Seven Unconventional Ways to Fight High Grocery Prices
Author: Nick
Category: Money
Topics: economy, food, frugality
It all started a couple of weeks ago when I noticed a package of boneless chicken breasts at the grocery store that cost $9 a pound. Nine dollars for one pound of chicken—the slowest, stupidest, least tasty of all grocery-quality animals. I could get some real breasts for less than that. Fortunately there were some chicken nuggets in the next aisle on sale for $2.50 a pound, so those yearning for their chix fix would not have to go home hungry.
Unfortunately this was only the first of outrageous grocery store surprises that would greet us on that trip. Most produce items had increased in price by 20% since last year, milk won the race against gasoline to $4 a gallon, and even ramen noodles had gone up in price to 12 cents a package instead of 10. Even filthy rich people are not immune to these increases; fancy-food retailer Whole Foods recently announced that, in an effort to avoid raising its prices, it will now be known as Three-Quarters Foods.
If you’re feeling the pinch in your pocket book when you purchase your products at the supermarket, you’re certainly not alone. And if buying the necessities of life are keeping you from being able to afford your skyrocketing mortgage or raging alcohol addiction, here are some steps you can take to take back your grocery stores from high prices.
- Go on a diet. Statistically speaking, there is a good chance you are a fat tub o’ lard. (My apologies to the skinny bitches out there.) Take a close look at your diet and determine if you really need those 900 calories worth of potato chips you eat every day.
- Grow everything yourself. It’s not as hard as you think to be self-sufficient with just a little hard work, some packets of seeds, and 12 acres of rich farmland. And lucky for you, 12 acres of prime farmland in your town can be had for just $3.7 million. Kiss expensive groceries goodbye!
- Look at another store. I know a couple of people who haven’t been to more than one grocery store or supermarket in the last decade. In fact, my wife’s aunt has been going to the same corner grocery store for the last 32 years for all of her food and household needs, even after it became a post office in 1997. You might find that another store has the products you typically by for a little less than your usual place.
- Consider alternatives. Don’t just limit yourself to substituting fresh and wholesome chicken for processed chicken nuggets. Love milk but can’t afford $4 a gallon? Buy powdered milk by the boxful—enough for gallons and gallons of a milk-like entity—for pennies on the dollar. The possibilities are endless; of course, so are the price increases, so you’ll eventually have to substitute everything you like to eat with whatever you find in the day-old section of the bakery.
- Try online grocery shopping. One of the best parts of online grocery shopping is that it opens you up to a whole new world of deals and discounts that aren’t available in store. You’ll also find it can take half the time of in-store shopping without sacrificing quality.
- Cut out the middle man. If only you could buy your apples, bread, and dead cow parts directly from the farmer instead of having to pay extra for the supermarket middle man. Well, you can—just swing by your local farmers’ market where you can find some of the best produce and other all-natural food items, often for a good deal less than you’ll pay in a store.
- Join the shoplifting revolution! Okay, hear me out. If everyone starts shoplifting cartloads of groceries, supermarkets will have no choice but to drop their prices. Sure, some might call it looting, but I prefer the more modern term democratic price correction.
Yay! Now you can afford to eat again. Sadly, thanks to the high price of fuel, you can’t afford to drive to the grocery store anymore. But it doesn’t matter anyway because truckers can’t afford to deliver inventories to the stores. That $3.7 million for 12 acres doesn’t sound so bad now, does it?
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26 Responses »
1.
paidtwice
April 7th, 2008 at 8:06 am
Powdered milk is surprisingly expensive actually
2.
Kyle
April 7th, 2008 at 9:53 am
My grocery bill is only about $60 per month and I eat nothing but healthy, fresh food i.e. nothing that comes frozen or in a box. I really don’t see prices going up all that much. Of course, I also don’t eat much meat at home, but that helps keep me from being a big tub ‘o lard.
3.
s. jennifer rose
April 7th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
@Kyle-
But please feel free to share an tips others might be able to implement!
Where do you live? I want to know how to eat for $60 a month! I don’t eat any meat and eat healthy fresh food as well. On a super thrifty month I spend ~$120 on all food expenditures. I might have 2 things against me — (1) I live in a very expensive area and (2) I have an incredibly fast metabolism and am a performance athlete so I eat a lot.
4.
rstlne
April 7th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
No, shoplifting does one of two things:
1. It makes the store raise prices in an attempt to recoup theft losses.
2. It makes the store go out of business, which is the same as #1 because with less competition, the remaining stores can raise their prices.
The shoplifter benefits (until he gets caught, of course) but the rest of us who play by the rules lose.
5.
teleolurian
April 7th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Take up smoking. Packs of cigarettes used as appetite suppressants are finally cheaper than the food they replace.
6.
Kyle
April 7th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
s. jennifer, I live in Atlanta which has a pretty low cost of living considering the size. To be fair, I left out the cost eating out, but I eat the vast majority of my meals at home. I shop at the farmers market, which is a LOT cheaper than the super market. I wouldn’t say I’m a high-performance athlete, but I run at least 2 or 3 half-marathons a year and plenty of 5 and 10k’s so I run 3 or 4 days a week and have to eat 3000 calories or so per day just to keep from shriveling into nothing. I just keep it simple. Nothing that comes frozen or in a box for the most part. Lots of fruits, veggies, and whole grains. Whole-grain pasta is pretty filling. Anything with protein is filling. My lunch today was 2 peanut butter and banana sandwiches, which cost maybe $1 at the most. Probably less.
7.
Certificate of Deposit Rates
April 7th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
I bet none of you want my food bill. I have six children, two are teenagers. $1200 – $1400 a month. Unfortunately life’s busyness makes boxed things more attractive for time, but much more expensive. We try to to keep our extra trips to a minimum and do shop around for discount items.
8.
s. jennifer rose
April 7th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
thanks for following up kyle! I guess I will chalk up the difference to living in an expensive area, since it looks like we eat similarly (no frozen meals, whole grain foods, etc) and you are pretty active. It just boggles my mind that you can eat 3000 calories most days for so cheap! I need to move!
9.
Sairah
April 8th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
HAHA…I gotta say, “democratic price correction” sounds much softer. Has a nice ring to it. Very Uncle Sam-esque.
10.
Ankit
April 9th, 2008 at 1:25 am
Seriously a big problem .. we have to live on bear and smoke now !!
11.
Mrs.ThePoint
April 9th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Can’t agree more with the 12 acre thing.
Unfortunately I don’t have a garden otherwise I am totally into it.
Great cartoon, very funny.
12.
Leslie Raymond
April 10th, 2008 at 3:24 am
Hilarious post — I love some of your “suggestions.” Seriously though, there’s several bloggers in the finance blogsphere who are all noting the rising cost of groceries. Everything that has to be driven somewhere is going to cost more because of the price of gas.
Love your cartoons, love your blog! Thanks for the laughs, and I’ll go back to clipping my coupons to feed the bottomless pit that is my family of four, plus two furballs.
13.
Judy
April 11th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
“slowest, stupidest… of all animals” ? Least tasty? Well, that last one is a matter of personal taste, but I would think that you, Nick, must be the slowest and stupidest animal in the grocery store, or else you would know that chickens are actually very smart and well-adapted animals. That kind of thinking is the reason why poultry farming is among the cruelest of all meat production practices. I don’t eat poultry for that reason alone, but if poultry farmers would start raising them with respect to their intelligence and capacity for suffering, I would gladly pay $18 dollars a pound. Before you go shooting your mouth off, ask somebody who actually keeps chickens how smart and amazing they are.
14.
Mark
April 12th, 2008 at 12:16 am
Ow. Judy,Judy. Did we get up on the wrong side of the Chicken Coop? Cut the guy some slack. Humor sometimes comes at a cost. This time it cost the poor chickens. I enjoyed the post. Do you have an email option to sign up? I’m justa asking?
15.
Money Advice
April 12th, 2008 at 4:02 am
“Grow everything yourself” looks really funny and i am sure in the days to come this can be a reality.
16.
How to Invest
April 13th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
My personal way to fight the high grocery prices and the weight gain problem is simply to eat less lol. I actually started counting how many calories I was eating in a day – 2500!!! This is extremely high for my almost 100% sedentary lifestyle. My new goal is to keep it under 2000 which should keep the grocery bill down!
17.
Wade Young
April 14th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Join a coop. I will pay $350 for fresh vegetables for the 2008 growing season, starting in May and going for 18 weeks. That’s $20 per week for fresh vegetables, straight out of the ground.
18.
Aslansmom
April 17th, 2008 at 10:18 am
Wow Judy! You really seem to have an issue with someone poking fun at chickens….And having worked in the poultry industry, in the quality assurance department for a major poultry producer (not to mention being two credits shy of a poultry minor in college), I can tell you that chickens are really not that bright. In terms of “capacity for suffering,” every living creature (of the animal variety, not plants) has a capacity for pain – suffering being distinguished from pain in the there is generally an underlying knowledge of the pain that is to come….and I can assure you, chickens just ain’t that damn smart! Don’t confuse training with intelligence (Pavlov’s dogs come to mind) and don’t give credit where it isn’t due. Chickens are simple animals with no understanding of the past or the future, much less their “fate”….just like any other animal, besides humans. If you object so violently to the poultry industry, I would love to know what your feelings are on the beef cattle and pork industry, not to mention the dairy industry…..BTW, great post Nick! Very Jonathan Swift-like. Dig the sarcasm!!
19.
Mack13
April 17th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
I really like the joke on shoplifting and it’s true we are a fat
nation that needs to eat less anyway.
20.
bonnie
April 18th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
omg i was perusing articles regarding money saving and landed here… thanx judy and Aslansmom and mark for a great laugh this am. Although i dont have my minor in poultry yet ..ahem ..um i’m considering getting it b/c chickens do have so much to contribute to our evolving society with their infinite wit and wisdom. funny as a child i had to collect eggs from our squalid henhouse and i just never realized how brilliant they were. for shame.. well anyway …. my two cents on how to save on groceries is this: really scrutinize your diet … most people in this obese country are “hungry” b/c they are dehydrated for one and they eat nothing with nutritional value…no pop tarts really arent the new “superfood” … so if you actually ate a real fresh fruit , veggie and /or whole grain more often with some h2o .. believe it or not your fat asses wouldnt be so “hungry” –translation: no vitamins , minerals etc and your body is hungry .. so put your Twinkies down and oh btw ….quit being suckers for all the marketing of fast food and going out to dinner ….(they are in it for the money, they are not your mothers concerned with your health and well-being, and nutritional needs being met) .. its not all that and guess what … all of a sudden your money woes related to food have subsided… duh. …
21.
Maria @ Financial-Tip
April 19th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
This is hilarious. To the poster who said chickens are “very smart”: you are wrong. Chickens are not “very smart”; in fact, most American people are not “very smart.” If you meant that chickens are very smart for being a dumb bird, please clarify. I have raised chickens and by the way, their entire brain is about the size of a pea.
It’s all about local food sources, people. And seriously, grow your own. If you have a typical suburban lot, turn your front lawn into an edible garden. Who cares what the neighbors think? You have a family to feed.
22.
Soxmom
April 28th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
I had a chicken. She followed me around like a dog. She was cute. Then a fox ate her. If she was so damn smart how did a fox eat her?
I grow veggies in terra cotta pots in my backyard. Maybe I should get a chicken and a cow.
I like the idea of taking up smoking to eat less. If the cigarettes could get delivered so I didn’t have to drive to get them… and I didn’t have to pay so much for health insurance when my lungs start falling out…
23.
Jerry Dill
July 7th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Democratic price correction is pretty funny. We should set up a national looting day. I feel like I need to break the law every now and then to get out of my everyday routine.
24.
Diet Blog
May 12th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Hilarious article! “Sure, some might call it looting, but I prefer the more modern term democratic price correction.” Brilliant! But in all seriousness, this is getting ridiculous. Good tips to combat rising prices.
25.
Raising Chickens
May 14th, 2009 at 8:58 am
It’s not that hard to raise some chickens (eggs and/or meat) and goats (milk and/or meat) yourself. You can also do the Square Foot Gardening to maximize your vegetable production.
And you don’t need 12 acres. 5 will do nicely. Check out the book “Five Acres and Independence”
26.
Jonas
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:17 am
maybe you can go vegan… It’s a saving money tricks for me…
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