What is your inflation “red line” at grocery stores?

[Anonymous]

No red line, but now doing 75% of our grocery shopping at Costco. Not processed/prepared stuff, but basic meat/produce/dairy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I bake a lot of cookies and butter has gone up to $6-7/lb. The sale price has gone from $2.50 to $3.74.

I won’t be giving away as many cookies once I run through my sale butter stash in the freezer.

Yes, butter! I’ve noticed that too. The WF 365 generic is still cheap at $3.99 but all the other brands are $7-$9/pound.

[Anonymous]

We do all our shopping at Costco and Trader Joes. TBH, prices are still pretty reasonable IMHO.

I never go to Giant or Safeway or WF - they've always felt like massive rip-offs to me. We only go there if something isn't available at Costco or TJs.

[Anonymous]

I noticed a bag of ruffles was $5. Please. That crappy bag of chips is only half filled anyway.

[Anonymous]

I saw a box of a dozen organic eggs for $9.29 at Harris Teeter last month. Pass.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I tend not to look at individual prices at the grocery store. I buy what I want, then I think the cumulative prices is too high, but I never know what made it that way. It’s not a good way to shop, but I can never remember what something “should” cost, even my frequent purchases, because I don’t buy them separately. I would have been terrible at the price is right.

I can’t understand this. You just grab whatever you want and don’t look at the price?

NP - and yes. We don't have kids so we have a very flexible food budget. We also drive a 10 year old Kia - we aren't extravagant generally, but, yes, we eat whatever we want.

+1 we have two kids. I buy what we want to eat and don’t worry about the cost. But we are stringent in other areas. Ie. we only do one vacation a year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I tend not to look at individual prices at the grocery store. I buy what I want, then I think the cumulative prices is too high, but I never know what made it that way. It’s not a good way to shop, but I can never remember what something “should” cost, even my frequent purchases, because I don’t buy them separately. I would have been terrible at the price is right.

I can’t understand this. You just grab whatever you want and don’t look at the price?

NP - and yes. We don't have kids so we have a very flexible food budget. We also drive a 10 year old Kia - we aren't extravagant generally, but, yes, we eat whatever we want.

+1 we have two kids. I buy what we want to eat and don’t worry about the cost. But we are stringent in other areas. Ie. we only do one vacation a year.

There’s a difference between not worrying about the cost and not even noticing the cost.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One dozen egg was ~$3.50 at Safeway. Used to be 1/2.

I saw a dozen for $8 at my store. They were organic but whatever.

I used to buy the more expensive eggs, but now they're going for $10.99 at Whole Foods! I switched to the regular brown eggs for $3.50.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I tend not to look at individual prices at the grocery store. I buy what I want, then I think the cumulative prices is too high, but I never know what made it that way. It’s not a good way to shop, but I can never remember what something “should” cost, even my frequent purchases, because I don’t buy them separately. I would have been terrible at the price is right.

I can’t understand this. You just grab whatever you want and don’t look at the price?

NP - and yes. We don't have kids so we have a very flexible food budget. We also drive a 10 year old Kia - we aren't extravagant generally, but, yes, we eat whatever we want.

+1 we have two kids. I buy what we want to eat and don’t worry about the cost. But we are stringent in other areas. Ie. we only do one vacation a year.

There’s a difference between not worrying about the cost and not even noticing the cost.

The question was do you look at the price - and generally no. I mean we're also not drinkers, so this would probably be a different answer if we were buying wine or whatever. Then I am very price sensitive. But for two people who live a pretty modest life otherwise, yeah, we don't really look at the price at the grocery store. Also I am a vegetarian so my big splurges are things like organic cheese and expensive mushrooms and strawberries whenever I want to eat them. Perhaps we don't look at the price that much because there's a natural limit to how much we could possibly spend on two people who aren't buying meat or booze.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was just going to write the $7.99 strawberries, and I see it is someone else’s sticking point too. Insanity.

This is mine too.

People, it's April. No one in DC should be buying strawberries. The price of strawberries from another part of the globe should always be high.

But before it was usually $5.00 max even out of season.

$2.88 at Giant this week if you buy two containers (non organic)

A deal even when you account for the fact that half of them will be moldy within a day (at least at my Giant).

I bought some Friday and had some for breakfast...still fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One dozen egg was ~$3.50 at Safeway. Used to be 1/2.

This is a pretty normal price for eggs? The Harris Teeter by me carries one brand that is $8 a dozen! Now that I won't do.

We get the super expensive eggs for animal welfare reasons. Our eggs actually haven't gone up in price - I guess inflation isn't yet affecting the bespoke, more humane farming industry (and hopefully won't).

Think about it this way: If you're now spending $4 for a dozen factory farmed eggs, why not spend just $4 more on the eggs produced by chickens who aren't tortured!

Why not? Because spending $4 instead of $2 is the issue, and spending 4x as much is not a solution....?

[Anonymous]

Some fruit prices, even at Costco, are a hard no.

Costco had organic strawberries for $10.99 over the weekend. Hard pass.

I grabbed 3 packs at Lidl for a total $7.50 instead.

The only exception I've made is for kumquats. That's one of my kid's favorite fruits and they are so hard to find. We can only find them in March & April around here, so every year I shell out $$ for some. This year a small clamshell pack was $6.99 at Harris Teeter.

I definitely do more comparison shopping. Last weekend I picked up groceries from 3 stores: Harris Teeter, Walmart, and Target. I scheduled them all to be ready at the same time so I could just do 1 trip out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was just going to write the $7.99 strawberries, and I see it is someone else’s sticking point too. Insanity.

This is mine too.

People, it's April. No one in DC should be buying strawberries. The price of strawberries from another part of the globe should always be high.

Are you serious?

I grew up in FL and it's strawberry season there! Well, it's ending now, but yeah. All of the strawberries I've been buying have been from FL.

The Strawberry Festival in March was always one of my favorite things to do as a kid!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was just going to write the $7.99 strawberries, and I see it is someone else’s sticking point too. Insanity.

This is mine too.

People, it's April. No one in DC should be buying strawberries. The price of strawberries from another part of the globe should always be high.

Are you serious?

I grew up in FL and it's strawberry season there! Well, it's ending now, but yeah. All of the strawberries I've been buying have been from FL.

The Strawberry Festival in March was always one of my favorite things to do as a kid!

PPs are using any excuse to justify high food prices as 'you should feel guilty for even eating XYZ because its bad for the environment'. Meanwhile its fruit season and the prices are still INSANE.

F them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I tend not to look at individual prices at the grocery store. I buy what I want, then I think the cumulative prices is too high, but I never know what made it that way. It’s not a good way to shop, but I can never remember what something “should” cost, even my frequent purchases, because I don’t buy them separately. I would have been terrible at the price is right.

I can’t understand this. You just grab whatever you want and don’t look at the price?

NP - and yes. We don't have kids so we have a very flexible food budget. We also drive a 10 year old Kia - we aren't extravagant generally, but, yes, we eat whatever we want.

Same. No kids, old car. We spend about $1k per month on groceries, and do a fair amount of dining out and takeout.