Dollar Tree says US$1.25 price point to become new standard

How often do you need to buy dishes, cups and socks?

$100 is plenty to afford groceries at a grocery store. If they only had $4 or something your point would make more sense.

You can take $30 to a grocery store and walk out with a decent quantity of rice and beans, at good prices per ounce.

They may not have the space for a barrel of Pine-sol either.

> Yes, it's cheaper by the fluid ounce to buy a barrel of Pine-sol at Costco.

Its frequently cheaper to buy the same size package of a grocery item at a traditional grocery store than a dollar store; I've seen cases as extreme as things that regularly go 4/$1 (and occasionally go on sale at 10/$1) at regular grocery stores going for 1/$1 at a dollar store.

But if you don't have a regular grocery store in convenient distance (walking/biking distance if you don't have working car!), that doesn't matter. (Costco and similar stores present another level of problem; they tend to both be more distant for most people than even standard grocery stores and to bias toward larger package sizes—aside from whether you can afford to tie up money in the larger item even with a smaller unit cost, storage space becomes a problem.)

Except it's not just a cash flow problem, it's first and foremost a community collapse problem. Poor immigrants buy in bulk and share all the time. Eventually the only way to avoid poverty is effectively cooperating with other people - at work to accomplish tasks worth paying for, social networking to get a job, staying married to provide for children. I am not patronizing anyone here, just acknowledging that their troubles have many more dimensions than just unit prices of small portions of various goods.

Your first sentence sums up the majority of this site on any socioeconomic issue. At this point the term “financial literacy” is exclusively used by armchair poverty quarterbacks.

I have been dirt poor most of my life. And I can tell you I was careful about where I shopped.

And many other poor people I knew _blew_ tons of money on McDonald's because "they couldn't afford to cook"

It's not so cut and dry.

> Classic analysis by someone who seemingly has never been dirt poor.

I’ve been dirt poor; I’ve never been in a situation where “dollar store as regular grocery source” made sense (though I’ve shopped in dollar stores, and occasionally when I did found deals on grocery items that were worthwhile), and I am very much aware of why that was never the case for me and why it is and was sometimes for other people.

Also, not all people who shop at dollar stores are dirt poor.

> It may be tough to believe, but y'know what'd surprise literally none of the poors if you told them? That they pay more money for less product at the dollar store than elsewhere.

Actually, it would probably suprise some of them. Believe it or not, poorly informed poor people do exist. The idea that they don't is as misguided as the idea that all poor people are poorly informed.

> Despite their limited ability, they ARE able to look at price tags in different stores

Not really, when reason #3 (“Lack of actual grocery stores conveniently located”) applies. Comparison shopping takes time and effort that is something of a luxury in the best of cases, but it also takes having alternatives in the first place.

> If you're dollar store level poor, it's expensive and stressful, and you're constantly weighing spending money now versus keeping what little remains for whatever awful thing is going to leave you destitute.

That's true, but it doesn't contradict anything I said. It's like you have a canned rant about poor people that you arr trotting out independent of its actual relevance to the discussion.

> There's a fair amount of conflicting and complex psychology going on in that shopping decision beyond not just knowing that they should comparison shop.

Which would perhaps be an insightful counterargument if I had said something even approximately like “poor people who shop at dollar stores do it because they don't realize they should comparison shop”. Of the three reasons I gave for people shopping at dollar stores, only one relates to a failure to understand the price realities, and I never suggested that one was particularly common among the poor.

Dollar stores are a relatively recent phenomenon, a consequence of the destruction of local retail by various chains--first chain groceries, then Wal-Mart, etc. Dollar stores have slowly filled in the gaps left by the closure of local retailers and low-end chains like A&P. At first chains drove down prices, such as precipitous price declines brought by chain groceries, and then those Wal-Mart brought to everything else. But consolidation in the chain industry, including Wal-Mart displacing lower end chains and then slowly moving up market, left gaps, especially at the very low end. Dollar stores slowly filled in those gaps, but as they did so they ceased being literal dollar stores. And like any for-profit chain, they've begun using their market dominance to increase prices.

> Despite their limited ability, they ARE able to look at price tags in different stores and go "hey, wait a minute!"

Not really. Dollar stores have become so ubiquitous precisely because of their market dominance in areas without options--retail deserts, if you will. If you've really been dirt poor--and dirt poor outside the major cities and suburbs--you would know that driving 20-30 miles to the Wal-Mart two towns over, presuming they even have lower prices, can be cost prohibitive (especially when considering wear-and-tear and the risk of breaking down) when you're living day-to-day, even though in the long-term you end up paying more at the dollar store. Drive across the vast areas of rural and poor America and you'll see dollar stores in the most random and remotest of places; places that 10, 20, or 30 years ago had more options--you may even see their long shuttered remains somewhere nearby.

This is the classic dilemma the impoverished face, and have always faced--it takes money to make (or save) money. Yes, increases in prices at dollar stores will negatively impact alot of people. But when decrying the state of the nation you have to understand why that is and what it means. For example, before someone blames inflation, maybe they should look at profit margins. AFAICT, they've rose relatively sharply since COVID-19: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DG/dollar-general/... Indeed, the "narrowing" of Dollar Tree's earnings forecast mentioned in the article, from $5.40-$5.60 to $5.48-$5.58, is maybe better described as an upward adjustment. I suspect the price increase will help margins even further.

> y'know what'd surprise literally none of the poors if you told them?

Because apparently all poor people all the same in your mind.

> "It's expensive to be poor."

This is a talking point I wish more people on HN understood.

Can't afford a dental cavity filling? It becomes a root canal next year. Maybe you'll settle on just a simple extraction, and now you're down a tooth with no hope of ever affording a dental bridge, let alone an implant.

Can't afford to get a lump checked out? Three years later, you're unable to afford the stage 3 cancer treatment.

Buying the massive 30-roll pack of toilet paper from Costco for $15 is cheaper than buying 6-packs for $5, but you only have $20 to last the week, and you gotta buy food, too.

Can also see this by finding basically any product on Amazon and then being suggested like 30 competitors offering the same the same thing made in the same factory.

Are these any good? I might need a car on the cheap soon.

There’s one in the town of 20,000 next to me (15 minutes away) along with two other grocery stores and a Walmart.

There’s nothing in my town of 2,000 of course, though I believe there’s a Dollar-Something in another local town.

It isn't a good luxury car, but it objectively is one. "Luxury car" is a description of market segment, not a measure of quality.

Well cared for FCA products (and several other makes) are rare because they offer permissive financing and tons of incentives and intentionally design to keep low MSRPs. This results in lots of of people of more modest means owning them initially. That is a recipe for hard miles and minimal maintenance.

Your average Chrysler 300 is likely to have far more wear on the bump stops and in the back seats and trunk and far fewer scheduled maintenance items done than a 4Runner or some other car that has high class first owners.

>For example, a similar year Toyota, Subaru, or pre-CVT Nissans will hold higher values than equivalent American brand vehicles, with some exceptions.

Cars move down the economic ladder as they age. A similiar year Camry, Accord, or other InternetApproved(TM) cheap to run commuter car, is going to be in much nicer shape because it started a few dozen rungs higher than that '04 Impala, Sebring or whatever domestic we're comparing to. The price will reflect that niceness.

The Camry that's the same price as the average '04 Impala is going to be in equivalently rough shape and will be an older model year because it took it longer to get to that point because it started in nicer hands.

Seriously, punch in a $3000 price limit into your preferred classified section and see what it gets you.

These people are poor, not stupid. They're buying Big3/Korean/VW/Nissan sedans because that's what's available in the best condition and lowest miles at that price point because nobody wants them because they're not as practical as crossovers and people making white collar money don't fetishize them as ideal beater cars the way they do Toyotas and Hondas of that era.

Yeah. If you want a V8 sedan on a budget Chrysler 300s are a great option (as were the used Ford panther family of cars that preceded them in that market niche).

....which is why they're so stigmatized by the white collar well to do crowd.

Why do you think payday loan shops exist?

Depends on the price, of course. Compare the per-unit prices, your warehousing costs, and the interest rate on the loan.

> It's not like you need very much of it very often

You never drove an old hooptie, like I did in my early years!

Start working it out at your grocery store. It's not as easy as it looks.

I'm not saying it is impossible, far from it, but you do have to be conscious of every single purchase. That head of broccoli is $2 this week? Maybe not in the budget. Apples are up to $1/each again, those are right out. These aren't crazy organic prices either, this is regular produce and store brands. This goes double if you're trying to eat a healthy balanced diet and not going for a college kid ramen diet.

Even worse with a budget so small it is hard to take advantage of buying in bulk to save money. Buy a 50lb sack of potatoes and you can't afford to each much of anything else for the week. Buying flour to make bread is a great cost saver when you are buying in 40lb bags, but not so great in the 5lb bags with the markup.

You’re talking homeless which is a subset of poor.

Whenever someone says “the poor can do this” someone comes along to give an example of poor people who can’t. We get it, but there are plenty of poor who can do those things.

You can add cash to your Amazon account at AllPoint ATMs, CVS, Walgreens, RiteAid, GameStop, 7-11 and many other stores.

That price is not even cheap, grocery stores have rice at a much lower unit price in much smaller packages. Dollar store rice is likely in between them and still a very solid calorie deal. There is still a requirement that one has time, equipment & energy to cook with, though.

I think the point is that people on the poverty line eventually have to start making decisions that will break them out of the cycle. There are plenty of programs out there that will do just that. A 50lb bag of rice might very well be too much upfront but it might mean hitting the local food pantry while building up a pantry full of staples from EBT. I don't pretend this is an easy process but continuing to do that same and getting the same results shouldn't be surprising to anyone. Additionally, it can't be stated enough how important it is to build up credit for these people.

You could do a community purchase with your neighbors. Where I'm from people even register officially as cooperatives in order to buy stuff at bulk with proper accounting. Now some people who are super poor might also have horrible social skills, but that is already a compounding issue and moves goal posts.

I'm picking your response, but it's typical of an archetype that's bothersome in a different way to the GP's archetype of pointing out that volume discounts exist. When you're poor, your food budget isn't a crisp reliable $40/wk that you give like an API call to the store for a constant amount of the same food with $0 left. No, the amount varies up and down, as does the kind of food you get that week, as does the amount left over after all ordinary expenses. This leads to the conclusion that if your time frame expands beyond one week, saving is possible! Even poor people understand saving up, despite archetypes like the GP imagining this is unknown to them and that their particular proposal is the best course of action, or archetypes like yours imagining that it's somehow impossible for them. Oh, and a savings account is unnecessary.

Incidentally, the median US household is said by the BLS to be capable of saving $1k/mo after all ordinary expenses. For those who actually save, a savings account typically isn't the mechanism to do it. This leads to "funny" statistics pushed by news outlets on how a huge percentage of people, even HNers who have thousands or even millions saved up in mostly liquid assets, have no savings, because they're sampling either non-existent or non-useful-and-thus-empty savings accounts.

I don’t think that was supposed to be the bottom example, it’s half as expensive per unit at Target for 2 lb bags.

Comparative advantage is still in effect. It just comes down to stuff like economics of scale, language, local laws, etc rather than simply ultra low wages.

An interesting long term effect of this is there is a second whiplash as stalled first world economies eventually benefit from the world catching up to them.

That's one thing. Also, China is no longer buying US treasuries, which for a long time contributed to reducing US inflation via underpriced imports.

With often same great sized packaging only with smaller amounts inside. Very wasteful. Deodorant, chips, pills, etc all look like a normal sized bottle but in reality is a smaller size for dollar stores. I have also heard things like canned goods of say a brand of soup they have special made for places like Costco that demand higher quality ingredients where the dollar store would get lower quality versions. Perhaps cheaper meat or less of it. Still tastes like the original just that it’s not actually nutritionally the same.

Also great for someone with an occasional sweet tooth and insufficient willpower to have junk food at the house. Sometimes I just want 4 Oreos and I’ll happily pay a huge per-unit markup to avoid eating the whole box.

See Sharpie pens, which are sold at dollar stores with less ink.

That’s exactly why I shop there. No sense paying $5 for 100 tablets that expire when I could spend $1 for 5 tablets that will get used.

It’s been a long time since a “half gallon” of ice cream became 3 pints in size.

I wish you were always 12 minutes in front of me in comment threads :)

What are the economics like on prepared drinks? Seems like transporting a bunch of water around is wasteful and expensive. I guess the revenues are so much greater than costs it doesn't matter - but here we have them shrinking the portion size.

Those used to be 8oz cans, too, I think.

It's the same in the US.

Offer $5 & $10 coins

All the zinc that goes into pennies is worth $9 million per year, based on a back of the envelope calculation. Last year, zinc suppliers/miners sold $17.3 billion of the metal, and will do even more this year.

$9 million is less than a rounding error there.

> deeply unsettling

Care to elaborate? What about the logo makes you feel this way?

Dollar Tree doesn't sell fresh groceries, but they certainly sell food.

https://www.nogettingoffthistrain.com/shopping/dollar-tree-g...

But even if you ignore food, the point applies to all sorts of things (cosmetics, clothing, pharmacy, etc) people go to both for at a low price point.

>And Dollar Tree does not sell groceries (at least not any I've ever been to).

May be regional, because all of them around here do. At least canned/dry goods and frozen foods. Teeny-tiny steaks. No fresh produce, obviously.

Dollar Tree sells nonperishable and frozen-foods.

It's a problem if it's always rounding up. Throwing away the penny also requires legislation enforcing round to nearest.

> If it is 9/10 of a penny, then it is $0.001 per gallon. Fueling a 20 gallon tank is $0.02.

… and some people will drive down the block for those 2 cents, even though they may not realize that it’s only 2 cents. It’s just “cheaper” to them.

I've asked my landlord if they would let me buy back the quarters from them since it's such a pain getting them in a coin shortage. They didn't respond. Rent is already in the thousands, really my landlord should just stomach the $8 they get off me from the laundry room a month and just make it free. I'd honestly pay my landlord even higher rent if I didn't have to deal with getting rolls of quarters.

The simple solution is minting larger value coins.

If I have to wait in line at all, it's 99% a no-go. Add convenient self-checkout with wireless payments, and you've got my business. I wouldn't normally stop at CVS, but find myself doing so regularly. Why? Because there's no line. I can walk immediately to the items I need, then quickly scan them, tap my watch and walk out. It's easy, fast, and efficient.

Nowadays, waiting in line is a frustrating anachronism. The exceptions would be higher end stores like Publix that actively guide customers into the fastest checkout lines. But when purchasing a smaller quantity of items, self-checkout is most certainly preferable.

Pretty sure just about all types of employers in the US are having problems hiring and retaining employee's right now.

But not snark, according to the HN guidelines:

>" Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. "

My tongue-in-cheek point is that no one should wait for their employer to raise the price of the goods or services they are selling to ask for a raise, because there is no justification needed other than doing what you want to do, which includes selling your labor to a different employer for a higher price.

Last year hammers cost $5, this year it's $4. Go to a jobsite and ask a guy what his hammer is worth and last year he would say $5, this year he says $4. He's not making a value judgment based on anything intrinsic about the hammer, it's just worth less due to the cost of replacement falling. He literally values it less.

Humans, unlike hammers can decide to train to become a screwdriver or change from Binford Tools to Craftsman, who may value low turnover more than Binford and thus pay more to retain employees.

If the management or ultimate customers of your industry or firm don't support paying you a wage that keeps up with the CPI, I suggest working hard to find better managers and customers. You are fighting a losing battle otherwise. There is a ton of demand out there right now for almost everything.

Yeah, that sounds cool and all, but somehow I ended up with a job that pays over $100K a year, that makes me work for about 3 hours a week from home and has been paying me for years to do that. And I'm pretty sure my manager knows that.

If I were to quit, I'd end up with another job that makes me work for 30+ hours a week, for the exact same salary. And that's just one example. I know many more like that.

Your supply and demand can't explain that, yet it is my daily reality in a capitalist society. Capitalism is just another lie we tell each other to make each other believe we live in a just world.

Dollar General is more common here, which is slightly better — the prices are slightly higher and some have produce etc.

Can confirm, the Dollar Tree near me has this.