We're in a recession.
I can't find the blog post from the last major recession where people were talking about all the crazy flavors you only see when the economy is REAL bad.
At WalMart, they're now 47¢ (and I swear low-30s within the past year)... which actually helped me not purchase any this last visit (too expensive for all it is).
Couldn't believe how many people would go to the sushi restaurant at the base of the building and spend $25 on lunch a couple days a week. Yikes.
At the very least you should consider steaming some vegetables (also very cheap), slice them up, and mix'em in to get some moderate nutritional value from it.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/whats-your-daily...
The problem with ramen is the amount of carbs and little nutrition which only spikes your insulin and makes you hungry 2 hours later if your metabolism is not great, not saturated fat in a vacuum. I wish popular knowledge about food had moved on from the misguided research of Ancel Keys already.
Nothing fresh in them, high sodium, freeze-dried ramen or noodle bowls were originally survival food and should be treated as such.
Not saying don't eat them, and I don't know your socioeconomic background or anything, but if you want to eat them or have to eat them, try to add a little something extra into them.
A cup of shredded cabbage and/or a few cherry tomatoes and/or a half cup of onion slices and/or an egg, things like that should be cheap and easy to add and will help dilute the sodium and add a healthy component to the meal, and your kidneys and heart will thank you for it.
Until my blood sugar (A1C) and blood pressure numbers started climbing...
It sounds like a habit drawn from poverty, but frankly, you'd have to be really poor to reach for something like this daily (I'm talking extreme survival situations that even the homeless don't typically face). Those with low income can still get much better food at a reasonable price. They don't need to shop at Whole Foods.
I'm not sure you can even eat like this for very long either. The malnutrition is that bad. Expect high medical care costs or an early death down the line.
Penny wise, pound foolish.
But, odds are, the person who eats instant ramen 5 lunches a week isn't going home to a balanced dinner and likely eats fast food or frozen dinners most nights, which is why I suggested adding a few inexpensive extras.
A cup of pre-shredded bagged cabbage would add ~$0.50 to a ramen meal. If they do 30 minutes of meal prep on a sunday they could pre-portion a full portable soup container with all of the extras for the week and be ready to go for maybe an extra dollar a day.
Why do people cheap out on food, but spend that money on less important things? We're talking about your health here! It's even worse when people with high incomes do it.
Getting lunch with coworkers once in a while doesn’t hurt
https://www.heb.com/product-detail/15219522?shoppingStore=79...
Also there's fairly wide variance in calorie count brand to brand for the same size square, not sure why.
Edit: The last time I worked in an office building, I had a limited time for lunch. I could have brought in ramen, or purchased something from the decently-stocked break room coolers. I could have sat at my desk or gone outside or eaten in the break room.
And sometimes, I did do those things.
But what I quickly discovered was that what I wanted on my lunch break was primarily a break.
I wanted to get the hell away from that place, surround myself with something completely different, and spend time relaxing my brain before getting through the second half of the day.
So I often went out to get lunch.
But because time was limited, it had to be nearby, and my options were thus very limited.
So I ate a lot of bargain-menu Wendys and tacos from Qdoba because I could get there, and eat, and relax a bit, and be back on time.
If there were instead a sushi place right downstairs, I'd have probably hit that once or twice a week, too. It would have had a higher monetary expense, but my brain would have thanked me for the extra time to unwind and I'd have had a better and more-productive rest of my day and come home in a better mood than I might have otherwise.
That was the same year where I was homeless while technically having a "tech" job.
The problem here is some waited for too long to be told we are now in a recession, then some politicians tried to redefine it.
But that is nothing compared to what will happen in the next 5 - 10 years. Nothing goes up forever. The only hint is that we need to prepare before 2030.
The problem is that this recent equities run has been extra terrible for more conservative 60/40 portfolios [0].
[0] https://www.morningstar.com/economy/6040-portfolio-150-year-...
There's an intermediate option: sell high P/E stocks and buy lower P/E stocks with dividend paying history. There are ETFs designed for this purpose too.
In particular bulking up in EM, EU, and small cap. And slimming down in us large cap.
That's crazy.
I have a blog post about the inverse TSLA position here: https://bagelpour.wordpress.com/2025/11/30/taking-an-inverse...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/11/24/sp500-sto...
Also, its possible that the market thinks job losses are good (aka that AI is replacing jobs)
Stocks go up, wages and income go down, things keep on keeping on because AI has quietly replaced you.
We can’t time the market, but we can protect the scraps we’ve accumulated at least.