Logics, I agree with what you said about price gouging - come on, it has to be a thing! I also eat very simply and have been able to keep my food budget in line with pre-inflation costs for the most part. Buying markdown items and incorporating them into my menus helps a lot. I also use my Amazon rewards (MTurk) to stock up on bulk pasta, instant potatoes, tomato sauce, etc.LogicsHere wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 4:53 am I listen to some of those vlogs as well, but you can't let what one vlogger says about price increases being astronomical after the new year throw you into a panic . . . no one has a crystal ball with all the answers. All you can do is expect that some will continue to go up and work with what you've got. Personally I think a lot of this so called inflation is the result of price gouging in addition to the effect of COVID and the Federal Bank trying to crush the stock market. When a product goes up 25% or more in a month that's not inflation, that price gouging.
My suggestion would be is to try to make sure you keep as full a pantry as you can because if you run it down it costs far more to replace at one time. Whenever you see something on sale that you eat frequently and that stores well, if you have the money buy some additional.
I keep a full pantry so that when I'm on the verge of running out of chicken I can buy just chicken that month because I have enough of everything else. In my area chicken prices have been coming down. I have one local market that has advertised boneless chicken breasts for $1.79 for the last 2 weeks.
I'm eating spaghetti on average 4 days a month, fitting in pancakes and pastina 2 to 4 times a month and eggs at least twice a month for dinner. I'm also eating soup a couple days a month. Now of course, it's just me so it makes it a bit easier.
Menu planning is also key here and in some ways changing your eating habits.
I dropped my food budget significantly since COVID and have been keeping my food costs under $200 a month. Mackie said the other day she goes through the food ads with a fine tooth comb. So do I, the instant they become available.
I've been using my Chase rewards money towards "free" things from the drugstore as well as the supermarket. I don't like the third party cash payments that Pinecone is using so I recently looked at Amazon and currently use some Pinecone points for Amazon credits. I saw that I can buy a physical VISA or Mastercard. True there is a purchase fee of between $4 and $5 dollars, but right now I have over 20,000 points sitting at PineCone and nothing I want and they don't offer physical gift cards for anything I need.
I've been looking at what I have an how to use it up. One apple left becomes a topping for pancakes for supper, one sad looking orange got juiced and added the juice to my sliced peaches.