How are you handling rising food and energy costs?

[sipnride]

My parents are retired and definitely feeling the pinch. I'm not retired and increase in wages is mitigating things to a good degree.

My take is this: a lot of people are getting long overdue wage increases after decades of stagnation. It's definitely not ideal but during the pandemic, after companies cut back employment, many workers who were making poverty level wages discovered they could make just as much doing gig work and have more freedom to boot. This led to decades worth of inflation hitting all at once.

The companies whose business models were predicated on undercutting prices by keeping labor costs down were stunned to discover that those business models have become obsolete. The companies that absorbed costs to keep workers benefitted from keeping employees who didn't test the market. Companies who leaned out but had a model that permitted growth in labor costs had a fairly easy time adjusting to the new reality, that workers had a lot more leverage than they had previously. But many of the companies who were pillars of delivering low prices through low wages/overseas production (i.e. dependent on shipping/logistics that have skyrocketed) either went out of business or had to change their model entirely.

All that's to say that most families with working adults in the household have benefited from this, and although the price of food and energy spiked the price of housing, which never stopped rising at an enormous clip, has remained stable. Since that's the biggest cost for most working families the tradeoff of wages v inflation has worked out. Obviously there are other families, and no doubt retirees or others on fixed income, as well as small business owners who had no ability to pay livable wages and still earn a profit, that are reeling from this moment. I feel bad for those folks. I hope states start doing a better job of meeting those peoples needs. But after decades of seeing a race to the bottom in terms of labor costs there was bound to be a shift at some point, and the pandemic was the catalyst.

 

[leahgoogle]

Don't know about corned beef as I'm not a fan, but will tell you that a chuck roast will come out of the smoker almost exactly like a smoked brisket. The chuck is known as the poor man's brisket in the BBQ world. It was phenomenal and I have another one in the freezer waiting for time to cook for 10 hours or so.

And that price for chuck roast I would feel like I was stealing it, LOL. No one believes my prices, but chuck roast was on sale last week at $7.99.

We also smoke chuck roast and love it! It is very similar to brisket so we have been buying it instead since brisket prices have gone up considerably around here.

 

[ShirikiUtundu]

Eggs are outrageous due to the avian influenza outbreak earlier this year. Last year you could get eggs for $0.99/dozen at Target. Now you are lucky if you can find a dozen under $4.

 

[focusondisney]

I’ve always just shopped at wegmans & never needed to budget & bought what I wanted that week. We’re in a new life phase that has me rearranging our spending now anyway. DH has been semi retired for 18 months, so he’s only driving to work 2 days a week. I retired this spring. Before that I was driving 20 - 25 minutes each way, twice a week. For the last 2 years I have also spent several days & evenings each week caring for my mom. She passed away less than 2 months after I retired. Instead of 30 minute round trips there 2 or 3 times a week, it’s now just once or twice a month as we clear out her house. So between less driving to work & not driving there, I’m using a lot less gas than ever before. I used to refill at least half a tank every week, now it’s about 3 weeks before I need to refill.

When I was working & caring for my mom we had fast food or frozen entrees probably 4 times a week. We’d often go out to eat another night. So I was only cooking 2 or 3 times a week. Now that I’m home all the time, I am trying to plan meals ahead. I can’t say they’re always planned with sales in mind tho. I’m still figuring this out remember. I think I’m spending more on groceries but at the same time, spending less on take out meals.

I’m trying to be more conscious of prices. I will say the pandemic helped somewhat in that regard. I have never been one to “stock up” & always purchased small size products. My mom was somewhat of a hoarder & so I had an aversion to anything that remotely seems like hoarding. Until the pandemic hit. With foods hard to get & not wanting to go into stores often, I did buy a small freezer & food saver machine. So I have been buying some meats in bigger packages, repackaging & freezing. And I started buying paper products in bulk & stocking up because of shortages. Now I usually get large sized paper & laundry products at Target with their buy 3 get a gift card promos. We’re cutting back on snacks & candy for health reasons so that has been a big money saver too. My DDIL swears by Aldi’s. There is one right near the Wegmans & Tops I usually shop at. I’ve stopped in a few times for produce that is so much less than Wegmans. I need to stop there more regularly.


This will be the first winter we’ll be home all the time so not sure how our utility bills will be. But our home is small & well insulated, our furnace & gas fireplace are new. We’re usually in the same room anyway, so not a lot of extra lights etc. That also means I can just run the fireplace for a little bit when we’re in the family room & not have to heat the whole house. The weather has also helped with utility bills so far. I used to need the heat on by the middle / end I’d September. But it’s been so nice this fall, I’ve only turned it on briefly maybe 3 times to take the chill off. But so far, our utility rates don’t seem to have jumped the way some other areas have. We’ll see how it goes they the winter. I’ve already decided I’ll layer up more if the prices get too bad.

 

[Meriweather]

Bought eggs at Costco today. Plan to do my holiday baking in the next 2 weeks before they expire. $5 for 2 dozen. I bought 4 dozen.
The chicken I like....frozen, boneless, skinless, thin sliced dropped $10 for a 10 pound bag.
Pork chops are still a good deal. So I got another big package of those.

 

[barkley]

I'm also being a little more experimental in the kitchen. For example, last week, chuck roast was on sale for $3.47/pound. That's a super good price in our area, so I bought 2 and one is brining in the garage fridge to become a sort of faux corned beef "brisket." Has anyone here done that? I felt like having corned beef, but brisket was more expensive. I guess I'll know in a few more days.

we stock up on beef and pork when they are on good sales and prepare them into the cuts we need. i can get a roast on sale for over half what anyone is charging for pre-cut stew or soup meat, use our meat grinder and pay dollars per pound less for ground beef. w/pork we will cut tenderloins into chops or grind whatever is on sale into bulk sausage that we easily season into whatever type we need.

@barkley Thanks so much for this info! I will look into that.

He is on Medicaid/Medicare. His version of MS is completely crippling. When he applied for Disability, he was approved immediately which is not common, I have been told. MRI scans don't lie.

it's rare for sure-i worked with people on medicaid while they were awaiting approval from social security. good that he has both medicaid and medicare so i assume medicaid is paying for your brother's medicare premium so that helps. hopefully the income charts get updated for some of the programs like food stamps and medicaid so the upcoming c.o.l.a. doesn't put folks like your brother and my son is a worsening financial situation.

 

[Christine]

I mean, that's a 25% increase in one year - that is a shocking raise, only it doesn't feel it b/c it's a low level price...

I've seen that increase happen, though, since 2020. So it's been over 2 years. It absolutely did not happen in the short span of a year. I believe it started in early 2020, after COVID, and some sort of "egg shortage" and, of course, never really went back down. So yes, it is a lot if it happened quickly but it really inched up in the early days of COVID.

 

[lowlight]

My parents are retired and definitely feeling the pinch. I'm not retired and increase in wages is mitigating things to a good degree.

My take is this: a lot of people are getting long overdue wage increases after decades of stagnation. It's definitely not ideal but during the pandemic, after companies cut back employment, many workers who were making poverty level wages discovered they could make just as much doing gig work and have more freedom to boot. This led to decades worth of inflation hitting all at once.

The companies whose business models were predicated on undercutting prices by keeping labor costs down were stunned to discover that those business models have become obsolete. The companies that absorbed costs to keep workers benefitted from keeping employees who didn't test the market. Companies who leaned out but had a model that permitted growth in labor costs had a fairly easy time adjusting to the new reality, that workers had a lot more leverage than they had previously. But many of the companies who were pillars of delivering low prices through low wages/overseas production (i.e. dependent on shipping/logistics that have skyrocketed) either went out of business or had to change their model entirely.

All that's to say that most families with working adults in the household have benefited from this, and although the price of food and energy spiked the price of housing, which never stopped rising at an enormous clip, has remained stable. Since that's the biggest cost for most working families the tradeoff of wages v inflation has worked out. Obviously there are other families, and no doubt retirees or others on fixed income, as well as small business owners who had no ability to pay livable wages and still earn a profit, that are reeling from this moment. I feel bad for those folks. I hope states start doing a better job of meeting those peoples needs. But after decades of seeing a race to the bottom in terms of labor costs there was bound to be a shift at some point, and the pandemic was the catalyst.

I haven’t met a single family that’s better off, I’m not sure if you and I live in the same country or era. I must be misunderstanding you, because wage increases have to outpace inflation in order to be considered an extra money on pocket raise.

 

[Christine]

I find it hard to believe that some are not noticing drastic price increases, short of the stuff you can buy from local farms, and even then the inputs have gone up drastically so the output has definitely increased in price. I have bought roughly the same things every week for the past 4 years and have every receipt saved in email (I use a cash back app that scans receipts), and I can tell you for certain that the average price of my weekly grocery has gone up from just shy of 200 to this week tipping the scales at 315. I buy my meat from a farm, my eggs from a farm, my milk was from a farm, but they had issues staying stocked and I can’t risk that with kids so I stopped, and while those have gone up less drastically, they have definitely gone up. This isn’t even taking into account that literally every thing I buy has gone up 10%+. I change my own oil, oil is way more expensive. Oil Filters are way more expensive. Water filters for my house have doubled. Cleaning supplies. I’m lucky I do shift work and can take overtime or I don’t think I’d be surviving without major life changes. If you don’t notice the price on increases, thank your lucky stars.

I think many of us live in different worlds sometimes within the same country!! Honestly, it has a lot to do with what you buy. I"m just not seeing a lot of changes. But I can see on this thread some whopping increases in things that I just never buy. I really notice it though, in the processed food and some meats. But again, mainly processed stuff.

I just pulled out some of my Wegman's Chicken Breasts to cook. I've been buying their house brand for 5-6 years. It's really produced by Bell & Evans out of Pennsylvania, I think, and is wonderful chicken. The family pack of 3 lbs is running me $4.99 a pound. That is has been consistent for YEARS. I tried to buy some of the cheaper chicken breasts that rotate as "sales" throughout the other stores for $1.99 a pound and it's barely edible to me. But my point is that the price has not changed for me. I don't know why different areas see such different prices. But yeah, things like soda, cookes, brand name cereals have gone crazy, but I just don't buy them anyway. It really feels mostly like greed to me. I understand some increase, but not what some of the "junk" is being increased to.

Cleaning supplies are the same for me also. Method Detergent at Wegman's is $9.99 and has been. No change. Same for all my bathroom cleaners, etc. I just notice less sales.

 

[ronandannette]

And, there are no national or state owned oil companies in Canada either - are you saying we could compel private Canadian companies to sell their oil specifically to us rather on the global market? How would that work?

Also, if Canada can help the US out with oil, why do they have to import oil from the US? USA is the largest supplier for imported crude oil to Canada.

Compel?!? Heck - approve a pipeline and they will ecstatically sell it to you. And we don't have domestic pipelines either, or adequate refining facilities, for that matter, which keeps us reliant on foreign supplies that are delivered from some very unsavory sources via tanker to ports in eastern Canada. Unbelievable, I know, but you really can't make this stuff up...

 

[sipnride]

I haven’t met a single family that’s better off, I’m not sure if you and I live in the same country or era. I must be misunderstanding you, because wage increases have to outpace inflation in order to be considered an extra money on pocket raise.

Do you know any truck drivers? How about construction workers? Their wages are way up. Most teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other public sector workers have seen very significant wage increases. Nurses and other health service workers have seen more modest increases.

But the biggest change is happening for the people who work closer to the minimum wage, most often in retail or basic services.

The vibe I'm getting sounds like you want to pick a fight or have some agenda so not really going to argue with you. Believe what you want but for a lot of people the long overdue raises are helping.

 

[Colleen27]

But there are limits. I passed on the Oscar Mayer bacon for $10.29.

WNY -- chicken is up to 6.99/lb near me. I am not a single person and have 5 people to feed. Two years ago I could still find chicken on certain sale cycles at 2.00/lb.

Eggs are up from $1.79/dozen to almost $4.00/dozen. That's a jump. If I'm paying that much I'll give $3.50 to the guy with the fresh eggs.

And that price for chuck roast I would feel like I was stealing it, LOL. No one believes my prices, but chuck roast was on sale last week at $7.99.

These prices, I would notice. I just paid $3.99/lb for a chuck roast, which is what I use for stew, and I griped about it because in the past I could get it for $2.99 if I watched sales. Bacon was on sale 2 for $8 this week - not Oscar Meyer, but the Spartan brand thick-cut is good enough for me.

Chicken has probably been the worst, I paid $3.99/lb this week which is $1-1.50 per pound higher than I used to see as a sale price, but that doesn't surprise me given the current state of things with poultry. I didn't even think about it earlier in the thread but that's probably what's going on with eggs too, and by extension with any product that uses eggs in the manufacturing. This whole year has been one alert after another from our university extension about the circulating strain of avian flu that is wiping out whole flocks of domestic birds, not to mention wild bird populations. I know the UK issued a warning to keep domestic birds indoors because of it, and there have been some really big flock losses in the US and elsewhere to the tune of millions of laying hens on egg farms and such. We're going into our second year of putting off starting a flock of our own because the main reason I'm entertaining getting chickens at all is because my daughter wants to show them, and it is anyone's guess whether or not the avian flu situation will allow us to have live birds in the barn at fair next summer.

A lot of people are really misinformed about this. We really don't control it as a government entity. I only recently learned about it so it's about drilling rights and who drills. Apparently them major companies use listed aren't even drilling to the capacity they've been allowed.

And even if they did, recent history tells us that when we increase domestic production foreign producers are likely to cut their own output to keep prices high, and since the market sets the price, we don't end up significantly better off for the new drilling. There are other arguments to be made for (and against) exploiting domestic fossil fuel deposits, but price isn't really among them.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I've seen that increase happen, though, since 2020. So it's been over 2 years. It absolutely did not happen in the short span of a year. I believe it started in early 2020, after COVID, and some sort of "egg shortage" and, of course, never really went back down. So yes, it is a lot if it happened quickly but it really inched up in the early days of COVID.

Eggs milk bread, etc can all fluctuate up and down over the years. I haven't really heard people seriously attribute every little thing to inflation. I do however believe the PP's point was it was still a decent increase when looking at raw figures (no pun intended) and that would be the case no matter when you're looking. I do remember when milk was seriously low at like $0.66 in 2019. It's gone up or down but has been over $2.00 for this year. It was $1.51 in December 2021. A few days ago it was $2.02 when we ordered it the first time it's been that low since summer started.

Want to know just how high it's gotten for eggs (which like I said before combo of avian flu and inflation)? In January 2020 they cost $0.49 for 6 of Great Value, in March of 2021 they cost $0.71 (and that's how you can see how the pandemic likely has been involved here), in May 2021 $0.75, in August 2021 $0.80, in December 2021 $0.81, in April 2022, 0.84 and now $1.22. There was a rather large increase due to pandemic but then it held steady relatively speaking throughout the year in 2021.

Sometimes I really hate typing things out...now I get to see how much more we've been paying

 

[Christine]

Eggs milk bread, etc can all fluctuate up and down over the years. I haven't really heard people seriously attribute every little thing to inflation. I do however believe the PP's point was it was still a decent increase when looking at raw figures (no pun intended) and that would be the case no matter when you're looking. I do remember when milk was seriously low at like $0.66 in 2019. It's gone up or down but has been over $2.00 for this year. It was $1.51 in December 2021. A few days ago it was $2.02 when we ordered it the first time it's been that low since summer started.

Want to know just how high it's gotten for eggs (which like I said before combo of avian flu and inflation)? In January 2020 they cost $0.49 for 6 of Great Value, in March of 2021 they cost $0.71 (and that's how you can see how the pandemic likely has been involved here), in May 2021 $0.75, in August 2021 $0.80, in December 2021 $0.81, in April 2022, 0.84 and now $1.22. There was a rather large increase due to pandemic but then it held steady relatively speaking throughout the year in 2021.

Sometimes I really hate typing things out...now I get to see how much more we've been paying

Oh I understand that my eggs increased. I just don't find the increases to be as large as some people are seeing on items. And every little bit adds up. FWIW, I've *never* seen the prices you report for milk or eggs. I mean, I think it's been well over 10 years or more since I've seen things that inexpensive. Alternatively, I don't seem to be seeing the same flucuations either so we just seem to stay at our high prices!

 

[BrianL]

Eggs are outrageous due to the avian influenza outbreak earlier this year. Last year you could get eggs for $0.99/dozen at Target. Now you are lucky if you can find a dozen under $4.

Yeah, eggs are brutal, and a staple for me.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

Milk $2? Is that for a half gallon or a gallon? We buy a gallon and it’s close to $5 now more often than not, depending on where you buy and brand, etc. But hard to find under $4 (New England).

I feel like some of the differences being seen and discussed here are probably regional.

 

[jalapeno_pretzel]

Compel?!? Heck - approve a pipeline and they will ecstatically sell it to you. And we don't have domestic pipelines either, or adequate refining facilities, for that matter, which keeps us reliant on foreign supplies that are delivered from some very unsavory sources via tanker to ports in eastern Canada. Unbelievable, I know, but you really can't make this stuff up...

So Canada is reliant on foreign oil imports but they would still have plenty they would like to sell to the US?

But, it also is the case that the US exports more than we import, so we are already producing more than we use anyway, so I'm not sure how Kenny's idea of Canada helping us would really work if we already have more than we need.

 

[sipnride]

Milk $2? Is that for a half gallon or a gallon? We buy a gallon and it’s close to $5 now more often than not, depending on where you buy and brand, etc. But hard to find under $4 (New England).

I feel like some of the differences being seen and discussed here are probably regional.

Partly, but i think it's also because some people were already buying the cheapest products from the cheapest vendors and others are just now starting to do so. Also (and this is in line with the regional variability to an extent) some states have less regulation so the amount of hormones and drugs manufacturers are permitted to use can fluctuate a lot, and that can have a big impact on prices as well.

 

[lowlight]

Do you know any truck drivers? How about construction workers? Their wages are way up. Most teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other public sector workers have seen very significant wage increases. Nurses and other health service workers have seen more modest increases.

But the biggest change is happening for the people who work closer to the minimum wage, most often in retail or basic services.

The vibe I'm getting sounds like you want to pick a fight or have some agenda so not really going to argue with you. Believe what you want but for a lot of people the long overdue raises are helping.

Sir, I wear a uniform to work and have for 25 years. The people you are talking about are the only people I know, they are my friends, family, neighbors, and coworkers. I am not trying to pick a fight with you, I feel like you read something somewhere and it’s so disconnected from reality that I don’t know where to begin. Union contracts are often times 4-5 years long and most of us haven’t seen a commensurate raise unless our contract came due within the last year or two, and then not anywhere near true inflation. The cost of my union negotiated healthcare went up 20 percent in the last two years alone. Again, we don’t live on the same planet or I’m misunderstanding you.

 

[JaxDad]

I’m just waiting for that Inflation Reduction Act to kick in! Like most of those who voted for it, I printed a copy, sat down, and diligently read every single word of the title. I was absolutely convinced it will work!