The Worst Inflation Example I've Found Yet
Of all of the grocery store inflation examples I've shared in the last 6 months, this week we might have the worst one yet. And it's delicious.
I made a little trip to the old Costco this week. Nothing crazy. I just needed a reup of a handful of our essentials. I walked out of there with 11 items total. Spent a cool $142.51 on that total bill. While it's generally impossible to get out of Costco without spending triple figures, $142 seemed like a lot. So, I did what any cranky old man would do; I went to my receipts folder and fired up the spreadsheet to do some calculations. I won't share every single item that I purchased because some of them (Sam Adams Seasonal pack $29.99) are not regular purchases. I swear I'm only sharing the 6 items that are purchased on a regular basis in the Faybomb house. Let's get started!
Wowzers. String cheese aside, all of this inflation is awful. Obviously the stand out here though is the coffee. Now, assuming I just buy one of each item on this list, when I average our full bill, our true rate of inflation is 14.3%.
Ready for the twist?
This isn't year over year inflation. This is since APRIL. Unfortunately, I don't think that we're done yet. Certainly not in some of these items. Check out this monthly chart of coffee futures.
Coffee is up 69% since the closing price in April. While that might make it seem as though I got a good deal on my Costco coffee, the reality is the increase probably hasn't made it's way to consumers yet. While Coffee as a commodity is very much overbought technically, it can stay overbought for a long time if demand remains high and supply can't service that demand. Oh and that whole currency out of thin air policy probably has an impact on commodity prices too. So, there it is. More inflation. There's nothing the Fed can do about this because the central bank is arguably the biggest reason for it. All you can do is prepare as best you can. That means stocking up on essentials before the 30% inflation rate.
Yowza! You might want to check out Thrive Market (https://thrivemarket.com/). The Thrive brand organic coffee has only gone up a smidgeon, and you can get a discount if you do autoship (which you can easily modify/cancel later if desired).
I’m going to try this. I also have a Whole Foods receipt from 2018 in my daughter’s baby book. Will report back.
I feel like I’m getting poorer and poorer