Beef. 7dollars a lb for ground beef is silly. God help you if you want a nice steak or a brisket.
LEGO. I’m going with other brands now, like Bluebrixx. They are like a third of the price.
I refuse to pump my car tyres from petrol stations anymore because all the ones in my local area have started charging exorbitant prices. It always used to be free with petrol, then a few years ago it became 20p, but now it’s randomly shot up to £1.50. WHY??
You can buy devices that pump your car tyres up for you too. They tend not to last very long, so they’re not exactly “one time” purchases, but they’re far more cost effective than doing it at stations nowadays.!
I stopped smoking thirty years ago partly because cigarettes were $7 a pack and that’s just ridiculous. Now the same size pack is over $50 (Australia)
So story time.
I smoked in high school and early college and quit before I graduated.
I then joined the Army and went overseas and did not restart smoking. So I oblivious to the cost of cigarettes.
I came back to the states and the first time I bought cigarettes since early college was for my brother around 2001/2002. He was broke and came over for Thanksgiving so decided to get him a carton of cigarets as he was out.
I was floored. A pack of cigarets was 10 bucks a carton cost 100 dollars. 10 bucks a pack.
Cigarettes (and to some extent alcohol) are one thing I think should be very heavily taxed, and therefore very expensive. The high prices are intended to encourage people to quit smoking, and more importantly, discourage people from getting addicted in the first place. Heck, a handful of countries are finally starting to ban cigarettes altogether for people born after a certain year. This is good.
I know I’m speaking from a point of “privilege”, I’ve never smoked in my life and never been addicted to any substance. I know it’s just not feasible for some people to quit, and for them, the high prices really suck. But on a society level, I still think it’s better if cigarettes are expensive enough to remind you you should quit every time you buy them.
Nah, because then you have the situation Australia has now which is that the financial incentive to bring in illegal cigarettes and sell them which creates organised crime groups who keep firebombing each others shit.
The US has the importation issue on a smaller scale because the tax on cigarettes varies between cities and states. Crooks will drive box trucks full of cigarettes from Virginia (which has the second lowest tax on them) to New York City (which has the highest).
A form has to be filled out above a certain number of packs so they’ll buy just below that amount at different locations to avoid having the purchases recorded by the state.
Yeah much of the cost of cigarettes is the deterring tax and I agree wth you on using them. Smoking is terrible and one of the best things I ever did for myself is quit smoking them.
I don’t know if there are similar taxes on other tobacco products.
That is what is so disheartening about all the vaping. In this that we had cigarettes and smoking beat. The numbers were going down and then vaping came along and everyone thought/thinks it is safe and now smoking is everywhere again.
I agree that tobacco products should be heavily taxed, but should cigarettes be banned outright? I’m not sure banning is the right way to go, I mean just look at what the prohibition of alcohol back then did. A thriving, unregulated black market. People should be able to buy cigarettes, that way they can be sure of what it is they are smoking.
Just my opinion tho.
Taxing cigarettes without proper redistribution is tricky because taxing cigarettes is also technically taxing poor people since they are the majority of smokers.
If the goal was to prevent people smoking, just put it behind a prescription or something. That way the people who cannot quit smoking, which is a very strong medical addiction, can still exist without paying exorbitant costs. But there’s still a deterrent for anyone to start smoking, and it changes public perception of the habit. You also have to convince a doctor to give you the script, which any good doctor will not prescribe cigarettes to a 16 year old who never smoked before.
This “sin tax” bullshit can fuck off. It doesn’t actually work or help anyone, as evidenced by the tobacco industry still being obscenely lucrative. Most people I know who used to smoke, still smoke. It’s not something you can stop just because it gets expensive, that’s not how addiction works.
If the focus was actually on public health, there are many better options, I’ve only listed one possible alternative. The true goal is and always will be money. The government makes a shit load of sin tax dollars, and the tobacco industry has a captured and addicted market so they don’t really care what the final price is.
I the mid-90’s I could get a carton of Camels at the reservation for $14.25. Last time I went (around 2004) a carton was $125. I quit smoking long enough ago that I have to assume the price now is somewhere in the $300 range.
It blows my mind.
I figure I quit smoking around 1990. I am not sure what I was paying for a pack, but the number that keeps popping up in my head is 4:25USD.
I smoked Camels filtered and Marlboro Reds.
I was shocked by how much the price had jumped.
I figure I quit smoking around 1990. I am not sure what I was paying for a pack, but the number that keeps popping up in my head is 4:25USD.
I remember cigs being about $2.25 my first years of smoking from '93 in southern California. I used to be able to steal quarters from my brother’s jar to buy a pack.
Yeah I can’t remember the exact number but it sure wasn’t 10 bucks.
I stopped 20 years ago… I smoked ~3 packs per week and the cost was less than 10$ (Canada), when it was more than that, I stopped. It is now 20$ for ONE pack.
Left Australia a decade ago, so I’m curious what the price of vapes/e-cigarettes are.
I assumed all the smokers would move on to them because that’s what tobacco companies are pushing these days.
No idea, sorry, as I’m not in the market. I have a vague memory that vapes are now only available on prescription.
Soda. Wtf are they even thinking at this point. Hell, I ran into a Dollar General to get carbonated water the other day and the only product they had was $9. For carbonated. Water. GTFO
soda is overpriced everywhere, people also stopped drinking them for the most part. i think some places have added tax too. i mostly drink sparkling water with flavours, of different brands. i usually dont mind stevia infused ones much. even in discount stores they are expensive asf. sparkling water is cheap compared to soda, like most of the time its half the price.
Sparkling water with flavours is soda with a different name, friend. And it used to cost less around me, but now it’s the same price as any other soda. We don’t have a special soda tax here.
Haha what, 1.5 L of store brand soda water is roughly 30 US cents here, and I live in an expensive country.
huh, i but carbonated water for like 50 cents a liter at the regular grocery store, and that’s not even the cheap shit.
Dollar stores are just large convenience stores. Very few products are cheaper than an actual grocery store.
A lot of items are more expensive per unit.
Like a roll of aluminium foin is half price at the dollar store, but only has 1/3 the foil.
its shrinkflationed to maximize the cost. and then larger chains started doing ti to. like with carbonated drinks 8pk vs 12pk, and fruit, energy, protein bars. 5 vs original 6-8. same goes with alot of toothpastes too. og is 8.2 to 5.4, and 5.1 to 4.6, and finally 4.3. i noticed that with foils too at the discount(grocery outlet) they used to have wafer thin for 200sqft, removed to 150max.
they play the same trick with TOILET paper too. try to trick people by reducing the ply and keeping the rolls the same, or the amount of paper the same.
target used to have very good instore brand thier up and up, i stopped buying it when they switched to"deal worthy"
That’s the poverty trap. Spend ‘less’ up front but way more over the long term whether we’re talking about aluminum foil or car loans.
Yeah they do seem mostly exploitative, but I don’t have any experience going to them.
They didn’t exist where I grew up even when I was poor. We just went to the regular grocery store and clipped coupons religiously.
They used to be halfway decent, but the line must go up.
They are great for cheap cards though. I only go there when Mother’s Day or someone’s birthday is coming up.
Totally. I will only buy soda when it’s on sale for half off. Otherwise it’s like $1 per can and that’s too damn much.
You can pick up a used ball keg, probs $25-30, a cheap regulator, some tubing and a carbonating cap (you can skip the carbonating cap, which last I looked is some $25, just hook the CO2 line to the dip tube, it’ll take longer to reach carbonation saturation, but it works fine), and a hand faucet for $1 and rent a CO2 tank (last time I filled a 5lb cylinder it was $30 which includes the cylinder) and make gallons of the stuff for decreasing spend.
Upfront cost is moderately high, yes thats true, but the more you use it the less it costs per gallon. And no plastic bottles, no questionable water source, no shipping pollution. You just have on demand carbonated water. If you add fruit puree, you can make “Italian soda”, or you can buy the soda syrup businesses and such use if you want, though you’ll want something in a pump bottle and not a box that hooks to a big system…
One 5lb tank of co2 is enough for 5-10 batches, depending how heavily carbonated you like, and each batch is 5 gallons, assuming a standard 1/8 barrel keg, so the math is pretty appealing if carbonated water is a thing you like.
Yep, I’ve altered a decade old Sodastream to use a 20 lb Co2 canister. This is the way.
Italian what?!!
Please tell me more, I have tried lots of things in carbonated water (lemon or cucumber is good) but never fruit puree!
The way we made it at the place I worked was to puree fruit, then reduce it a bit over heat (no added sugar), then put like 2tbsp or so over ice and topped off with the carbonated water.
So it’ll only really work well with flavors that don’t degrade in heat, but you may also have luck with just straight pureed fruits like watermelon, not super sure how that’d turn out.
You can also use fruit syrups that you buy or make yourself, tons of recipes out there.
You can also get a soda siphon that takes co2 cartridges. I’m sure it’s more expensive but takes less space. Also you can feel all cool and retro.
Those co2 cartridges are like $30 for 20 16-gram charges. I have them for my ukeg (pressurized growler). They keep 2 gallons of beer pressurized and dispense it, but I’d assume they are only enough for about 2 liter to carbonate from still. So roughly 10 gallons for $30 vs 25-50 gallons for about the same price (only considering ongoing CO2 costs) with the keg setup.
So you can, yeah, but it’s substantially more expensive in the long run, and a 5 gallon keg plus everything else really doesn’t take up a lot of space. They are tall and narrow, and you need to put the soda syphon thing somewhere, too, and I assume that’s taking precious counter space, rather than sitting in a dead space corner behind a door, or tucked into a closet or something.
Really it’s just a matter of how much you’ll use. If you don’t go through 5 gallons of carbonated water in a reasonable timeframe, like monthly so you can clean everything out, it doesn’t really pay to make a big batch. You can get a 2.5 gallon keg if you want a smaller batch, but those are tough to source used and are thus pricier (place I’ve bought from before has them for $120, about the same price as a full-size keg of the same brand)
PC parts
my nephew build a pc this winter. he paid like 2K for roughly the same spec that my older nephew built in '23 and paid like $800 for.
only thing that wasn’t a massive price increase was motherboard, case and power supply.
Newegg was bundling other parts with video cards to deter scalping. I got a Sapphire Pulse 9070 XT 16GB and 750W power supply for $630 a few months back. It’s now “on sale” by itself for $790. Months before that it was closer to $500!
The Seagate Exos 20 TB hard drives I paid $350-$400 each for over a year ago are now $793.
It’s absolutely insane.
Yeah, I think the only new part my pc sees between 2025-??? is the case.
You’re lucky to have kinda the opposite of my situation.
I used a second hand office machine with a low power graphics card added, because that came out quite cheap. Until about 2 years ago, when I saw that really good looking cases, with the glass and LEDs and everything, are quite affordable now, got one for 60 bucks, I think.
The problem was that that office machine was not made to be upgradeable. Power supply that delivered pretty much exactly what the current parts needed and no more, with custom connectors to the mainboard.
So I thought ok, I do it in steps, after all that’s the whole point that that’s possible. Start by getting a nice modern bequiet PSU, and finding a more standard motherboard, that fit with my CPU and RAM. In some obscure webshop no less, because stuff is old, I’m working with DDR2 here.
And the plan was that later I would look at upgrading motherboard+CPU+RAM, because I’d have to do those together.
And then the data centers happened.
I’m just lucky that the old machine was a beast for its time - the back then impressive 16GB RAM are still decent now. Battlefield the WW1 one ran fine, that game where you upgrade your jeep was too laggy - gotta be a bit more selective about what I run now, because my upgrade plans are on ice until we storm the data centers.
I want to upgrade, but i can at least comfortably play every game that is out so I can eait.
The assumption is that prices will come down again. I suspect not :(
Prices could come down during the upcoming crash of the economy. Trouble is, that means consumers won’t have money, and billionaires will buy it all up on the cheap.
You mean you just steal everything now?
Legit, yes.
Went to the local hardware store yesterday to pick up some necessary nuts and bolts for building a bicycle trailer (itself being built so I don’t have to spend money on gas as much). And fully half of those nuts and bolts went into my pockets instead of the little bag they give you to go through the checkout. The more expensive half, of course.
Until the Epstein class is behind bars – or better yet, 6ft underground – I will continue to do everything possible to keep my money out of their pockets, which includes stealing things when feasible.
RAM and storage for computers.
Removed by mod
No way I’m wrapping my jingly janglies in something I bought from the dollar store.
So, commando, then?
The recent episode of GB sewing bee had contestants making knickers out of jersey t-shirts they got 3 pairs per t-shirt. Plus some elastic and time of course. But you do also need a sewing machine however its a good machine for life.
It shouldn’t? That sounds quite reasonable … cheap even.
Yeah, $4 a pair for something you wear for hours a day seems pretty reasonable
Why do we even have forced laborers making out clothes in oppressive regimes like Bangladesh if we are going to pay 4 bucks a piece?
Because they’d be ten times the price if they were produced in a country that treats its workers better.
right? i pay like 10 bucks a piece and it’s not fancy stuff.
though it lasts like 3-4 years a pair. i only buy like maybe 2-3 pieces of underwear a year.
You’re finding them for $21? I can’t find all cotton boxers for less than $10/pair
Streaming services of any kind. I’ve got a jellyfin server now that has everything I need.
It was fine when they were $5 a month, but this $20 a month bullshit is insane. And what do you mean I can’t share one account with the family if we’re not on the same network, get real.
I don’t have that problem. I share netflix/HBO with my sister who is across the country with little to no issue.
but we never sub up more than two services at once.
I’m in the US and have to watch a few seconds of something on my phone while connected to the wifi in each location for two houses less than 3 miles apart every single month or it gets signed out of every device at one of the two locations. I only do that ao my daughter can watch shows at two places.
I will most likely cancel this fall after catching up on my backlog. It isn’t the cost that will be the dealbreaker, it is the hassle.
yeah and i have to mfa for my work vpn once a month… that’s pretty standard stuff dude.
you seriously think once a month auth is awful burden you can’t live with?
Yeah, that’s super asinine. Do you remember when the internet worked without seventeen thousand layers of bullshit?
It is an annoyance for a thing that up to a couple years ago required zero effort and at that time the company promoted sharing accounts. Now they are so against sharing that they penalize people who use more than one wifi network.
I’m not even sharing accounts, just watching it in two places. If I could just mfa once at either location to confirm it wouldn’t be so bad. I have to remember to take action in two places and track it so it doesn’t get cut off in the evening at the other place while I’m going to bed and my kiddo is trying to watch a movie.
Also I’m paying for Netflix. Your job is paying you to do that.
yeah the world changes. nothing stays the same. what seemed like a good idea 5-10 years ago seems utterly stupid today. that’s how life works, including business.
I mean, I get it, 1st world problem of mind inconvenience is a moral outrage. But I don’t own two homes, I can’t possible imagine how difficult and awful it must be to have to manage my netflix account across multiple properties…
oh wait, you could just create a vpn and network your two homes so they appear on the same network! wow… almost as if there is a solution to every problem.
I don’t own two homes, what the fuck are you talking about?
My daughter moves back and forth between two homes, like a lot of kids do. You do understand that family situations can be complicated right?
Netflix’s “solution” is to have a second account, but then if she watches something at my place and then at her mom’s it would require signing in and out of Netflix constantly to have access to her personal profile. Netflix tying accounts to wifi networks is stupid and frankly you would fit right in there.
I don’t work for netflix but I do understand a lot about tech and I do very well in my career, yeah.
Because I don’t tolerate entitled requests from users who think their convenience is all that matters. They have to sign into the account everytime they they move locations because it’s a necessary security precaustion and contractually obligated by our insurance.
but right, I’m a dummy and you know better. you know you can just setup your daughters phone with a netflix account and have her stream from the phone to any tv without having to re-auth right?
but hey sorry for trying to help you out, when clearly you didn’t want a solution, you just wanted to be embittered at netflix because how dare you be inconvenienced.
You could just… no longer subscribe to them. but that would be even more inconvenient.
you act like having 2 homes is a normal thing.
Lol meanwhile I have to punch in a code if I want to watch Netflix at work because I’m not on my home network. Somehow Netflix invented landline streaming services.
My family will rotate Steaming services. We sub for a month or two when we wanna see a show or something, then cancel in favor of something else.
yeah, this is the way. i got lectured yesterday buy some weirdo about how doing that is ‘too inconvenient and a massive waste of time’. and then doubled down when I pointed out it takes seconds to do this, and were like ‘it shouldn’t have to take me seconds’. OK buddy… like i guess if you feel you must be subbed to 8 different services at once and forever because you can’t ever cancel or swap, it must be really tough to be you.
yup, which is why the money boys are desperate to make bundles. annual contracts with cancellation fees are in the future. line must go up!
dam thats like 100+$ of streams, its an addiction. good thing im satisfied by all the stuff being uploaded to YT in clips, basically tells you the whole story/seasons anyways.
Do you have any information that could help me understand how to self-host my own music streaming using jellyfin? I’ve been meaning to learn this as I’m over Apple’s last increase.
You bet! If you only need to get it working on your home network then it’s really easy. The Jellyfin website has great documentation on the process and there are also great YouTube videos as well. It’s pretty much download the program and tell it where to look for the files, then visit the localhost link it gives you and bam you’re golden.
If you also want to be able to access it from outside of your home network then things get can get a bit tricky and you will need to set up a reverse proxy of some kind (Caddy, Nginx, Pangolin, etc).
Or tailscale to ease things, really easy to setup, only caveat is that devices that will access the server must also be on the tailscale “network”
Thank you so much! I should have just looked into it myself but it felt daunting as I’m new to it all but really want to own my own data and media again.
If you only want to stream music you might be better off setting up Navidrome. !selfhosted@lemmy.world is a good place to look for advice on this stuff.
Raspberry PIs.
I have a super old model with such old connections it’s not even useful for anything.
I’m going to go on a rant here, but I was disappointed in the launch of the Pi 5 and even more frustrated at the lack of pushback by the tech community.
I’m forgetting the details now, but it launched much later than it was supposed to (they used covid as an excuse, but I’m not sure). That’s not the issue; the issue is that it was only slightly more powerful than the Pi 4.
Given that the Pi 5 was launched 4 years later, it should have been more powerful. But considering it wasn’t, it meant they were using cheaper silicon.
But the real kicker is that I think it had a $10 (like a 25%) price hike.
So more expensive for marginally better power…screw that.
That along with the locked down nature of arm, I was done with the company. Especially considering the strides x86 has made in low power applications.
It just sucks can’t afford anything right now.
I have three that I purchased prior to the insanity.
I might sell one and buy yacht.
I just looked them up, that’s crazy they’re that expensive now.
Beef, almost completely.
i can still get stew meat and sirloin tips for a decent price. but those were never nice cuts anyway. they are only abotu 8-10/lb though still.
i used to get strip streaks sirloin and now those are 20/lb+
I only get steak if it’s close to expiration and marked way down. Ironically it’s better at that point anyway since it’s been aged (as long as you eat it right away). Otherwise I’ll buy top or bottom round and hammer the shit out of it with a tenderizing mallet and flash-seer it; taste is quite good and you let the mallet do the work instead of your teeth.
Beef is price fixed in an illegal trust.
But, also, beef is pretty much the worst meat when it comes to environmental impact of producing it. So it probably should be the most expensive.
Beef is still to cheap IMHO, at least here in Europe.
I do not understand how beef can still be cheaper than chicken or pork, in some places (not basic giga farmed chicken/pork of course)
Red meat in general. Even pork has gotten out of hand.
My family is eating poultry two or three nights per week and entirely vegetarian the rest of the week just to cut spending.
Pork is still decent in my area. The most expensive stuff has gone up but the cheap stuff hasn’t. Beef it’s across the board.
Costco prices still seem reasonable compared to what I’m used to. regular grocery store prices for meat in any form are fucked. the prices they have on tiny hams or pre-packaged sliced meat are fucked.
i haven’t seen much of a price increase in poultry or pork or fish.
i’m still paying like 2-3 dollars per chicken, 5-6 for pork, and 10 for fish. same as it was 5 years ago.
Haven’t reached that point, yet. Would love to have stopped buying new HDDs the other day, but I needed more storage and they won’t be getting cheaper …
nothing.
i have cut back on eating out by 50% , and starting buy less/cheaper cuts of meat. so i’m spending the same pretty much.
other than food i have not really seen much inflation in my expenses.
Rice Cakes (the circular ones)
They’re regularly $3.49 Canadian now… that’s absurd. It has one ingredient, rice. Rice isn’t that expensive, and it doesn’t even use very much of it.
They’re not even difficult to produce, the machine to make them is only a few thousand dollars and I’m seriously considering buying one from South Korea at this point.
There are a couple different round rice cakes, but you can actually make a really good quick rice cake in the microwave relatively easily.
Or
Wrong type of rice cake. Im taking about the puffed kind.
Ahh, yeah those need a machine. I’m sure you could get one, but I don’t know if your neighbors would appreciate it. The ones I’ve seen the vendors use are pretty loud.
