Are you folks holding up well against the price of food? I hope so.
Potatos were $0.60/lb when I moved here six years ago. I thought that was pretty outrageous, but I put it down to coming from California - where groceries are naturally cheap.
It was only two years ago that they surged to $0.90/lb. I remember, because I'd just learned how to make potato salad, and it was frustrating.
Now they're $1.25/lb.
Banquet chicken TV dinners had two pieces of chicken in them a decade ago - and they were priced the same as all the other dinners. About a dollar apiece.
Now they have ONE piece of chicken, are no longer grouped with the other TV dinners, and are 50% more than the other TV dinners.
In California, I regularly bought large frozen pizzas for $3.33 apiece. The one I bought yesterday was $6.00, and that was the best I could do on a per-ounce basis.
I bet it was smaller than the ones I was buying in California, too.
I used to buy frozen French Fries at a warehouse-style grocery store (whose name escapes me), for 19 cents a pound. The best I can do today is 89 cents a pound.
In California, I was getting turkeys at Thanksgiving for FREE - buy spending $25 on other things... and later $100 in groceries. This year, the best I could do was 59 cents/lb when I spent $40.
Movie rentals have been $1.00/night at the discount places for as long as I can remember. But in the last few months, they've climbed to $1.25 at Redbox. Netflix has raised its prices. Most of the video/DVD rental "stores" have gone out of business.
The rate of price inflation on things that really matter is truly horrifying.
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