Hacker News Reader

Comment by darth_avocado | Hacker News Reader

Everything costs too much. I went to the grocery store yesterday I spent $50 to get a packet of bread, a dozen eggs, two yogurts, two yellow onions, a jalapeno, two tomatoes and a bunch of parsley. This covers breakfast for 2 days for my partner and I. In 2022, $150 would fetch the entire week’s groceries for the two of us. We are paying more, while having to change what we eat with cheaper/unhealthier options. Otherwise we would be spending almost $1500/month on just groceries for 2.

I used to eat high quality fish every week, now it’s beans and cheaper cuts of chicken. And we make good money, but our wages have gone down since 2022 when adjusted for inflation.

View on HN

I'm in Europe. I have been tracking my all expenses to the cent religiously since 2010 in Excel sheets. I also haven't changed my grocery habits much since around 2020, except very recently when I actually started looking at the deals (discounts) and buying more generic stuff. We haven't been eating out much (~5 times per month on average) Obviously, it varies month-by-month but my family's (2 adults, not counting the child) expenses on food have risen by around 100% since 2022.

I can’t edit the comment but I think people have a reactionary response to this comment, and are comparing grocery prices at the cheapest store available to them.

The comment was meant as a comparison to the same store prices in 2022. If your argument is that “Walmart is cheaper, shop there”, how much more expensive is Walmart as compared to 2022? If your argument is that “don’t buy everything at the same store or buy cheaper brands”, is that something you had to do before or is that your response to raised prices. If your argument is “well you live in an expensive, I don’t”, has your grocery bill remained the same as compared to your income from a few years ago (you could’ve gotten a promotion or a new job, but that’s not the point).

Also keep in mind, shop at XYZ is not really a great way to think about this because not everyone has access to the same stores.

Where are you located? I think even NYCs groceries are not that expensive.

SF Bay Area. I will say that these are not Costco prices or a store where I’d be couponing, but it’s not Whole Foods either. I would love to go to Costco but unfortunately I do not have the space to accommodate the bulk quantities that I’d have to buy and consume.

hi! i live in SF. at trader joe's, these items would be priced at - $5 (bread loaf) + $5 (eggs) + $3 (yogurt) + $2 (onions) + $2 (tomatoes) + $1 (jalapeno) + $3 (parsley) = $21.

i'm rounding up on eggs and bread since you might be buying a more expensive variety, and guesstimating parsley because i haven't bought it from trader joe's before. everything else is pulled from my last few shopping trips.

if you're spending $50 on this, i would highly recommend finding a new grocery store.

It seems inflated roughly 40% to prove a point but regardless stuff is still too expensive and I don’t eat meat. Don’t know though yesterday was reading some comments here about people literally saying “$50k income a month in SF and you still can’t buy a house,” stuff like that is ridiculously out of touch.

I don’t have a Trader Joe’s around me. Sure I drive 20 mins away to one and then spend another hour going to a different place to shop for all the things Trader Joe’s doesn’t have, then yeah I could get things for cheaper. But that’s the point. You didn't need to do this a few years ago and now you do.

Yeah, I'm in my 40s and I never understood why people hated inflation so much until 2021/22. I get it now, it's massively disruptive and annoying.

$5 a loaf of bread is truly diabolical.

juat wait until you hear the costs of gluten-free bread

>> Chooses to live in one of the highest cost of living, most expensive areas in the entire country

>> Complains that groceries are expensive

Bay Area was the highest cost of living areas in 2022 as well. You seemed to have missed the point.

I feel like some of that is maybe shopping at the wrong place. Which the article I guess covers by saying people are addressing by changing retailers to save money.

Where I am in the US, you can get a dozen eggs for ~$2 at Walmart. A loaf of bread with 22 slices is like $2 to $6 depending on store brand vs name brand. The canned refried beans I buy are still $1.30 to $1.50 for 4-5 servings.

Some stuff is way too expensive (beef) but other food items seem at normal prices to me.

When you have to start shopping down market because you can't afford your normal store that is an indicator that you have less buying power now.

Saying 'everything is fine, you just have to shop down market, you can no longer afford your normal store, you need to go to the poorest store now because you are poor now' is just rephrasing what is being said.

I don’t have Walmart to go to but I do have a Costco. But like I mentioned in a different comment, I can’t do normal groceries there because of the space I have + how much I can consume before it all goes bad. I still shop for a lot of things at Costco, but the point I was trying to make was comparing my same exact situation from 4 years ago to today.

The article points to shopping around and buying cheaper brands to make it work. But that’s the point, you didn’t have to do it, but now you do because things are too expensive.

You can get items at Costco that you do not need a lot of room for. Plus, you can meal prep and save time and money. It should not cost you $1500 per month to eat healthy food.

Again the point isn’t that there is a pathway to healthy and cheap food. The point is how much you have to do to get there. A few years ago you could shop at a single store and not meal prep to achieve that, now you do.

> Where I am in the US, you can get a dozen eggs for ~$2 at Walmart.

Some people prefer to shop at less conglomerate and evil stores.

It also depends on what sort of stuff you're buying. For example here (non-US) the cheapest white bread is USD1.20, but you can bet that's the worst, most unhealthy garbage they can make. Something with high fibre is more like twice that.

I think the point is that everything got more expensive, everywhere. How much were these eggs at Walmart in the beginning of 2020?

A dozen of eggs at Aldi's in FL was $0.79 in 2020. Now around $3.00.

Farmed salmon was commonly $8.99 at Costco, now it's $12.99 (sometimes on sale for $9.99).

On the topic of shopping at the wrong place, in Australia we have a supermarket duopoly. Depending on where you live, you may only have the choice of Coles or Woolworths. They both suck. I'm lucky to live in the inner city and can shop at aldi or the local markets. People living in regional towns have less choice and are getting screwed over.

Where?

At least where I live if I went to Kroger I’d spend $6 on bread, two tubs of Fage would be $14, eggs are like $3, the parsley would be like $1.50 and the rest of the veggies comes out to about $5.

And how much did that cost in 2022?

Fage and parsley are up substantially since 2020. The rest has been pretty stable, at least near me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com