Rising food prices

[Kansas1960]

This week I have purchcased

Peter Pan Peanut butter .99
Milk 1 gal 2% 1.92
Butter 4 stickes 1.38


Recently
Suave shampoo .49 boutht 30
Maxwell house coffe 2.99 (big can) bouth 25

Hamburger .99 per pound boutht 65 lbs

shop sales and buy as much as you can that won't spoil. Don't take a list of preplanned meals, buy what is on sale and make a meal out of that.

Soon there will be Thanksgiving sales sold cheap. Stock up!

[nc73]

This week I have purchcased

Peter Pan Peanut butter .99
Milk 1 gal 2% 1.92
Butter 4 stickes 1.38


Recently
Suave shampoo .49 boutht 30
Maxwell house coffe 2.99 (big can) bouth 25

Hamburger .99 per pound boutht 65 lbs

shop sales and buy as much as you can that won't spoil. Don't take a list of preplanned meals, buy what is on sale and make a meal out of that.

Soon there will be Thanksgiving sales sold cheap. Stock up!

Sheet that's alot of coffee and burger.

[Blueboy]

My tip for meats is to start hunting and fishing. My freezer is full after deer season and I keep bass and catfish on hand year round.

Venison is "Good Eats"!

[BigJohn]

I have bought a few $.40 a pound Turkeys. Will they get cheaper?

Rice is coming down in price but still high.

Watermelons at one store for $.15 a pound.

If it is on super sale, I probably buy it.

[momisery]

I have found that the food prices in the Ozarks in Missouri are really high. We have been here for two years and last year went to visit family out west. The prices in the grocery stores where so much lower even on meat and dairy. And the produce here is horrible most of the time. I have also found there is less competition. For example in the mall here, the one and only, lol... the prices are higher because they do not have the great 70% off sales of larger areas to sell of volumes of clothes. They will put items on 70%, but they have limited stock. We had heard it was cheaper to live here even when you chose the cost of living sites to determine where is a good place to live it show this area as being cheaper to live in than say AZ. But I have found this to be not true. We pay personal property tax on our cars instead of a car tag that is costly and we pay for an inspection here too. Our home insurance is much more costly and car insurance is not cheap really either. The housing was cheaper, but the healthcare insurance is 80/20 with large deducatble and this area is OWNED by BCBS so you have not choices. So, I guess it might be cheaper if you like junk food, drive and old car without insurance, and don't pay for your own healthcare. I have lived in CA,AZ,IL,WI,SC,IA, GA, and now MO. The most expensive places to live for the working class ended up being both small town areas in SC and MO. I did not think that would be true. In fact I have been asking people who have moved here from FL, or AR just out of the area places and they all agree. The guy I spoke to the other day said that in FL he was making 18.00 per hour and his wife was making 70,000.00 per year in healthcare. Now he is making 10.00 and she is making 10..00 and being in their 50's the healthcare is not affordable at all. They have been here for 3 years and are selling out to move back to FL. He says the housing down there now is cheaper, so he is getting in now and working a low wage job like they do here. Food I think has gone up, but I have also notice they are different from state to state and store to store. Here one store sells something for 2.58 the other 4.25 on the same day? And the same is true of resturants.. mcd's here has one that charges 40 cents less for a sausage mcmuffin and it is in a smaller town about 7 miles out side of the larger one. They also recently got a chain mexican place and it charges 1.00 more for a lunch item? The taxes and land prices are higher in the larger area, but they are cheaper to buy at? Seems so strange to me. My concern is gas prices this winter...

[BigJohn]

Gas prices are a concern for us also.

I hope heating oil doesn't go up for the Northern folks. I don't know how some of them did it the last time round.

[momisery]

Wow... our turkey is 99 cents a pound with a grocery purchase.. i wanna move.. lol

[nc73]

Gas prices are a concern for us also.

I hope heating oil doesn't go up for the Northern folks. I don't know how some of them did it the last time round.

Wear lots of clothes? That's what we have to do. I refuse to fill my propane tank up all the way which costs me 900 dollars since I won't be here that much longer. 900 will last 3 months if we use like it was intended. We are just using electric space heaters until we are outta here.

[momisery]

We buy bulk meat at Sams and then cut the pieces down and freeze them. We also look for the specials at the local store. We cook on the grill all year long and use fresh veggies or salad ... sometimes we will use box stuff when prices are too high. I have learned to fill in with high grain bread, I eat that pretty well, and hubby can have more of the meat that I don't need. I am not a big person, so I eat less it is that simple. I do spend money on my hair products, but they are not salon items, just upper end drug store stuff because my hair is long and in good condition and I have no desire to cut it and then pay a beauty shop. I cut my own bangs and trim the ends that is it!! I don't do my nails, just file them and do my own toe nails too.. but I always have so I guess I am not saving more.. just still saving. lol I will post the food cost once I get home and get a bill.

[Kansas1960]

What part of the Ozarks do you live?

I have found Spingfield/Joplin area cheap and near the Lake (ie. Laurie Mo) to have very reasonalble food and gas prices. Just curious what part of the Ozarks you live.

[BigJohn]

Wow... our turkey is 99 cents a pound with a grocery purchase.. i wanna move.. lol

Our local Walmart has Turkeys for $.40 a pound. A different store has pork roast for $.99.

We have bought hotdogs as cheap as $.39. They were 7 ounce packages.

I plan on cooking a turkey this Sunday and it should last the whole week.

[momisery]

That is where I live. Milk one half gallon is 2.02. Farmland bacon on sale 3.99. Bush Beans 1.78 can, Pepto Bismol tablets small bottle 3.79. Small Squash 1.00. and the sale of the day was Tbone Steak 8.63 for a small one. Family pack of ground beef which was 4 pounds 11.81 on sale. The wages here are about 11,000 under the national median per the GOVT website. The gas isn't too bad compare to CA of course. But smaller areas have fewer places to compete with each other. The McDonalds in Republic charges 3.90 with tax for one Sausage and egg sandwich, that is horrible. My biggest complaint is the healthcare. BCBS is big in this area and about all there is available thru employment. I pay 240.00 for coverage for hubby and I plus another 30.00 for drugs my plan went up in October. That is for the best standard PPO I can buy at work and it has a deductable this year of 550/1100 with a total out of the pocket of 4100/9200 I think this year. So, pretty much you can plan on putting out a lot of cash if anything goes wrong plus what you pay every month. I have been here for two years from GA. In GA I had and HMO for 52.00 per month and co-pays of 20.00 for the DR and 10.00 for meds. When you consider the cost of goods for necessities and the horrible wages it is not a cheap place to live. A DR visit cost more than it did in GA or CA or AZ for that matter and the DR's here make just as much as they do out west. My point is if you paid so much less, and commerical or homes are so much cheaper how come prices are not so much cheaper too? If our hospitals were cheaper people would flock in to use the cheaper care, but it is not. many people I have spoken to who have moved here in the past 3 years agree with me, the story about it being cheaper to live here is not true if you base it on the necessities in life.

[Blueboy]

My biggest complaint is the healthcare. BCBS is big in this area and about all there is available thru employment. I pay 240.00 for coverage for hubby and I plus another 30.00 for drugs my plan went up in October. That is for the best standard PPO I can buy at work and it has a deductable this year of 550/1100 with a total out of the pocket of 4100/9200 I think this year. So, pretty much you can plan on putting out a lot of cash if anything goes wrong plus what you pay every month.

Momisery I'm sorry but I had to laugh out loud when I read your complaint about your insurance cost. Sometimes we don't know how good things really are.

My insurance for me and my wife cost over $1400/month with $3000 deductible. It is with BCBS and I thank God every day for having insurance with them.

You see in Dec '08 I was diagnosed with liver cancer and had to have a transplant in Jan '09. When we sat down with the hospital to go over projected charges, which were well over $350k, we told them we had BCBS and the guy closed his notebook and said "Great, you won't have any problems. He told us that most people have to have fund raisers and such in order to be approved for the transplant. (Wouldn't that be fun while you know you're dieing?) he said BCBS doesn't attempt to find loopholes to keep from paying" never once through this journey have we had a single issue with them paying their part. They actually called my wife a couple of days after the surgery just to say that if we needed anything let them know and gave a contact who would handle our case. Our policy has a "out of pocket" max of 4100/9200 also.

I will have to take medicine that cost over $2500/month for the rest of my life and the new years monthly premium cost are going up only $100/month. This doesn't even cover the medicine cost.

Like fools we went through savings and retirement funds to pay cc and now that all funds are gone cc are calling 20 times per day. They have jacked up interest rates to 29.99% and also raised late fees, I just wish the cc companys were 1/10th as understanding and cooperative as BCBS and we might not be preparing to file BK. Life has absolutely changed, but I'm still here.

But I digress, turkeys here in western SC are $0.49/lb.

[Snickers]

That is where I live. Milk one half gallon is 2.02.

Goodness, that is really high for milk! I'm in Maryland and it is normally around $1.79, cheaper when on sale.

[momisery]

The insurance is thru my employer. My job pays 14.90 per hour and in GA I was making 50,000.00 per year. Hubby is laid off so times are a bit bad, but we are eating. When I first started working in 1968 I made min. wage and my insurance was covered 80,20 plus I had a full company pension. Today, no pension, my insurance is an 80/20 PPO and it cost my employer too... My point is the cost is crazy, and my point is also that in GA we had an HMO that was much cheaper and little out of pocket. We should all have better insurance.