I've never been afraid of spiders, generally speaking. After all, I'm a grown man. If we have a spider in the house, and I'm up against it, there isn't much of a contest.

That said, I'm talking about your average little spider here. I suspect that if I had been in my kitchen and found a black widow while washing some grapes that I had purchased at Costco, as a Seattle woman recently did, I might not talk so tough.

Yep, one Nancy Pitts was washing red grapes when she spotted the infamous spider. She managed to catch it and then decided to look online and try to determine what kind of arachnid she had. That's when she learned she had the black widow, well known for its deadly bite. And as it turns out, this isn't all that uncommon. In Hawaii, Julie Klaz, a scuba diver instructor in Kealakehe, Kona, was washing grapes from a Costco, when she discovered a two-inch black widow scurrying about.

As if you needed another reason to be wary of rebates, one of the largest rebate processing companies, Continental Promotion Group, just filed for bankruptcy. CPG, more widely known as RebateStatus.com, no longer has enough money to cover the rebate checks it has been processing. This means if you have a rebate check from the company, you shouldn't try and cash it unless you care to be hit with a NSF fee when the check bounces.

RebateStatus.com handles rebates for many companies including:

• Costco
• Newegg.com
• Canon
• Logitech
  
• Home Depot
  

Expensive tastes are getting a little bit cheaper this holiday season. When a Starbucks regular realizes that the $3.50 he spends every morning on the way to work adds up to nearly $1,000 each year, he may decide that a good way to save money would be to brew some coffee at home. Of course, he'd be right, but the retail coffee giants don't want you to see it that way.

This year, as more of its customers take a closer look at their budgets, Starbucks is introducing some new ways to save money on coffee and gift items without skipping its stores every morning.

Savings start with new Gold Cards. Store managers will be giving out a limited number of Gold Cards to the very best customers, while others can buy the cards for $25. These cards are good for 10% off most items in the store, and the company expects to sell "millions." If you're one of the ones spending $1,000 annually on coffee, $25 buys you $100 of that back. So if you're not going to cut back on your Starbucks visits, at least you can cut the damage to about $925 this year.

In addition to selling savings with the Gold Cards, the store is cutting prices on many of its gift items in hopes of luring holiday shoppers. Coffee samplers and CD's that sold for $14.95 in 2007 will be marked down to $12.95 this holiday season, and stores will feature tables with gifts under $10 as well.

Lastly, the coffee giants have teamed up with Costco to offer savings on gift cards for the first time ever. Costco shoppers can purchase five $20 gift cards for $80. This deal has been available for just one month, and already the store has sold more than 1 million gift cards. Starbucks execs are optimistic that this will be a huge moneymaker in the holiday quarter. After all, shoppers love to save money -- but one of the best ways to save money still remains: Don't buy overpriced coffee every day.

I was surprised to learn that Costco, one of my fav stores, now offers a survival kit of seven days of freeze-dried gourmet meals for one for $79.95. This compares favorably to our usually monthly grocery/dining out bill. For the same price, the store also offers a more bare-bones product with the name "Emergency Food Supply" which comes in the kind of tub usually used for laundry detergent.

The latter claims to include "275 servings of Pre-mixed and Pre-seasoned 100 % Vegetarian and Vitamin Fortified food for you and your family." The food will last unopened for 20 years, and includes such taste favorites as Western Stew, Ala King, and Potato Bakon. At $79.95, this 23 pounds of goodness calculates to a cost per serving of less than 30 cents per meal. This puts it down to Monkey Chow level, in cost to survive.

The gourmet version only provides seven breakfasts, lunches and dinners, along with four desserts, but the menu includes Chicken Rotelle, Roast Beef Hash, Tamale Pie, Chocolate Mud Slide, and Deep Dish Crumble. To prepare, one need only add water (hot water will make some dishes more appetizing). Meals can eaten out of their pouches, so no dishes! The menu provides approximately 2,000 calories a day.

I'm considering buying one of each and giving them a taste test. This could be a great way to reduce cooking time and save some money. Or it could be the death of my taste buds. Either way, the price is right.

Thanks to Wise Bread

This post is part of a series about real-life signs we're in a recession.

As a city dweller, I've always found visiting Costco with my parents something of a treat. The cheap food at huge quantities, the surprisingly affordable gadgets, the mounds and mounds of remarkably affordable clothes.

I would make an afternoon of it a couple of times a year, bring my kids, wander the aisles with my folks and sample the free goodies. At check-out time, the bill would inevitably come to something in the $200 to $300 range, I'd write a check to my Dad, and we'd leave feeling like we had a kind of expensive but amusing family outing. I didn't join Costco since the idea of paying a fee to save money on purchases just didn't make sense to me. And how often would I really get there?

But finally, just a month or so ago, in my own personal sign of recession, I decided that it was time for me to join Costco myself. I know I'm not alone. Costco is one of the few retailers doing pretty well these days. Lots of Americans are worrying about the rising price of food. No matter how secure my husband and I feel in our own jobs, we see rising job insecurity all around us. Given that backdrop, I decided it really is worth it to pay $50 to join the Costco club.

As the media cries about economic woes of consumers, wholesale clubs are reporting strong numbers. Stores like Costco say that consumers are stocking up due to the cost savings offered by buying in bulk. While other retailers are struggling, those selling bulk items seem to be doing well. Discount retailer Wal-Mart is looking as strong as it has in the past, but its Sam's Club business unit is doing well with this current consumer preference toward bulk products.

But buyer beware: Bulk pricing isn't always best. It's important to look at your unit cost (by ounces or other measure) to see if you're really getting a good deal. Shoppers automatically assume that products bought in bulk save them money. And while that's often the case, it's not always the case so you have to be educated about what you're buying.

You should also resist the temptation to overbuy. If you aren't able to use all of a bulk food product before it spoils, you're no further ahead. And buying three year's worth of toilet paper doesn't seem to make sense. If you're buying something you don't need simply because the price seems right, you may want to think twice. Smart shoppers buy in bulk only when it makes good economic sense.

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.