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Milk is still $2.49 a gallon, Tropicana sales still hit $2.50/ea, I'm still buying pasta for about $1/box which is basically 3 meals. $1 pizza is still $1 pizza. NYC food prices, without including the higher end of going out, have been basically the same for the last 7 years. I can still go to Aldi and buy for cheaper, but $24/year saved is not worth the hour train ride. The person who does 20 cent dumplings is still there. Etc.
Milk is still $2.49 a gallon, Tropicana sales still hit $2.50/ea, I'm still buying pasta for about $1/box which is basically 3 meals. $1 pizza is still $1 pizza. NYC food prices, without including the higher end of going out, have been basically the same for the last 7 years. I can still go to Aldi and buy for cheaper, but $24/year saved is not worth the hour train ride. The person who does 20 cent dumplings is still there. Etc.
Milk where I shop is $1.04/gallon, chicken $1.99/lb, eggs .43 cents a dozen, bananas 33 cents a pound.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mizzourah2006
Milk where I shop is $1.04/gallon, chicken $1.99/lb, eggs .43 cents a dozen, bananas 33 cents a pound.
Like homes and rent, food prices are affected by the cost of living. That grocery store, convenience store or even farmer's market will have a lot more overhead in a metro like Seattle or San Francisco than a small town in Mississippi or Florida. Not only do they have to pay higher wages but the cost of land, building on that land, utilities, and government regulations are a lot higher. On the other hand, salaries are also higher, and if you shop mostly at Costco as we do, the prices are well our averages.
Here's our average prices:
Milk $3.83/gallon, chicken $5.80/lb, eggs $3.31 a dozen, bananas 77 cents a pound.
Like homes and rent, food prices are affected by the cost of living. That grocery store, convenience store or even farmer's market will have a lot more overhead in a metro like Seattle or San Francisco than a small town in Mississippi or Florida. Not only do they have to pay higher wages but the cost of land, building on that land, utilities, and government regulations are a lot higher. On the other hand, salaries are also higher, and if you shop mostly at Costco as we do, the prices are well our averages.
Here's our average prices:
Milk $3.83/gallon, chicken $5.80/lb, eggs $3.31 a dozen, bananas 77 cents a pound.
I could definitely go find prices like that where I live, like at Whole Foods or Fresh Market. I shop mostly at Aldi's or nearby competitors that compete with Aldi's prices on most fresh stuff. When I lived in Orlando and shopped at Publix chicken was usually $3.99+/lb. But at Aldi's or Walmart down the street the same stuff was $1.99/lb. It's just that some people don't really care about price.
Milk where I shop is $1.04/gallon, chicken $1.99/lb, eggs .43 cents a dozen, bananas 33 cents a pound.
Basically as Miz says. I could take a salary cut to 1/2~2/3 of what I make currently, or 1/6~1/2 of my potential, but it's really not worth it given I spend around $20~$30/wk on groceries (more like every 2 weeks, free food at work extends this a lot).
Rent stabilization also drops my particular NYC COL calculation by a large margin, but this is more personal finance than general economics.
Food prices vary between geographic locations; sometimes different section of town; even same chains. You can also not compare food for food such as chicken breast versus chicken breast without the details. Plop an Aldi egg in a pan and a local small producer egg. Some of us are particular and I am not talking about organic/bio/... labels - just food that tastes right, looks good and is the real thing as far as I can tell. Yes, almost everything has something in it by now. We will not go off the grid until further notice.
Food is the biggest ticket in our budget, going out once in a blue moon.
Food prices are totally insane. We spend as much on groceries for four people as the mortgage on a five-bedroom house (no, I am NOT including eating out or take out in that). Literally the housing payment is $950 and groceries range from $850-$1,000 depending on the month. Of course, despite being in a generally mid-range COL area, my food prices are much closer to Hemlock's outside SF than mizzourah's. At least, milk is $2.99-$3.99/gallon depending on where you shop and which brand you get. I guess if I could get milk for $1.04 a gallon (and other stuff at equivalently a third the cost I actually pay) then maybe my grocery bill could be as low as some have posted on this thread, but seeing as no such prices EXIST here, that's not exactly a viable plan.
It's actually extremely frustrating because I have all the other bills at basically their 1970s equivalent level. We paid $129k for our house, only about $10k more than the adjusted average price in the OP's post, and I'm sure the lower interest rates make up for that difference. I only buy used cars for cash and have never sold or junked a car (still driving what I got at 16, though I've bought a second as well), nor paid more than half of that $12k adjusted price, which probably makes up for needing to pay for cell phones, internet, and cable which didn't exist back then (services I also have at a reasonable cost).
But there's just no controlling the grocery bill, it seems. I've wasted hours looking at online guides to shopping frugally, but we already do a lot of it and the rest we either can't do (we don't have a Costco near us or a chest freezer to buy perishables in bulk) or aren't willing to do (I'm not soaking beans for 24 hours, especially since they always turn out gross anyway, or drinking nothing but water).
To be fair, before I found out about Aldi's aside from the consistent $1.99/lb for chicken milk, eggs, and produce were a lot more expensive for us. Milk at other stores around us is over $3/gallon, eggs are usually $1.50/dozen, etc. But I'll drive 3-4 miles further to save that much money. Some lady was telling my wife how cheap Aldi's was so we just went to check it out and were completely amazed. It likely has to do with how low their overhead is. Most of the stuff is just a box cut open placed on a shelf or boxes stacked on top of one another. The stores runs on less than 10 employees at any given time.
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