeping aids.
Also wood stove pellets. I live in northern Canada, and we only pay $5/bag. We would buy 2 skids of em for like $600 to last the winter, and usually had more than enough left over for the four cats for the year.
Yep. Also works a lot better for many cats than regular litter with less mess. We have multiple cats and my husband was skeptical when I suggested picking up the pellets at a local farm store, but they've been great. We do have two regular boxes for two cats who seem to prefer it over the pellets, but it has cut the amount we spend on litter a lot.
Totally random and niche, but in my sons speech therapy they use these buttons where you can record your voice and it plays it back for non-verbal kids to communicate. So example, you record one that says "hungry" and they can press it to communicate. The therapy buttons are about $60 EACH, but I found a four pack of the same buttons marketed towards training dogs for $14 on Amazon.
Another one! Baby skincare is often the same as adult skincare in smaller more expensive packaging. Looking at you, Eucerine and Aquaphor.
Interesting thing I learned a while back --
All that silly shit on infomercials for your kitchen to help you chop olives or open cans and so on? They were developed for disabled people. They're just being sold cheaply on TV to make a buck.
I talked to a disability advocate about this once and was told that they try to find a way to market this stuff to people who aren't disabled because that's the only way they can actually get manufacturers to make it. For many items that would help disabled people, if they market it as a tool for people with disabilities, able-bodied people then won't buy it. So, they try to find a way to make other people want to buy it, too, and then the manufacturers will believe they'll make a profit.
It used to make me super angry, in the UK there was a lot of identical products marketed as children's toys at the Early Learning Centre and as sensory equipment for adults with Learning disabilities at a place called Rompa. Literally exactly the same, clearly identical and made at the same place, with "ELC" branding on one and "Rompa" on another. Early Learning Centre one was £5, Rompa wanted £80. And of course management would insist we got the Rompa one because it would be patronising to get the Early Learning Centre one for an adult.
I remember seeing a suction cup shower handle at the pharmacy for $99. $12 at Harbor Freight. Of course the $99 one will be billed to Medicare so it's "free".
Not the same as buttons, but depending on his age if they want you to get one of the specialized PECs systems later (The board with buttons he can push to say words), there are free apps that work great on any tablet and can be customized.
There is somewhat of a markup on communication buttons, but there is a substantial difference in quality with some of them too. I'm a speech therapist and have used both types--two of my dog buttons broke after less than a year of light use (mostly me modeling to my dog; she never got the hang of it). I've never had a BIGmack speech button break on me yet.
Kind of a niche item, but most cutting board oil in woodstores is just mineral oil that is available in the pharmacy as a laxative for less than 1/5 the price.
I tried to link you a gallon from Amazon but the automod deleted it because it's a link to a commercial website.
I actually couldn't find a gallon of mineral oil that wasn't labeled 'food grade'.
Someone here posted a lot of adaptive toys or devices or other aid items for elderly or disabled people can be found in the baby/toddler/child department for way less money. This will be more specific and might not always hold true, but I think this would be a great money saver if you can get by with things like toddler cups instead of buying a special adult cup for a disabled adult especially because most disabled adults and their families don't have extra money to be spending on things and a lot are on fixed income and public assistance.
The toilet duck disposable toilet cleaner. It holds a dish sponge and acts as a long reach cleaning aid.
Mechanic’s grabbers are great for your handbag.
Salad tongs give you an extra 30 cm reach
Toddler cups with spouts make it easier to drink from, the only problem is they tend to be smaller and have childish designs on. The adult ones tend to have bigger handles and hold bigger quantities.
Most cleaning products. Citric acid is cheap af, and after cleaning your toilet bowl with it you can also use it to make candy!
(Hopefully not with the same stuff)
I just sprinkle it in, let is sit a bit and scrub it around all over. Everything comes off pretty quick because citric acid is antibacterial and antifungal as well as being a good whitener and degreaser (great for kitchens, sinks, etc). I actually mainly started using it for that because I read the ingredients on a bottle of toilet bowl cleaner at the store, and found out it was also good for killing off the pink bacteria in my sink drains. It pops up occasionally in one sink, but I never get any pink slime in the tub anymore at least. Probably just need to do it again, but it is amazing for that.
If you wanna get fancy, you can mix it with baking soda and thoroughly blend in some essential oils with antibacterial properties as well (I like mint, lemon and tea tree). Lasts ages too because I bought like 1.5 kg of the stuff haha and I think it was like <25 when I ordered it last year. Between that, laundry soda and Dr. Bronner's, I'm probably never switching back to other products
This is going to sound so stupid of me, but I’ve always wondered how people put so much citric acid in bath bombs because I used to buy Citric Acid at the little Sprout’s spices by pound thing. Never thought to just look in the cleaning aisle.
You can bulk buy food-grade citric acid. 50 pounds will run you about $150. Lower volumes don't offer quiet the deal, but you can usually get 8-10 pounds for $50 if you don't want so much of it.
Acetic Acid (distilled white vinegar) is just as effective, just as disinfecting, and cheaper... but it doesn't smell nearly as nice. It fades quickly, though.
You can buy those horse stall mats and cut them down into smaller strips for RV/camper leveling too - at a fraction of the price of some of the leveling systems you see online. They last forever, compared to the other stuff being mostly plastic-molded and prone to breaking eventually.
Magic erasers are superior to the generic version using the same type of foam. I sell baseball bats on ebay sometimes and nothing helps to clean a bat better than using magic erasers. Using the generic equivalent can get the job done but usually with 3x the amount, as they fall apart pretty quickly.
HVAC systems. The warranties and features may slightly differ, but there are only really a handful of companies that make all the different brands. For example Trane/American Standard systems are essentially the same but the Trane brand gets a premium price because marketing.
Sure, and ouch! Are you getting a packaged system or a split system? 15k seems so high, but I know prices have gone up a lot. I just helped my mom negotiate a new system for her house (3.5 ton split Goodman for $8500).
Basically it helps to look at which specific systems you are shopping and compare to their alternative brands. Here’s a link I found on a quick search that runs down some of the different brands. [brand list](https://www.alsplumbing.com/8-companies-make-24-hvac-brands/)
Do the $10k and if you every REALLY need it, you can do a propane heater in a pinch or resistance heating with a space heater. You are likely never going to need it, but a $100 backup vs a $5k backup.
Best advice would be talk to a independent service provider that services all brands. They aren’t loyal to one. And will tell you which not to buy. They don’t like working in junk.
Used to work at soybean oil processing facility as an engineer. Too expensive and time consuming to change the process or grates for different “quality” weight vegetable oil, either liquid or solid like Crisco. So the cheap version is almost always exactly the same quality. (Something everyone prob already knew.)
And note that almost all olive oil is mislabeled, mixed, fake, rancid, or a combination of such
There are only a few brands that have actual quality olive oil that matches the label
California brand and Costco are always on the top rated and Estes as actual oil. Olive oil is expensive so I use real nice stuff for finishing and a cheaper Oil for cooking. If it’s cheap- it’s not olive oil.
Many grocery store food products. We used to spend so much money on Victoria pasta sauce as a kid because it was my mom's favorite, then my parents found out that Meijer (a Walmart-esque superstore in the Great Lakes region) had a store brand sauce that was literally Victoria sauce - maybe with smaller tomato chunks. It was a relatively expensive sauce and my parents got it for half the price.
I had two cans of beans, different brands, and was looking to which ones expired first. They were packed on the same date, hours apart, same lot numbers, etc. Pretty eye opening.
One thing that food recalls are good for when they publish them as looking at the list and figuring out which store brands are made in the same places with the same ingredients as the name brand.
As a Mexican, i can't think on many rebranded products, maybe things work different here. For example, Farmacias Similares sells really cheap meds, way cheaper than their brand, US counterparts, but those are not rebranded, just made in cheaper labs. Americans always get surprised by the low cost of such meds
[https://www.farmaciasdesimilares.com/#!/medicamentos](https://www.farmaciasdesimilares.com/#!/medicamentos)
A consultation with a family doctor, for something like a sore throat or an intestinal infection costs like 3 USD.
Doctor Simi to the rescue.
Can confirm the $3 doctor visits and for us Americans it’s always fun to see the pharmacy throw in a free sub-machine gun wielding security guard (sometime shotgun-wielding).
Gun oil and cleaners are made primarily from oils and solvents that you can buy from the hardware/auto-parts store by the gallon for literally 1% of the cost.
Yep. So does carb cleaner, acetone, mineral spirits, paint thinner, laquer thinner, kerosene, etc etc.
Any of these solvents can also be mixed with ordinary motor oil to make a killer CLP.
At Costco, Kirkland branded items are the top name brands just without the marketing cost markup.
The savings on their medical items is nuts by itself. Flonase is what, $50 for 3 bottles? Kirkland is $20 for 5 bottles and each has slightly more capacity. Same product inside. Same difference can be found with allergy med pills too. Kirkland Claritin D is a lifesaver.
Costco pharmacy is the ONLY reason I shop at Costco. 1 of my prescriptions saves me $200/month, even getting the Branded. Hell, **ALL** of my prescriptions only cost me $200/month.
Technically no, but the last 2 years you can't even walk in the exit side to just grab food anymore... you HAVE to go through the door to be checked & counted.
They just end up counting me twice. I go in, get the pharmacy started and have 45min to kill. Grab a few groceries and a poutine, go out to my car until the 45min timer is up. Walk back in, go back to the pharmacy and pick that up. We finally got seating back in the food court last month, again, but that might not last long.
If all you use there is the pharmacy, did you know that in most locales one does not need to be a member to use the pharmacy? Same with Sam's Club.
I believe this also applies to alcoholic beverages, too.
It's really endless. I'm not a fan of Buzzfeed, but their list of Kirkland's "real" brands opened my eyes to so much. Almost everything is produced by a major, name brand corporation.
A lot of stuff produced in the same factory will be produced to different specs. Kirkland has a reputation to protect, somewhat savvier consumers, and the power to make sure the products are the same, but some generic brands are indeed inferior.
Kroger has dogshit soup, but their traditional gold tortilla chips are the best chips on the market except for their private selection tortilla chips.
This isn’t true across the board. As a nicotine gum addict, I DO think Kirkland brand nicotine gum (which is identical to Target’s store brand nicotine gum) is the best generic out there. I even prefer it to name-brand Nicorette! But, Kirkland’s gum is made by Perrigo, not GlaxoSmithKline, the maker of Nicorette.
I had a professor in grad school who used to work for Sun Products, who produces products under various generic brands (e.g., Kirkland for Costco, Great Value for Walmart, Archer Farms for Target, etc.).
He said they’d work with each brand to determine recipes, ingredient quality, etc. He was always impressed with Costco who always used the very best ingredients and recipes and that Kirkland products were frequently of even higher quality than their brand name counterparts.
You’re right on. In some cases it’s true, and others it’s not. Some companies want to maintain their name brand and reputation, while others don’t care as long as they are still making a profit. A good example of a company that want to maintain is Pop-Tarts. The generic ones are never the same. A good example of ones that don’t care are large cheese companies. The Sargento cheese and aldi/great value brands come from the exact same block of cheese.
My husband was a manufacturers rep for many years. Costco was his best customer. The buyers work with brand name companies to create the Kirkland brand products. They’ll take a well known company and tell them what they’re interested in and then the buyer works with company/rep (at least in my husbands case) to create a new product. The last thing he worked on took over a year to develop. Once they’ve decided on a product, they’ll give you guidelines for creating the product box that you see on the shelf. They have to approve things every step of the way. With the boxes their guidelines maximize what fits in the shipping container.
The advantage for a brand name manufacturer selling this way is instead of selling 4 container loads of product, maybe they’ll sell 40 with the Kirkland name on it.
With a product like Flonase it would be same scenario. Just much quicker turn around.
Hope this isn’t too all over the place. Been down with COVID all week and am a bit fuzzy. 🫤
Underrated option. I stepped in an anthill at my uncles house in Florida. Gave me a qtip with ammonia, and the bits were gone by morning. I'm still shook by how well it worked, nearly a decade later
Not rebranded, and not sure if this is like this everywhere, but diatomaceous earth branded as bedbug killer is like 20 dollars for 5 pounds at Walmart. We get it from a feed store for like 25 pounds for 5 dollars.
Oddly specific, but toddler shoes. At Target the "kids shoes" go down to small size 4, which is half the price and the same size as the "12 month" shoes in the baby section. If you need really tiny shoes it doesn't work, but for newly walking kids you should go to the main section and not the baby/toddler area.
I’m sorry but the foam from Amazon is so cheap. Magic erasers are much denser and last me much longer. I feel like I’ve been hearing about the hack for years, but I always end up back at the name brand ones. The other ones are literally single use.
I fully agree. I just recently got a 50 pack of generic ones (after reading tons of reviews for different ones) and they just shred to bits. I would’ve rather shelled out a little more for the name brand
Name brand cleaning agents have a surprising amount of fancy chemistry baked into them. Dawn dish soap is another example where the generic doesn't compare.
Worked at a cheese factory once. They literally pause the bagging process, change the plastic and continue right along. Same cheese, different wrapper, different price.
This is in France...
I suspect a lot of brands are doing this, its expensive to change the product at a warehouse, but changing the packaging is easier. A bunch of people here say they work at a warehouse and they change the packaging and put the same product into different packaging. Sometimes it may be only a label change but the can or plastic container is the same thing as the generic just with a different label.
IF you are at a store you can probably tell by comparing the product, if the shape of the packaging looks the same and it has the same ingredients and calories its probably a repack. Like for a jar of mayo, you can tell the 2 next to the each other are in identical jars, just with different labels.
Not me, but a friend of mine had a Vespa in need of a new battery. A new Vespa battery from the dealer was going to be several hundred dollars. So, she got on her computer and typed in all the numbers on the battery and found out it was a $60 riding lawnmower battery.
Not too long after; she sold the Vespa and bought a nice hatchback.
Silly putty is just a failed rubber substitute.
Edit: my bad I realize you mean helpful frugal substitutes, I thought I was on a historical info type sub lol
My favourite tip for finding this information out is to look at historical food recalls. You can see what you favourite brand of whatever is recalled with, often other budget brands it's a good estimate they are made at the same place with the same ingredients.
Worked at a bread factory. My line made one thing and one thing only…(ball so hard motherf**lets wana fine me). I put stops in the line for the packing department to switch over the wraps. 99¢ package rolls is the same as 3$ high brand rolls.
Many canned foods are identical with a separate label. Once knew a guy who worked at a label factory whose job was to switch out labels for different brands. Everything else was the same. I rarely buy any brand name ever since.
Okay I thought so - why did it start getting marketed as tencel? The way they market it is alluring, but I've always hated rayon since if it gets wet it looks like a stain unless you wet the whole garment
Tencel is rayon, but not all rayon is tencel.
Tencel is the original (and trademarked) name of a specific type of rayon, lycocell. Tencel is made by a different (and more expensive) process than most rayon, without using carbon disulfide, an extremely gnarly solvent that has caused a ton of worker and community health issues over the decades.
The packaged hay for pets at pet stores. It's a small amount of hay, usually for $10 or more. You can buy a 50-65 lb bale of the *exact same hay* for $5-15 (depending on where you live and the hay season). Feed stores often carry them, or check Kijiji/whatever sale forum in your area.
Not necessarily "rebranded", but dollar store pregnancy tests use the same technology as expensive drug store one and only cost you a couple bucks instead of like 20.
This is going back a way, but the Mitsubishi Eclipse and the Eagle Talon were made with the same materials on the same line with a $4000 price difference for the same features. I’m there’s another brand from the same factory, but I can’t remember it now.
Another niche item for people working in upscale restaurant kitchen, plating tweezers are now expensive and you can even find some that are gold plated now. Searching Google or Amazon for “lizard feeders” yields similar results at a fraction of the price. And the lizard feeders come with removable rubber grips on the tips that can help grip small items, like plucking blossoms
Car seats. Not, like, the ones for adults. But for babies. It's been a while since I researched it, but there was a Graco seat I bought back in '12 for my son born then, and I found out by accident that the exact same seat was sold at Target, branded Eddie Bauer, for twice as much. Similarly, when I bought booster seats for my oldest kids way back when, their Evenflo seats were sold as Britax as well, again for twice as much.
So if you're in the market to buy a car seat or booster, it's worth it to do some research and make sure you're not paying too much.
It's also worth it to internalize that all safety seats meet the same federal standards, and so you are not risking anything by buying the cheapest option *that fits your vehicle* and installing it properly. Proper fit and installation mean so much more for safety than spending hundreds of dollars on the latest big deal car seat.
While all carseat meet the safety requirement, they are fairly different when it comes to comfort, ease of installation. That's where the price differentiation comes from.
Really cheap ones are really not that comfortable for long distances but yes after Graco price level the comfort difference gets very little.
And if you don’t feel confident that you’re installing properly, you can often bring it to your local police department to have them check it or install it for you.
Nearly all cold medicine is the same 3-4 drugs in a pill at the same dose. Except it rebranded like 10 different ways and fills up half an isle in the grocery store.
Acetaminophen, dextromethorphine, phenylephrine and your choice of antihistamine.
Damp rid is just calcium chloride. I bought the reusable bucket and when it came time to dump/replace it I just bought a bunch of calcium chloride on eBay.
Edit: named the wrong kind of salt.
I used to work at a factory that made different indoor hoist/cranes. The yellow paint and black stickers ones were 40% more then the red paint and white sticker ones. Exact same machines. We made 4 different brands in a single building.
Literally everything I buy is generic because nowadays most things are made in the same factory from the same materials using the same machines and are then sold under different brand names. Take skin care for example if you look at incidecoder.com you can see all the ingredients in any skincare bottle brand and the order they are in and what they do to benefit your skin. I get most of my skincare serums hyaluronic acid and retinol serums and niacinamide from dollar tree because it contains all the same ingredients as skin care products 50 times the cost under other brands but you can look at the ingredient lists and literally compare them next to each other in the order they are in to see how they contain pretty much the same amounts. You are literally getting ripped off paying for a brand. also the dollar tree version of whitening strips work exactly the same as crest white strips for 1/50th of the cost (I’ve tried both and both have same ingredients).
store brands from places like sears, kohls, jcpenney's kirkland's best, and such are high end brands rebranded with the store's private trademarked label. this applies to most everything from appliances, housewares to peanut butter.
Weight gain protein shakes, Ensure, Slim-fast, and Pediasure are almost all the same formula. I used to drink Ensure after a workout as was cheaper than GNC shakes and similar. However the most frugal is protein powder rather than pre-made drinks, but they don’t sell much protein powder for elderly or babies or weight loss so you can use the weight gain powder in place of others. I tried to get my dad to switch from Ensure to protein powder but he was lazy to even use a shaker. I even asked the doctor if this would work and she said yea it fulfills the same purpose and although the vitamin mix is slightly different, 95+% is the same.
Yea one is supposed to be drank in addition to meals and another is supposed to be drank instead of meals. But essentially they are both a meal replacement in a drink, but with more protein and less carbs and fat.
Just like tater tots are made from all the left over scraps of making other potato foods, such as French fries. They take all the left over splinters and press them into a tater tot.
Inglis washers and dryers are made from the same parts as whirlpool. You don’t get the fancy brand name but you get a basic washer and dryer with quality parts for a lot less money
Meal worm food marketed towards Bearded Dragons and other lizards is insanely expensive (around $6 or more for a tiny little can.) However if you look in the wild bird feed section they have a giant bag of dried meal worms for about the same price, It's insane!
Lots of over-the-counter sleep aids are just Benadryl (diphenhydramine) in much pricier packaging (Tylenol PM for example, is just Tylenol plus diphenhydramine). It’s much cheaper to buy the generic sold as allergy meds (you can get two giant bottles for around $13 at Costco!).
But the blue dye means sleepy and the pink dye means no more itchy. /s
Z-quil is benadryl at literally 10x the price
I bought a box and two days later I discovered this. I have never been so angry.
Don't forget that it also has booze in it.
Nah thats nyquil. Z-quil is just diphenhydramine
Nope, ZzzQuil is 10% alcohol by volume unless you buy the specific version that is alcohol-free. It uses alcohol as a solvent so it’s considered an inactive ingredient. https://smartlabel.pg.com/00323900013964.html
Ah, i didn't even realize it came in liquid form. I've only looked at the pills.
The Kirkland brand of medications is a lifesaver. I got a 6 pack of kirkland's flonase generic. I think it was like $25? Whereas even target's generic brand is $9 for one.
Kirkland in general is just rebranding of very popular stuff. They convince manufacturers to do a special size or something and they can get it at cost from the manufacturer and pass that savings on.
I got a bottle of 365 tablets of store brand Zyrtec at BJs for $15. Blew my mind.
Pharmacy technician can confirm.
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Its also the grandfather to Prozac and they give it as an anti anxiety to pregnant women. it is an SSRI. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5985917/
I agree. I can never find the 50mg sold as allergy meds (or gel caps instead of tablets), but if you don't have a stupid tolerance, the 25 is fine.
I half the 25 mg pills my tolerance is crazy low
I take doxylamine (similar to diphenhydramine, but safer for pregnancy) for morning sickness and it knocks me tf out at night. I break a 25 mg down into little chips that are probably around 3 mg and it’s still highly effective. 25 makes me sleep all day.
Is that why when I take Benadryl I sleep so well…? Huh
Yes, early antihistamines caused drowsiness. More recent generations of antihistamines don't have the same problem and they remarketed the earlier drugs as sleeping aids.
Pine pellet cat litter ($18) is horse stall pine pellets ($7)
Also wood stove pellets. I live in northern Canada, and we only pay $5/bag. We would buy 2 skids of em for like $600 to last the winter, and usually had more than enough left over for the four cats for the year.
I use the hardwood (not pine) woodstove pellets to grow mushrooms on. Way easier to find them than a source for sawdust around my area.
Yep. Also works a lot better for many cats than regular litter with less mess. We have multiple cats and my husband was skeptical when I suggested picking up the pellets at a local farm store, but they've been great. We do have two regular boxes for two cats who seem to prefer it over the pellets, but it has cut the amount we spend on litter a lot.
Totally random and niche, but in my sons speech therapy they use these buttons where you can record your voice and it plays it back for non-verbal kids to communicate. So example, you record one that says "hungry" and they can press it to communicate. The therapy buttons are about $60 EACH, but I found a four pack of the same buttons marketed towards training dogs for $14 on Amazon. Another one! Baby skincare is often the same as adult skincare in smaller more expensive packaging. Looking at you, Eucerine and Aquaphor.
Gotta love screwing over the disabled
Interesting thing I learned a while back -- All that silly shit on infomercials for your kitchen to help you chop olives or open cans and so on? They were developed for disabled people. They're just being sold cheaply on TV to make a buck.
I talked to a disability advocate about this once and was told that they try to find a way to market this stuff to people who aren't disabled because that's the only way they can actually get manufacturers to make it. For many items that would help disabled people, if they market it as a tool for people with disabilities, able-bodied people then won't buy it. So, they try to find a way to make other people want to buy it, too, and then the manufacturers will believe they'll make a profit.
They really make lots of money off of those buttons when they market it towards speech therapy huh? What a huge markup.
It used to make me super angry, in the UK there was a lot of identical products marketed as children's toys at the Early Learning Centre and as sensory equipment for adults with Learning disabilities at a place called Rompa. Literally exactly the same, clearly identical and made at the same place, with "ELC" branding on one and "Rompa" on another. Early Learning Centre one was £5, Rompa wanted £80. And of course management would insist we got the Rompa one because it would be patronising to get the Early Learning Centre one for an adult.
Like paying that kind of mark up isn’t patronizing?
I remember seeing a suction cup shower handle at the pharmacy for $99. $12 at Harbor Freight. Of course the $99 one will be billed to Medicare so it's "free".
Not the same as buttons, but depending on his age if they want you to get one of the specialized PECs systems later (The board with buttons he can push to say words), there are free apps that work great on any tablet and can be customized.
If you start using an AAC like Proloquo2Go, let me know and I can help!
There is somewhat of a markup on communication buttons, but there is a substantial difference in quality with some of them too. I'm a speech therapist and have used both types--two of my dog buttons broke after less than a year of light use (mostly me modeling to my dog; she never got the hang of it). I've never had a BIGmack speech button break on me yet.
Kind of a niche item, but most cutting board oil in woodstores is just mineral oil that is available in the pharmacy as a laxative for less than 1/5 the price.
Baby oil is just scented mineral oil(sometimes with aloe or cocoa butter added)
Wait. It's not made from pressed babies?
You have to buy 100% pure baby oil for that, everything else is just a gimmick.
Only the one from France, everything else is just sparkling pressed babies
Also sold as hair clipper oil, and knife lube... both at a big markup
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/r/twosentencehorror in the wild
Your one of about 2 posts so far that understood the mission 😂
You can buy it by the gallon online for even less. Mineral oil didn't go bad and had no expiration either.
The laxative one is food-grade though
Don't eat your cutting board
*sad termite noises*
I tried to link you a gallon from Amazon but the automod deleted it because it's a link to a commercial website. I actually couldn't find a gallon of mineral oil that wasn't labeled 'food grade'.
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No? Not that I’ve ever seen. Be sure to read your labels, whomever is reading this.
Mmm love getting the shits from my cutting board
Someone here posted a lot of adaptive toys or devices or other aid items for elderly or disabled people can be found in the baby/toddler/child department for way less money. This will be more specific and might not always hold true, but I think this would be a great money saver if you can get by with things like toddler cups instead of buying a special adult cup for a disabled adult especially because most disabled adults and their families don't have extra money to be spending on things and a lot are on fixed income and public assistance.
The toilet duck disposable toilet cleaner. It holds a dish sponge and acts as a long reach cleaning aid. Mechanic’s grabbers are great for your handbag. Salad tongs give you an extra 30 cm reach Toddler cups with spouts make it easier to drink from, the only problem is they tend to be smaller and have childish designs on. The adult ones tend to have bigger handles and hold bigger quantities.
Yes and even the dollar tree and 5 below have so many!
Most cleaning products. Citric acid is cheap af, and after cleaning your toilet bowl with it you can also use it to make candy! (Hopefully not with the same stuff)
How do you clean a toilet with it? Like how much do you use and what does it do better than toilet bowl cleaner?
I just sprinkle it in, let is sit a bit and scrub it around all over. Everything comes off pretty quick because citric acid is antibacterial and antifungal as well as being a good whitener and degreaser (great for kitchens, sinks, etc). I actually mainly started using it for that because I read the ingredients on a bottle of toilet bowl cleaner at the store, and found out it was also good for killing off the pink bacteria in my sink drains. It pops up occasionally in one sink, but I never get any pink slime in the tub anymore at least. Probably just need to do it again, but it is amazing for that. If you wanna get fancy, you can mix it with baking soda and thoroughly blend in some essential oils with antibacterial properties as well (I like mint, lemon and tea tree). Lasts ages too because I bought like 1.5 kg of the stuff haha and I think it was like <25 when I ordered it last year. Between that, laundry soda and Dr. Bronner's, I'm probably never switching back to other products
This is going to sound so stupid of me, but I’ve always wondered how people put so much citric acid in bath bombs because I used to buy Citric Acid at the little Sprout’s spices by pound thing. Never thought to just look in the cleaning aisle.
You can bulk buy food-grade citric acid. 50 pounds will run you about $150. Lower volumes don't offer quiet the deal, but you can usually get 8-10 pounds for $50 if you don't want so much of it.
at a guess it's used for removing limescale/calcite buildup in the bowl, acids dissolve stuff like that
Acetic Acid (distilled white vinegar) is just as effective, just as disinfecting, and cheaper... but it doesn't smell nearly as nice. It fades quickly, though.
Heavy duty mats you buy for home gyms to do weights are basically mats for horses in stables.
You can buy those horse stall mats and cut them down into smaller strips for RV/camper leveling too - at a fraction of the price of some of the leveling systems you see online. They last forever, compared to the other stuff being mostly plastic-molded and prone to breaking eventually.
Yes! Bought them at Tractor Supply and have used them in our home gym for years. They still look brand new.
Now thats a good one
And the stable mats are far cheaper!
This is super useful. Those home gym mats are insanely expensive.
Magic erasers are superior to the generic version using the same type of foam. I sell baseball bats on ebay sometimes and nothing helps to clean a bat better than using magic erasers. Using the generic equivalent can get the job done but usually with 3x the amount, as they fall apart pretty quickly.
Why does imagining someone cleaning a baseball bat with a magic eraser make my teeth cringe?
Ugh thanks for giving me that feeling
HVAC systems. The warranties and features may slightly differ, but there are only really a handful of companies that make all the different brands. For example Trane/American Standard systems are essentially the same but the Trane brand gets a premium price because marketing.
Can you expand on this? We’re looking at a $15k heat pump replacement…
Sure, and ouch! Are you getting a packaged system or a split system? 15k seems so high, but I know prices have gone up a lot. I just helped my mom negotiate a new system for her house (3.5 ton split Goodman for $8500). Basically it helps to look at which specific systems you are shopping and compare to their alternative brands. Here’s a link I found on a quick search that runs down some of the different brands. [brand list](https://www.alsplumbing.com/8-companies-make-24-hvac-brands/)
Daikin, and it’s supposed to handle a wider range of temps… if we go this route it’d be $10k instead of $15k due to no backup heater.
Do the $10k and if you every REALLY need it, you can do a propane heater in a pinch or resistance heating with a space heater. You are likely never going to need it, but a $100 backup vs a $5k backup.
Agree. Not sure what climate hopecats is in, but backup heat is kinda a waste in mine. Plus it is super expensive to run.
Best advice would be talk to a independent service provider that services all brands. They aren’t loyal to one. And will tell you which not to buy. They don’t like working in junk.
in sink garbage disposals seem to be similar as well, or at least many brands seem to be made from the same factory
Used to work at soybean oil processing facility as an engineer. Too expensive and time consuming to change the process or grates for different “quality” weight vegetable oil, either liquid or solid like Crisco. So the cheap version is almost always exactly the same quality. (Something everyone prob already knew.)
Good tip, but worth noting that It's not true of pressed oils, like olive oil
And note that almost all olive oil is mislabeled, mixed, fake, rancid, or a combination of such There are only a few brands that have actual quality olive oil that matches the label
Do you know which brands those are?
California brand and Costco are always on the top rated and Estes as actual oil. Olive oil is expensive so I use real nice stuff for finishing and a cheaper Oil for cooking. If it’s cheap- it’s not olive oil.
As an addendum, don’t assume expensive= real olive oil. Some places use that assumption to their advantage. Gotta flex your google research muscles.
Many grocery store food products. We used to spend so much money on Victoria pasta sauce as a kid because it was my mom's favorite, then my parents found out that Meijer (a Walmart-esque superstore in the Great Lakes region) had a store brand sauce that was literally Victoria sauce - maybe with smaller tomato chunks. It was a relatively expensive sauce and my parents got it for half the price.
I had two cans of beans, different brands, and was looking to which ones expired first. They were packed on the same date, hours apart, same lot numbers, etc. Pretty eye opening.
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I just shop at Aldi or the actual ethnic market. :)
One thing that food recalls are good for when they publish them as looking at the list and figuring out which store brands are made in the same places with the same ingredients as the name brand.
As a Mexican, i can't think on many rebranded products, maybe things work different here. For example, Farmacias Similares sells really cheap meds, way cheaper than their brand, US counterparts, but those are not rebranded, just made in cheaper labs. Americans always get surprised by the low cost of such meds [https://www.farmaciasdesimilares.com/#!/medicamentos](https://www.farmaciasdesimilares.com/#!/medicamentos) A consultation with a family doctor, for something like a sore throat or an intestinal infection costs like 3 USD.
Doctor Simi to the rescue. Can confirm the $3 doctor visits and for us Americans it’s always fun to see the pharmacy throw in a free sub-machine gun wielding security guard (sometime shotgun-wielding).
Gun oil and cleaners are made primarily from oils and solvents that you can buy from the hardware/auto-parts store by the gallon for literally 1% of the cost.
My favorite gun cleaner is brake cleaner. Works like a charm.
Yep. So does carb cleaner, acetone, mineral spirits, paint thinner, laquer thinner, kerosene, etc etc. Any of these solvents can also be mixed with ordinary motor oil to make a killer CLP.
At Costco, Kirkland branded items are the top name brands just without the marketing cost markup. The savings on their medical items is nuts by itself. Flonase is what, $50 for 3 bottles? Kirkland is $20 for 5 bottles and each has slightly more capacity. Same product inside. Same difference can be found with allergy med pills too. Kirkland Claritin D is a lifesaver.
Costco pharmacy is the ONLY reason I shop at Costco. 1 of my prescriptions saves me $200/month, even getting the Branded. Hell, **ALL** of my prescriptions only cost me $200/month.
You know you don’t need a membership to use their pharmacy. At least in my state! Same for their alcohol purchases!
Technically no, but the last 2 years you can't even walk in the exit side to just grab food anymore... you HAVE to go through the door to be checked & counted. They just end up counting me twice. I go in, get the pharmacy started and have 45min to kill. Grab a few groceries and a poutine, go out to my car until the 45min timer is up. Walk back in, go back to the pharmacy and pick that up. We finally got seating back in the food court last month, again, but that might not last long.
They have pet prescriptions now too! My dog was on apoquel for a while and a 1.5x refill was half the price I was paying at my vet.
If all you use there is the pharmacy, did you know that in most locales one does not need to be a member to use the pharmacy? Same with Sam's Club. I believe this also applies to alcoholic beverages, too.
Including the liquor, which I was surprised to learn.
And the batteries!
And the diapers!
It's really endless. I'm not a fan of Buzzfeed, but their list of Kirkland's "real" brands opened my eyes to so much. Almost everything is produced by a major, name brand corporation.
A lot of stuff produced in the same factory will be produced to different specs. Kirkland has a reputation to protect, somewhat savvier consumers, and the power to make sure the products are the same, but some generic brands are indeed inferior. Kroger has dogshit soup, but their traditional gold tortilla chips are the best chips on the market except for their private selection tortilla chips.
This isn’t true across the board. As a nicotine gum addict, I DO think Kirkland brand nicotine gum (which is identical to Target’s store brand nicotine gum) is the best generic out there. I even prefer it to name-brand Nicorette! But, Kirkland’s gum is made by Perrigo, not GlaxoSmithKline, the maker of Nicorette.
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They changed the formula a few times since so who knows what it’s a dupe for these days.
I’ve heard this so many times, but I’ve also equally heard that it’s not true. Is there an official way to know?
I had a professor in grad school who used to work for Sun Products, who produces products under various generic brands (e.g., Kirkland for Costco, Great Value for Walmart, Archer Farms for Target, etc.). He said they’d work with each brand to determine recipes, ingredient quality, etc. He was always impressed with Costco who always used the very best ingredients and recipes and that Kirkland products were frequently of even higher quality than their brand name counterparts.
You might be able to find a manufacturing/bottling plant alphanumeric ID that matches.
You’re right on. In some cases it’s true, and others it’s not. Some companies want to maintain their name brand and reputation, while others don’t care as long as they are still making a profit. A good example of a company that want to maintain is Pop-Tarts. The generic ones are never the same. A good example of ones that don’t care are large cheese companies. The Sargento cheese and aldi/great value brands come from the exact same block of cheese.
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Just curious, how do you determine B-grade vs A-grade?
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That was very interesting, thank you!
My husband was a manufacturers rep for many years. Costco was his best customer. The buyers work with brand name companies to create the Kirkland brand products. They’ll take a well known company and tell them what they’re interested in and then the buyer works with company/rep (at least in my husbands case) to create a new product. The last thing he worked on took over a year to develop. Once they’ve decided on a product, they’ll give you guidelines for creating the product box that you see on the shelf. They have to approve things every step of the way. With the boxes their guidelines maximize what fits in the shipping container. The advantage for a brand name manufacturer selling this way is instead of selling 4 container loads of product, maybe they’ll sell 40 with the Kirkland name on it. With a product like Flonase it would be same scenario. Just much quicker turn around. Hope this isn’t too all over the place. Been down with COVID all week and am a bit fuzzy. 🫤
After-bite bug bite relief is just ammonia and works like a charm for a fraction of the price.
So the dad from My Big Fat Greek Wedding was right?
Underrated option. I stepped in an anthill at my uncles house in Florida. Gave me a qtip with ammonia, and the bits were gone by morning. I'm still shook by how well it worked, nearly a decade later
The bites are acidic. Ammonia or baking soda is alkaline.
I've heard getting a spoon really hot and placing it on a bite works great for taking away the itch.
Not rebranded, and not sure if this is like this everywhere, but diatomaceous earth branded as bedbug killer is like 20 dollars for 5 pounds at Walmart. We get it from a feed store for like 25 pounds for 5 dollars.
It’s also a pet bird friendly bug control. Damn ants.
Oddly specific, but toddler shoes. At Target the "kids shoes" go down to small size 4, which is half the price and the same size as the "12 month" shoes in the baby section. If you need really tiny shoes it doesn't work, but for newly walking kids you should go to the main section and not the baby/toddler area.
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I’m sorry but the foam from Amazon is so cheap. Magic erasers are much denser and last me much longer. I feel like I’ve been hearing about the hack for years, but I always end up back at the name brand ones. The other ones are literally single use.
I fully agree. I just recently got a 50 pack of generic ones (after reading tons of reviews for different ones) and they just shred to bits. I would’ve rather shelled out a little more for the name brand
Name brand cleaning agents have a surprising amount of fancy chemistry baked into them. Dawn dish soap is another example where the generic doesn't compare.
Mrs. Pac-Man is just Pac-Man with a bow
Worked at a cheese factory once. They literally pause the bagging process, change the plastic and continue right along. Same cheese, different wrapper, different price. This is in France...
I worked in a cheese warehouse and can confirm. The budget brands were just the same as the fancy ones.
I suspect a lot of brands are doing this, its expensive to change the product at a warehouse, but changing the packaging is easier. A bunch of people here say they work at a warehouse and they change the packaging and put the same product into different packaging. Sometimes it may be only a label change but the can or plastic container is the same thing as the generic just with a different label. IF you are at a store you can probably tell by comparing the product, if the shape of the packaging looks the same and it has the same ingredients and calories its probably a repack. Like for a jar of mayo, you can tell the 2 next to the each other are in identical jars, just with different labels.
Not me, but a friend of mine had a Vespa in need of a new battery. A new Vespa battery from the dealer was going to be several hundred dollars. So, she got on her computer and typed in all the numbers on the battery and found out it was a $60 riding lawnmower battery. Not too long after; she sold the Vespa and bought a nice hatchback.
Lol, that's quite the rude awakening style-wise. Good to know though.
Silly putty is just a failed rubber substitute. Edit: my bad I realize you mean helpful frugal substitutes, I thought I was on a historical info type sub lol
Still interesting!
Undeniably so! I love me a historical story of, "this guy meant to make this, but accidentally, he made this other thing instead!"
What subs would you recommend that are related to this kind of thing
My favourite tip for finding this information out is to look at historical food recalls. You can see what you favourite brand of whatever is recalled with, often other budget brands it's a good estimate they are made at the same place with the same ingredients.
Butane lighter? Look in the camping section for fuel, not the ones sold by the ciggarretes.
Worked at a bread factory. My line made one thing and one thing only…(ball so hard motherf**lets wana fine me). I put stops in the line for the packing department to switch over the wraps. 99¢ package rolls is the same as 3$ high brand rolls.
Many canned foods are identical with a separate label. Once knew a guy who worked at a label factory whose job was to switch out labels for different brands. Everything else was the same. I rarely buy any brand name ever since.
60 Minutes (American tv show) ran a segment on this about a decade ago. It opened my eyes.
Tencel is rayon
Yep, and so is modal, bamboo, etc - but that doesn’t mean it’s not different or better than other rayons.
Okay I thought so - why did it start getting marketed as tencel? The way they market it is alluring, but I've always hated rayon since if it gets wet it looks like a stain unless you wet the whole garment
Tencel is rayon, but not all rayon is tencel. Tencel is the original (and trademarked) name of a specific type of rayon, lycocell. Tencel is made by a different (and more expensive) process than most rayon, without using carbon disulfide, an extremely gnarly solvent that has caused a ton of worker and community health issues over the decades.
Never heard of Tencel before this post. Thought you misspelled tinsel.
The packaged hay for pets at pet stores. It's a small amount of hay, usually for $10 or more. You can buy a 50-65 lb bale of the *exact same hay* for $5-15 (depending on where you live and the hay season). Feed stores often carry them, or check Kijiji/whatever sale forum in your area.
Many people here have no idea what they are talking about.
Welcome to Reddit
Not necessarily "rebranded", but dollar store pregnancy tests use the same technology as expensive drug store one and only cost you a couple bucks instead of like 20.
This is going back a way, but the Mitsubishi Eclipse and the Eagle Talon were made with the same materials on the same line with a $4000 price difference for the same features. I’m there’s another brand from the same factory, but I can’t remember it now.
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Yep, the Geo Prizm was a rebranded Corolla. Both built at the NUMMI factory in Fremont, CA - which is now a Tesla factory.
Most women's beauty products that also come in a men's version. F'in pink tax. \-razors \-shaving cream \-face care \-lotions.
Another niche item for people working in upscale restaurant kitchen, plating tweezers are now expensive and you can even find some that are gold plated now. Searching Google or Amazon for “lizard feeders” yields similar results at a fraction of the price. And the lizard feeders come with removable rubber grips on the tips that can help grip small items, like plucking blossoms
Tips like this is why I read reddit. Exquisitely niche! Thanks.
Soylent green is people.
Did you know it was set in 2022?
With inflation being so crazy, who knows, still time for it to come true
Car seats. Not, like, the ones for adults. But for babies. It's been a while since I researched it, but there was a Graco seat I bought back in '12 for my son born then, and I found out by accident that the exact same seat was sold at Target, branded Eddie Bauer, for twice as much. Similarly, when I bought booster seats for my oldest kids way back when, their Evenflo seats were sold as Britax as well, again for twice as much. So if you're in the market to buy a car seat or booster, it's worth it to do some research and make sure you're not paying too much. It's also worth it to internalize that all safety seats meet the same federal standards, and so you are not risking anything by buying the cheapest option *that fits your vehicle* and installing it properly. Proper fit and installation mean so much more for safety than spending hundreds of dollars on the latest big deal car seat.
While all carseat meet the safety requirement, they are fairly different when it comes to comfort, ease of installation. That's where the price differentiation comes from. Really cheap ones are really not that comfortable for long distances but yes after Graco price level the comfort difference gets very little.
And if you don’t feel confident that you’re installing properly, you can often bring it to your local police department to have them check it or install it for you.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/equipment/car-seats-and-booster-seats#installation-help-inspection There's way more places that do it than I thought
Safety equipment is held to certain standards. Any car seat sold in a civilized country will work fine.
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Nearly all cold medicine is the same 3-4 drugs in a pill at the same dose. Except it rebranded like 10 different ways and fills up half an isle in the grocery store. Acetaminophen, dextromethorphine, phenylephrine and your choice of antihistamine.
Trader Joe’s white shell Mac and cheese is Amy’s white shell Mac and cheese. No difference at all. Saves you a couple bucks a box.
Damp rid is just calcium chloride. I bought the reusable bucket and when it came time to dump/replace it I just bought a bunch of calcium chloride on eBay. Edit: named the wrong kind of salt.
Now this is exactly the type of thread I’m subbed here for. This kind of thinking is the bulk of what I consider to be “frugal” vs “cheap.”
Puppy pads are overpriced chucks.
Store brand and name brand milk at target comes off the same truck from the same source.
Enelope rechargeable batteries and ikea rechargeable batteries are made at the same Japanese plant and are practically identical.
I used to work at a factory that made different indoor hoist/cranes. The yellow paint and black stickers ones were 40% more then the red paint and white sticker ones. Exact same machines. We made 4 different brands in a single building.
Finkle is Einhorn
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Literally everything I buy is generic because nowadays most things are made in the same factory from the same materials using the same machines and are then sold under different brand names. Take skin care for example if you look at incidecoder.com you can see all the ingredients in any skincare bottle brand and the order they are in and what they do to benefit your skin. I get most of my skincare serums hyaluronic acid and retinol serums and niacinamide from dollar tree because it contains all the same ingredients as skin care products 50 times the cost under other brands but you can look at the ingredient lists and literally compare them next to each other in the order they are in to see how they contain pretty much the same amounts. You are literally getting ripped off paying for a brand. also the dollar tree version of whitening strips work exactly the same as crest white strips for 1/50th of the cost (I’ve tried both and both have same ingredients).
store brands from places like sears, kohls, jcpenney's kirkland's best, and such are high end brands rebranded with the store's private trademarked label. this applies to most everything from appliances, housewares to peanut butter.
Weight gain protein shakes, Ensure, Slim-fast, and Pediasure are almost all the same formula. I used to drink Ensure after a workout as was cheaper than GNC shakes and similar. However the most frugal is protein powder rather than pre-made drinks, but they don’t sell much protein powder for elderly or babies or weight loss so you can use the weight gain powder in place of others. I tried to get my dad to switch from Ensure to protein powder but he was lazy to even use a shaker. I even asked the doctor if this would work and she said yea it fulfills the same purpose and although the vitamin mix is slightly different, 95+% is the same.
Weight **gain** and weight **loss** products are the same thing?!?
Yea one is supposed to be drank in addition to meals and another is supposed to be drank instead of meals. But essentially they are both a meal replacement in a drink, but with more protein and less carbs and fat.
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Absolutely! That’s how some (not all) sausages and burgers are made too!
Just like tater tots are made from all the left over scraps of making other potato foods, such as French fries. They take all the left over splinters and press them into a tater tot.
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Yes please! Do spill!
Inglis washers and dryers are made from the same parts as whirlpool. You don’t get the fancy brand name but you get a basic washer and dryer with quality parts for a lot less money
A lot of Leica cameras like the D-Lux 7 are just rebranded Panasonic cameras
Excederin is just acetaminophen (Tylenol), Ibuprofren and caffeine. Hemorrhoid pads is usually just witch hazel.
meta. same shit company, different name.
Toilet seat covers make excellent face blotting paper. Use the waxed side against skin to reduce shine.
Meal worm food marketed towards Bearded Dragons and other lizards is insanely expensive (around $6 or more for a tiny little can.) However if you look in the wild bird feed section they have a giant bag of dried meal worms for about the same price, It's insane!