Reply to If you have NOT found it hard to manage grocery prices, what are you buying where?

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Reply to "If you have NOT found it hard to manage grocery prices, what are you buying where?"

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[quote=Anonymous]For us it's less about finding a new place to shop (we sort of rotate between TJs, Whole Foods, Harris Teeter, and sometimes Target for certain shelf staples) but thinking about what we are eating and trying to default to things that cost less.

We have certain meals that involve only inexpensive ingredients, so even with higher prices, it's not too painful. Stuff like red beans and rice, spaghetti and meatballs, lentil curry, crunchy tacos, etc.

We avoid prepared foods and high budget items like bakery bread (we make bread at home and even with flour being through the roof, it's still relatively affordable).

And then there are things I just know from experience. It's worth it to buy meat and produce at WF because the cost is similar to other stores but the quality is better. But dairy and shelf staples are often more expensive at WF (unless its 365 brand) so we try to get a lot of those at TJs where their distribution model is keeping the price of things like pasta, beans, frozen food, nuts, and snacks lower than elsewhere. And then we know that HT and Target will often run specials on name brand items like breakfast cereal (which I loathe but is all one of my kids will eat in the morning so we still buy it) so we stock up on those when they are on sale.

We were given a free Costco membership as a gift last Christmas and I've bought a few things there where buying in bulk actually makes financial sense (I mostly think it's a racket but I get flour, olive oil, baking soda, and a few other staples there and it lasts a long time and does have a lower per unit price).

That's about it. We've been doing this for years now, first due to belt tightening pre-Covid when I got laid off, then during Covid when I paused my job search to take care of kids home from school, then post-covid to deal with inflation. I feel like the longer I do it the better I get at it, but it gets harder and harder. Bread flour prices just went up another 20%. Meat and eggs have actually come down a little from their peak, but produce, milk, yogurt, and cheese have all gone up.

The worst is when you have to buy something you don't normally buy and it turns out it now costs 3-4x what it used to. Halloween candy sticker shock is real ($10 for a bag with maybe 20 pieces of candy? And I have to buy two per kid just to have enough for their class?). If this goes on, I think the expectation that people can do stuff like that is going to have to adjust. We are okay financially and can spend $40 on classroom candy for halloween but I hate it. I am sure there are some people for whom that's just impossible. A lot of schools and kids activities rely on parents always being able to just foot the bill for little add ons. How can that continue? Most of us are not wealthy.[/quote]

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