So your choices due to covid were inflation or a huge recession. Which one would you prefer? People are still employed and the economy recovered. |
| Family of 5, eat out a lot, and spend likely 3x that a month. I'm not skimping on anything, organic for most items, but honestly even I'm thinking of cutting back. This morning alone I gassed up my car ($80, $120 at Costco, and $100 at grocery store). I'm pretty much spending a couple hundred dollars every single time I shop and I shop 3x a week. |
To start they don't increase NATIONAL inflation by 3% points with free cash handouts that were not needed in 2021 - child tax credits, stimulus etc is/was a huge problem. They knew that all along which is why when we hit 8% inflation in 2022 they suddenly shut up about Build Back Better. They were warned time-and-again that the programs were inflation-inducing and had proof from enacting the CTC with six months of extremely high inflation as a immediate result. A recent study from the Federal Reserve entitled "Why is U.S. inflation higher than in other countries?" shows that core U.S. CPI inflation is running about 5%, while the rest of the OECD is running about 2%
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^YES, but the conclusion of every non-partisan economic group us that without the stimulus, we likely would have been really f87c4d.
"The United States is experiencing higher rates of inflation than other advanced economies. In this Economic Letter we argue that, among other reasons explored by the literature, the sizable fiscal support measures aimed at counteracting the economic collapse due to the COVID-19 pandemic could explain about 3 percentage points of the recent rise in inflation. However, without these spending measures, the economy might have tipped into outright deflation and slower economic growth, the consequences of which would have been harder to manage" "Yet today’s situation looks very different. Unemployment is relatively low, and households overall are in good shape financially. The Conference Board, a business research group, found that consumers’ inflation expectations last month were the highest they’d been since July 2008. But consumers didn’t seem all that worried: The board’s confidence index rose anyway, on optimism about the job market. “For the time being, at least, they feel that the benefits are outweighing the negatives,” said Lynn Franco, the Conference Board’s senior director of economic indicators." Further, consumer demand will continue to drive inflation, no matter what the Fed does. So pick your poison. And at any rate, the Fed is on it to the best they can be, "Powell has announced that the Fed will start reducing the monthly bond purchases it began last year as an emergency measure to try to boost the economy. In September, Fed officials also forecast that they would raise the Fed’s benchmark interest rate from its record low near zero by the end of 2022 — much earlier than they had predicted a few months earlier. But sharply higher inflation, should it persist, might compel the Fed to accelerate that timetable; investors expect at least two Fed rate hikes next year." |
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OP, I read a lot of threads like this one on dcurbanmom, and the amount you spend seems very common to me.
Probably with a little bit of paying attention you could trim that back to $800-$900/month with little pain and effort. With a lot of attention to cooking more from scratch, shopping the sales and stocking up, and using up leftovers, and with changing some of your menus to feature more low cost or in season produce, you could get it down lower of course. People on a strict budget are spending maybe $100/week for groceries for a family of three! So it can be done, but, most people who post here on DCURBAN MOM aren't doing it. |
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We’ve got 3 kids. Two of them are teenagers. My husband exercises and eats a lot. We spend $2000/mo.
We don’t eat out much but yeah the grocery bill is nuts |
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My family is about the same size as OP's. We spend at least $2000 per month on groceries alone. That does not include eating out for dinner once a week or grabbing take out for lunch once a week. Probably $2700 per month food bill total.
Ridiculous, but we only buy organic produce and we cook seafood twice a week. |
| So many fatties on here |
Build Back Better would have helped stem inflation but your Republican cult leaders made sure that didn’t happen. After all, how else would they have gotten you so pissed off about Democrats? |