Ask Lemmy

I just spent $109 for a Valvoline oil change in the Los Angeles area. I found this old coupon from 2014. Crazy how much it's increased.

Bread. Even bread is too expensive now. Rice has been climbing but is still affordable. For now.

I bought two individual russet potatoes, came to about $5.50. In the past Ive always bought bags of potatoes, but they go bad sometimes before they get eaten, so Ive just been buying individual potatoes lately.

Politicians, they used to be expensive. Now it’s almost downright affordable.

Sounds weird but, chocolate chips.

Oh, and a $70k Toyota Tacoma. $70,000, for a taco. The fuck is Toyota smoking?

Having teeth.

I thought home internet would get cheaper over time...

In Australia, surprisingly and disappointingly, medical appointments. Seeing a specialist for anything is about $500 AUD, after Medicare rebate. So you need to have more than that much liquid cash on the day, and be able to tank the hit.

I still remember being in line behind this mother whose child was clearly extremely unwell mentally. When she heard the price for the psychiatrist appointment she's like, I can't pay that... Let alone 2 or 3 times because psychiatrists never diagnose on the first visit. She had her own (understandable) mental breakdown, and stepped outside to call family to borrow money.

You shouldn't need a payment plan to get antipsychotics. Somehow still cheaper than the scam that is private health insurance though.

Normalizing monopoly.

Lumber. I was planning out a project with teak wood and noped out as soon as I saw the prices.

Already said a lot, but should be said again. Food.

Food, my weekly grocery bill has risen from ~80€ to ~130€ and I've started to limit and reduce snacks. Store is the same, amounts have gotten smaller, only difference is time. Few years ago when the first Lidl(Aldi) was opened and became the closest store to my home. Overall weekly bill never reached to triple digits, nowadays it never stays below that.

And i bloody hate triple digit numbers, my heart weeps every time i need to pay it and think about quitting eating all together.

Generally everything.
Have you seen how much you pay for "nothing special" groceries? $30 and you didn't buy anything.
Couple cuts of meat $6, cheese $4, a loaf of bread $4, a gallon of milk $4, carton of eggs $5, and some random greenery and maybe some sweets $4.

I haven't seen someone say yet but used good. Like garage sales and thrift stores and auctions, everything is hiked up to be almost the same price as if you'd buy it new.

Fast food. I basically can't leave a fast food restaurant without spending over $20 for my family of 4.

Phone service in America. A 1 month sim here in vietnam with a number and 8gb/day costs ~10USD. Its cheaper if you buy longer. Meanwhile Verizon is charging 35-50 dollars a month.

Cow. Ground beef got so expensive. Good for me in the sense that I am eating less red meat, but bad in the sense that meal prep takes longer now.

I stopped buying chips when prices doubled. I stopped buying minced meat and chicken. I only buy eggs and coffee when it's finally discounted. Now frozen vegetables doubled in price. I can't just stop buying things.

Also, came back to Netherlands after a few years. Cigarettes over €10 and €7.50 for a beer wtf

Healthcare

This is going to have an asterisk because I'm in a fairly remote area on vacation. Like, in the Upper Peninsula, not a lot of grocery competition.

But we went to get some food for the week at this grocery store today, and I was staggered by the prices, many of which were crazy out of step with what I'd pay in my home state at a random Walmart or similar chain. The smallest Lucky Charms was over $6; the largest was on sale for $4 and change but only if you had the store loyalty card. If you use the store loyalty card it doesn't auto-discount anything, you have to use the credit card reader to scroll the available coupons and try to pick the ones relevant to your cart.

Normal sized Starbucks whole bean bag was $17. Extra big one was like $27. Of course I bought neither.

Twizzlers in the big bag was two for $8. Fuck off lol.

They extrude corn syrup and artificial flavoring for pennies and will do anything to increase or maintain profit margins as people can less and less afford luxuries like sweet treats with 0 nutritional value. They're going to price us all into diets with their inflexibility and greed.

Cigarettes.

I haven't smoked in almost thirty years, but I remember thensuper discount brand cartons going for $7 back in the late '90s.

It’s been said a lot but food.

Really everything has gone up a lot. It seems like things have gone up a lot more than inflation numbers would tell you.

We’re fortunate that we can absorb it but we have tightened up anyway because I don’t see the raping of our wallets ending.

utility bills, it has gone up because of AI datacenters, and all forms of insurance, health, car,,,,etc looking at parents costs. we have the wierd property tax here, that the state likes to tax on for some reason, and target the actual billionaires.

also the cost of schooling for different grad programs, one grad program in health is under 15k for a state school but highly competitive as a result due to very limited space and schools(like most state schools ever only accept 30ish applicants per semester or year) out of likely hundreds or thousand+ people applying and the industry is a shortage(likely intentional to keep the salary high, much like with MDs licenses) they recent started a "abridged program" which i dont think it solves the problem. while pharm school very expensive yet earns almost the same as the grad program i mentioned and 4 times as long to finish.(1 vs 3/4 years), since everyone wants to come our state the shcools are severely impacted because theres only ever 9 unis that teach this program for CLS.

Apparently getting corrective eye surgery. Not that I ever had the procedure. How could I when I'd be dropping $7000?! I even tried applying for financial assistance, but my application was denied.

Fast food

I'm much healthier as a result

Edit: food is good, good is not food

literally everything. I stopped getting fast food and lottery tickets because they were no longer inconsequential amounts. I mean its not exactly a bad thing for my health and well being but its kinda crazy. Ironically. Relatively speaking. Healthier stuff is cheaper because less and less people can afford it. I even see soda companies desperately trying to raise prices but folks don't have it. Every sale the shelves get cleared because everyone is stocking up to make it to the next sale. when no sale then none of it moves.

Eggs are back to 1.90-2 per dozen, but velveeta slices are $6 and a gallon of milk is $5-6 also

Scallions are still cheap but fish and shrimp, chicken and beef are way up. I cook most of my family's food but if we want Uber Eats it's always like $60-100. We are in Manhattan, but honestly when I visit family in FL or GA it's not much better. Coffee is double what it was 2 years ago.

Gasoline isn't even that expensive. At least, not compared to the 2008 oil crunch when prices got up to a 2026 adjusted $6.30/gal.

Even 2022 saw higher prices, shortly after the COVID supply shock, at north of $5.

Given the percentage of my budget that's gasoline related, I just don't see how it ranks beside the sudden spike in water bills we've been seeing. Or the inflation in rental rates. Unless you're driving an absolute hog of a car, it's just not that much by comparison.