I found an 8+ year old grocery store recipt on the weekend. Wow...

You are correct. While portions have gotten smaller; packaging and prices have increased.

I am amazed how much smaller the ice cream container is, and how quickly it disappears. ?We use to keep a gallon of ice cream for at least 2 weeks.

hamburger 2008 1.99 lb

hamburger 2012 6.59 a lb

And you will eat better when you incorporate more whole foods into your diet. That is better and cheaper than processed foods. And eating less is what most adults should be doing anyway.

Eating less and/or better...yes, I agree with that 100% But paying more to do so, I can't stomach that.

INFLATION.

FEDERAL RESERVE IS OUR WORST ENEMY

Make more soup, stews and casseroles with the meat. It will go further. Plus you can cook these in quantities and freeze them for 'fast' food later on in the week/month. You will save money and time and still eat better and stay full.

That sucks...I've been on my own since 17 and have been astounded at the rising cost of groceries.

Sounds like when we found a bunch of old newspapers and the food sale prices were.....well more than reasonable by todays prices

I know. That is just how things are going and we must adapt. Start couponing here and there. I make that into a game and have fun. Start a small garden or container garden. Get a fishing license and hit the local lakes/rivers. Like minded friends can be made then and techniques can be shared. Even though things around us are getting crappy doesn't mean our life has to. Simplifying can be a good thing and can make us more resilient and tougher and even more apt to help out one another. Something TPTB may not like.LOL

The cool trick established when Greenspan was still head of the Federal Reserve is called "hedonics". The way it works the increase in your fish prices will never show up on the inflation count. Here's how they do it.

Say fish is stable one month, no price increase. But Chicked goes up 15%. Hedonics is a rule they use in this new inflation accounting that says that any time you can substitute the higher priced food or other item - this isn't just food - the increase shall be ignored. The accountant assumes you substituted fish for chicken to avoid the price in crease of 15%.

Next month, the chicken has gone up from 1.00 to 1.15 but doesn't go up any more. This month the fish goes up 10%. Well, now the accountant assumes you substituted the chicken for the fish so the inflation rate is still 0% - for meat/protein for BOTH MONTHS. But the items cost 15 and 10% more.

Works for them, not for us. Just thought you'd all like to know why the actual increases we see aren't showing up in the numbers. They have other tricks, too, like never counting the cost of government tax increases, etc.

Works for them. for a while.

Last Edited by Crazy Harriet on 10/15/2012 12:57 PM

In the early 70's I could get 4 loaves of bread for $1.00 dollar.
A gallon of milk - delivered to my doorstep - $1.25

A weeks worth of groceries for me was never more than $40-$50

I went to the store yesterday and two bags of groceries was $60.00 I purchased nothing fancy just staples: Hamburger, bacon, eggs, lemons, rice, potatoes and cat food.

I can not imagine what it cost to feed a family and it only going to get worse.

I am so glad I had a garden this year - 12 quarts of tomato sauce, 8 large cabbages, 5 pounds of cauliflower and Brussels sprouts (both still growing), several large pumpkin pie pumpkins, a bushel of Green bell peppers and a couple hundred cayenne and habenaro peppers on a 60 x 40ft plot land --- well worth the effort!

Around my house we've began to eat more staple type foods like beans and rice. I've actually been pushing it as a way to get the family used to the kind of food that we stockpile and that I expect we'll be forced to eat soon.

Right now we can still feed ourselves on $5-$12 a day (depending on what we eat of course) very comfortably, but I expect soon we'll not be able to eat anything but oatmeal, beans, rice, powdered potatoes, rice, and bread for less than $5-$10 a day.

You had a receipt from 23 years ago? lol I thought I was bad. My closets are like time capsules.

I live in the US and in my town that I live they will not allow any big box stores..so we have one grocery store that charges out the ass for everything..and their stuff sucks. If I want to get cheaper I have to drive over an hour for a WM or Target or any decent grocery store..Otherwise I get to pay overpriced for stuff as if I live in Canada or something.

It is a global scam to murder people

Op, what percentage has your income varied over 8 years?

You're joking right?

^
This^

My ten year old keeps asking me to make another 'surprise rice' dish that I whipped up two weeks ago from leftover rice, frozen pigeon peas, and 2 leftover chicken thighs topped with leftover mozzarella. She doesn't realize that wasn't planned beforehand! That surprise rice pot fed seven...and some even had seconds!

SO yeah, these increasing food prices are all too real, but what really bothers me is that, in this same 8 year period, my 'cost of living' raises have equaled a little more than $2 an hour. So let me get this straight, the cost of food and pretty much everything else has more than doubled in the last 8 years, yet pay rates have gone up less than 10%. How is this supposed to work? And is inflation not supposed to be reflected in the whole money system, and not just how much things cost?? Inflation is the devaluation of money, correct? So why did my pay not double in this amount of time?

prices doubled for sure.
add much higher costs for energy and gas.

but it's ok since the wages tripled [/sarc]. LOLwut

Another way they trick you is to put less of an item in the can/box now at the same or more price. I used a yr or two old recipe the other day and went to get my 10 oz can of crescent rolls that I always use...just to find out that now it is only 8 oz can. So am hoping the recipe turns out ok..but seriously this is f'd up.

Geez, some people need to start learning how to cook and eat cheaper! Make your own freakin' soup out of fresh ingredients - have you ever checked the sodium level on a can of Campbell's soup?! Not to mention all the other chemicals they add.

Packs of bacon are extremely expensive and hard to find the 16 oz pack, now they are almost all 12 oz.

well, your earnings should have gone up in comparison.

Oh, this is going on all across the board. I get these healthy energy bars from the health food store (not the supermarket junk ones). The bar used to fill up the wrapper. Now when I buy them, you can shake the wrapper and the bar will slide back and forth inside... because it's SMALLER! They kept the same size wrapper and made the bar smaller and it's so obvious because it movess around in the package with all the extra room!!!

Why? Incremental devaluation of the "dollar" or more properly, the Federal Reserve Note.

Just like gasoline. Hell, the price hasn't gone up since the 1970s!...it's gone down! Back when I first started driving, gas was around 35-cents/gallon. As Ron Paul pointed out in one of the debates, the price is now around 10-cents/gallon!

Why? Because a 90% silver dime was worth at the time around $3.50 in Federal Reserve Notes!...and worth more today. Even today, if you can find an informed gas station owner, he/she would probably be quite happy to get a pre-1964 dime for each gallon. It would be more "money" than 3.50 of FRNs is.

Henry Ford was right....as long as the people don't fully understand money, they'll be fleeced forever....not exactly what he said, but still.....

Im a chef and see the prices our Restaurant pays. Its close to double across the board on everything over the last 4 years.

I occasionally buy chicken wings. They have doubled in the last 3 years.

Chicken thighs which i highly recommend as a delicious and cheap cut of chicken, are even starting to go up.

Heads up to seniors on social security. We are set to get the smallest cost of living increase in 40 years. Even though prices are through the roof. So keeping up with cost looks rough for 2013.

Yea its sneaky and discouraging. And NO my wages have not went up to compensate..as another poster suggested. LOL that would be nice though.