Is 3 years worth of insurance price only 3 years ago, is clearly a sign of how cheap everything has gotten. What a bargin . . .

I went to reorder them a few weeks ago, they were $29.99. I waited a week, came back and they were $31.99. I couldn't find a better deal at the stores so I ordered it. I was actually charged $33.99! No inflation at all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My wife and I are noticing portions going down. It happens at the grocery store, but even more often at restaurants.

Cartons, bags, and bottles are the same size, but contain less product, while the price remains the same, or is slightly higher.

Ice Cream used to be in half gallon containers, now it's 1.5 Quarts, and costs more.
The same is true with OJ. Less product, higher price.
A pack of the hot dogs I like to buy used to be 1 lb., now it's 12.5 oz., and costs more.
Coffee is similarly in a smaller bag, but a higher price.
I could go on.
The Trump tariff has just made everything worse.
The one good thing in all this is that it's a pocket book issue of immediate concern for everyone. MAGAts can't pretend there isn't any inflation when they come home with a single bag of groceries that costs 60-70 dollars and doesn't contain any meat.
If anything could possible wake up the MAGAts it's the sucking sound of their wallets emptying with ever increasing speed.

Price might go up only 5-10%, but you notice the size of the portions has dropped by a quarter or so.
Makes sense for the restaurant, since the price change is more objectively quantified than the smaller amount of food.

They get to save the price of take home containers.

which is a small store & isn't even in all 50 states.

So, gold crusted new ballroom for republicans, and the rest of us are told to make do with Aldi. If they don't have what we need then we're out of luck. I'm not sure what happens for folks who don't have Aldi or can't afford the prices - I guess they are supposed to die quietly on the street.

Wait- didn't I mean the "under $2" store??

bad milk and eggs. They are good for already packaged staples, but not fresh stuff.

I placed "Aldi" in my DU trash can because I receive the unsolicited suggestion of shopping at Aldi as well. I get tired of people saying how great it is and it's not.


Aldi is the furthest store away from me. If I'm driving home from work, I will stop and pick up a head of lettuce, sweet mini peppers, Cabot cheese blocks and they have a gluten free pancake/baking mix that I can make biscuits out of on occasion. I don't make these biscuits too often because it's not Keto friendly.


However, Aldi's eggs are marked as "large". This is an inaccurate egg size compared to Egglands Best, Tops Markets, and Wegmans. Yes, the size of eggs matter when a person eats the Ketogenic lifestyle. Aldi's also doesn't have special flour like almond flour. I have a gluten intolerance.



Some years ago, I picked up a marinara sauce at Aldi and it tasted horrible. I don't remember the brand that I bought but I threw it in the trash. I'd rather spend 60 cents more and buy Francesco Rinaldi marinara. This brand goes on sale frequently at Tops Markets. I'm a regular Tops markets shopper.


I hosted Thanksgiving this year and I made two different types of chili for 7 people. I picked up a mega ground beef (roughly 6 pounds) at Tops Markets with a flyer coupon. I spent $27 on total for the ground beef for chili. I averaged $4.50 per pound for this entire mega ground beef package. Without the coupon this mega ground beef package was roughly $32. I don't remember the percentage of lean/fat but it doesn't matter.


I recently stopped at Aldi for some reason and looked at the ground beef. It's about $4.99 per pound (2lbs) for 80/20 ground beef. So average $10 for the 2lb. carton of ground beef. I would say that I got the better deal on ground beef at Tops Markets, plus I set aside a pound and placed it in the freezer.


The problem is, most people don't know how to comparison shop. They only look at the price of an item, they seem to not notice price per pound, price per unit, price per liter, et cetera.



I've noticed that people on DU (no matter how well intentioned that they are) like to instruct others where they can and can't shop. It drives me absolutely bonkers. If I need to spend money on Amazon on something that I need, I will spend MY paycheck there. I don't need anyone's permission to do so.


About 3 weeks ago, I ordered a mans dress shirt and dress pants off Amazon for a Christmas gift. It was a much better deal with pricing compared to Kohl's. I hadn't been in Kohl's in a long time and I don't remember their clothing prices being that high, even with ongoing "sales". The clearance rack was insanely packed and not much better in pricing.


Anyway, just my $0.25 worth of input.

it would solve all the problems

Basically, shop where you want to shop. Don't let other people tell you where you can and can't shop.


No adults should be instructing other adults on where they can and can't shop.


Aldi is alright in the produce department. I'm very careful about what I purchase there because I've been disappointed with the awful taste of several of their products. Some of Aldi products are just nasty and I wouldn't let my dog eat it if I had one. Aldi isn't a place where one can comparison shop either.

My point was more general about the fact that we're missing the forest for the trees. Here we are down here, worried about where to shop for the very cheapest product, while the overall point is that we are being screwed.

There is no reason we need to make people like Elon billionaires and/or trillionaires in this country. The income inequality is through the roof, prices continue to rise, and Trump is taking the profits to his bank (along with a few other well-placed folks). My critique is of the system itself.

Last year I bought them at 20% off of the $24.99 regular price. That's five dollars off. This year, the 20% discount comes to eight dollars off! That's much better!

I have a subscription for keurig from Green Mountain via Amazon. My supply was dwindling due to company the past few weeks. I went to change my shipping date and saw a 96 cups ranging from 46 -75 dollars it was a WTF moment. .
Even with online subscriptions one must do the math. The 72 cups was 34.00. A 120 cup was offered at 59.99.

One must also beware of various other sellers/shippers. and deal direct with the company.

The same goes for overseas buying check to see if there is an on shore (US) buyer/shipper to skirt Trump tariffs.. I found Walmart online had a Florida supplier for an item that would have cost more that 60.00 in shipping and tariffs. Shipping was free. Walmart has mimicked Amazon and deals with a variety of companies. They bought out several medical suppliers and electronics.

Harris Teeter used to have their offbrand apple juice at 1.99. When I went to reorder online, that vanished and the 2.79 brand juice was unavailable. I wound up paying 2.99 for HT-branded juice.

((I checked other stores, and 2.79 was the lowest advertised.))

When I was first married, back in 1982, it cost us one year's salary for a very small cottage on a lake. I made the average income for 1982. We bought the house with a mortgage at 15% interest. We sold it 2 years later for about what we bought it for.

Today, it would take 6 to 8 year's salary for the same house... it's for sale again but I don't want to move back to Illinois.

But if you asked the demented pedo in the White House, it's all those dolls and pencils that are causing the out of control inflation.

It costs me almost twenty dollars to make a pot of soup these days. What was that you were saying about inflation?