Inflation everywhere?

[briansd1]

I was talking to my auntie about this the other day. She has a vegetable garden and cooks her own food from scratch. Her grocery bill is probably around $150/month.

She was born in 1922 and she’s seen the evolving American diet.

Today, food is a smaller proportion of income than it ever was.

Cut out all the restaurant, packaged, and pre-cooked food and cook your own, and you can save money.

The choices are also much greater. Previously expensive imported “luxury” stuff is now common place and widely available.

People have just gotten lazy over the years and they buy premade stuff (which is expensive, bad for your health, makes you fat, and will kill you early).

[Coronita]

[quote=Hobie]Years ago I bought a small freezer and stocked it with sale price meat for this very reason. Worked great for a while until the wife started buying frozen dinners, hotpockets, etc, “to have on hand for the kids” Now both freezers are full of this crap! And the wife says there is always meat/fish/poultry on sale so it’s not necessary. D’oh!

Time to plug in my wattsaver to see exactly how much this costs to run.[/quote]

Well, don’t worry about that..Because, if your only purpose of conserving energy/resources is to save money, you can forget about that…. See… the way it works is that utility companies love to tell you to save more energy/resources/etc. But then when people actually do, and as a result their bottom line sees a noticeable difference, the utility companies make up the difference by raising the rates, which inevitable results in you paying more for getting less….And what’s worse, because consumption goes down, while keeping the same $$$ coming in, the utility company doesn’t do sh!t to build out additional infrastructure to support future demand…. And even if consumption were to return back to the levels, prices clearly aren’t going to go back down either, because utility prices are always sticky, they don’t really fall down once they go up…Just like the predicament we are in with healthcare costs. Now that all the companies have raised healthcare costs because of our new health care “reform bill”, even if the health care was repealed, it’s not like any of the companies are going to reduce the health care costs back to what they were before….

So for example, in case you missed it…Enjoy bending over because you fell for the “please conserve our resources to save money” B.S.

Water:

http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2010/world/u-s-urban-residents-cut-water-usage-utilities-are-forced-to-raise-prices/

Last week the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, one of the nation’s largest municipal water suppliers, announced that along with requiring its customers to use less water under mandatory conservation measures it also would hike up the price for water by 15 percent over the next two years.

SDGE:

http://www.kusi.com/story/13865477/sdge-pkg

Since the recession hit, San Diegans have made great efforts to conserve energy, despite that
SDG&E residential electric rates went up at the start of the year because SDG&E say they took in less money than expected last year.

San Diego Gas and Electric is taking great pains to explain why selling less power to its residential customers in 2010 translates into those customers having to pay 2-to 3-percent more for their electricity at the start of 2011.

Well, no sh!t sherlock….. Because the utility companies have no interest in reducing the $$$ they bring in…Afterall, all those pension benefits have to come from somewhere if they are public co’s…And if the for-profit public, they aren’t going to see their bottom lines come down either….

So remember…If you want to conserve because you want to save precious resources. By all means, that’s a good thing to do… But don’t believe the hype that it will actually save you money…

Now where’s my brokerage count to purchase energy/utility company shares and where is my gas-guzzling 4.8 twin-turbo V8…. 🙁

[Coronita]

[quote=Hobie]Years ago I bought a small freezer and stocked it with sale price meat for this very reason. Worked great for a while until the wife started buying frozen dinners, hotpockets, etc, “to have on hand for the kids” Now both freezers are full of this crap! And the wife says there is always meat/fish/poultry on sale so it’s not necessary. D’oh!

Time to plug in my wattsaver to see exactly how much this costs to run.[/quote]

Well, don’t worry about that..Because, if your only purpose of conserving energy/resources is to save money, you can forget about that…. See… the way it works is that utility companies love to tell you to save more energy/resources/etc. But then when people actually do, and as a result their bottom line sees a noticeable difference, the utility companies make up the difference by raising the rates, which inevitable results in you paying more for getting less….And what’s worse, because consumption goes down, while keeping the same $$$ coming in, the utility company doesn’t do sh!t to build out additional infrastructure to support future demand…. And even if consumption were to return back to the levels, prices clearly aren’t going to go back down either, because utility prices are always sticky, they don’t really fall down once they go up…Just like the predicament we are in with healthcare costs. Now that all the companies have raised healthcare costs because of our new health care “reform bill”, even if the health care was repealed, it’s not like any of the companies are going to reduce the health care costs back to what they were before….

So for example, in case you missed it…Enjoy bending over because you fell for the “please conserve our resources to save money” B.S.

Water:

http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2010/world/u-s-urban-residents-cut-water-usage-utilities-are-forced-to-raise-prices/

Last week the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, one of the nation’s largest municipal water suppliers, announced that along with requiring its customers to use less water under mandatory conservation measures it also would hike up the price for water by 15 percent over the next two years.

SDGE:

http://www.kusi.com/story/13865477/sdge-pkg

Since the recession hit, San Diegans have made great efforts to conserve energy, despite that
SDG&E residential electric rates went up at the start of the year because SDG&E say they took in less money than expected last year.

San Diego Gas and Electric is taking great pains to explain why selling less power to its residential customers in 2010 translates into those customers having to pay 2-to 3-percent more for their electricity at the start of 2011.

Well, no sh!t sherlock….. Because the utility companies have no interest in reducing the $$$ they bring in…Afterall, all those pension benefits have to come from somewhere if they are public co’s…And if the for-profit public, they aren’t going to see their bottom lines come down either….

So remember…If you want to conserve because you want to save precious resources. By all means, that’s a good thing to do… But don’t believe the hype that it will actually save you money…

Now where’s my brokerage count to purchase energy/utility company shares and where is my gas-guzzling 4.8 twin-turbo V8…. 🙁

[Coronita]

[quote=Hobie]Years ago I bought a small freezer and stocked it with sale price meat for this very reason. Worked great for a while until the wife started buying frozen dinners, hotpockets, etc, “to have on hand for the kids” Now both freezers are full of this crap! And the wife says there is always meat/fish/poultry on sale so it’s not necessary. D’oh!

Time to plug in my wattsaver to see exactly how much this costs to run.[/quote]

Well, don’t worry about that..Because, if your only purpose of conserving energy/resources is to save money, you can forget about that…. See… the way it works is that utility companies love to tell you to save more energy/resources/etc. But then when people actually do, and as a result their bottom line sees a noticeable difference, the utility companies make up the difference by raising the rates, which inevitable results in you paying more for getting less….And what’s worse, because consumption goes down, while keeping the same $$$ coming in, the utility company doesn’t do sh!t to build out additional infrastructure to support future demand…. And even if consumption were to return back to the levels, prices clearly aren’t going to go back down either, because utility prices are always sticky, they don’t really fall down once they go up…Just like the predicament we are in with healthcare costs. Now that all the companies have raised healthcare costs because of our new health care “reform bill”, even if the health care was repealed, it’s not like any of the companies are going to reduce the health care costs back to what they were before….

So for example, in case you missed it…Enjoy bending over because you fell for the “please conserve our resources to save money” B.S.

Water:

http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2010/world/u-s-urban-residents-cut-water-usage-utilities-are-forced-to-raise-prices/

Last week the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, one of the nation’s largest municipal water suppliers, announced that along with requiring its customers to use less water under mandatory conservation measures it also would hike up the price for water by 15 percent over the next two years.

SDGE:

http://www.kusi.com/story/13865477/sdge-pkg

Since the recession hit, San Diegans have made great efforts to conserve energy, despite that
SDG&E residential electric rates went up at the start of the year because SDG&E say they took in less money than expected last year.

San Diego Gas and Electric is taking great pains to explain why selling less power to its residential customers in 2010 translates into those customers having to pay 2-to 3-percent more for their electricity at the start of 2011.

Well, no sh!t sherlock….. Because the utility companies have no interest in reducing the $$$ they bring in…Afterall, all those pension benefits have to come from somewhere if they are public co’s…And if the for-profit public, they aren’t going to see their bottom lines come down either….

So remember…If you want to conserve because you want to save precious resources. By all means, that’s a good thing to do… But don’t believe the hype that it will actually save you money…

Now where’s my brokerage count to purchase energy/utility company shares and where is my gas-guzzling 4.8 twin-turbo V8…. 🙁

[Coronita]

[quote=Hobie]Years ago I bought a small freezer and stocked it with sale price meat for this very reason. Worked great for a while until the wife started buying frozen dinners, hotpockets, etc, “to have on hand for the kids” Now both freezers are full of this crap! And the wife says there is always meat/fish/poultry on sale so it’s not necessary. D’oh!

Time to plug in my wattsaver to see exactly how much this costs to run.[/quote]

Well, don’t worry about that..Because, if your only purpose of conserving energy/resources is to save money, you can forget about that…. See… the way it works is that utility companies love to tell you to save more energy/resources/etc. But then when people actually do, and as a result their bottom line sees a noticeable difference, the utility companies make up the difference by raising the rates, which inevitable results in you paying more for getting less….And what’s worse, because consumption goes down, while keeping the same $$$ coming in, the utility company doesn’t do sh!t to build out additional infrastructure to support future demand…. And even if consumption were to return back to the levels, prices clearly aren’t going to go back down either, because utility prices are always sticky, they don’t really fall down once they go up…Just like the predicament we are in with healthcare costs. Now that all the companies have raised healthcare costs because of our new health care “reform bill”, even if the health care was repealed, it’s not like any of the companies are going to reduce the health care costs back to what they were before….

So for example, in case you missed it…Enjoy bending over because you fell for the “please conserve our resources to save money” B.S.

Water:

http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2010/world/u-s-urban-residents-cut-water-usage-utilities-are-forced-to-raise-prices/

Last week the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, one of the nation’s largest municipal water suppliers, announced that along with requiring its customers to use less water under mandatory conservation measures it also would hike up the price for water by 15 percent over the next two years.

SDGE:

http://www.kusi.com/story/13865477/sdge-pkg

Since the recession hit, San Diegans have made great efforts to conserve energy, despite that
SDG&E residential electric rates went up at the start of the year because SDG&E say they took in less money than expected last year.

San Diego Gas and Electric is taking great pains to explain why selling less power to its residential customers in 2010 translates into those customers having to pay 2-to 3-percent more for their electricity at the start of 2011.

Well, no sh!t sherlock….. Because the utility companies have no interest in reducing the $$$ they bring in…Afterall, all those pension benefits have to come from somewhere if they are public co’s…And if the for-profit public, they aren’t going to see their bottom lines come down either….

So remember…If you want to conserve because you want to save precious resources. By all means, that’s a good thing to do… But don’t believe the hype that it will actually save you money…

Now where’s my brokerage count to purchase energy/utility company shares and where is my gas-guzzling 4.8 twin-turbo V8…. 🙁

[Coronita]

[quote=Hobie]Years ago I bought a small freezer and stocked it with sale price meat for this very reason. Worked great for a while until the wife started buying frozen dinners, hotpockets, etc, “to have on hand for the kids” Now both freezers are full of this crap! And the wife says there is always meat/fish/poultry on sale so it’s not necessary. D’oh!

Time to plug in my wattsaver to see exactly how much this costs to run.[/quote]

Well, don’t worry about that..Because, if your only purpose of conserving energy/resources is to save money, you can forget about that…. See… the way it works is that utility companies love to tell you to save more energy/resources/etc. But then when people actually do, and as a result their bottom line sees a noticeable difference, the utility companies make up the difference by raising the rates, which inevitable results in you paying more for getting less….And what’s worse, because consumption goes down, while keeping the same $$$ coming in, the utility company doesn’t do sh!t to build out additional infrastructure to support future demand…. And even if consumption were to return back to the levels, prices clearly aren’t going to go back down either, because utility prices are always sticky, they don’t really fall down once they go up…Just like the predicament we are in with healthcare costs. Now that all the companies have raised healthcare costs because of our new health care “reform bill”, even if the health care was repealed, it’s not like any of the companies are going to reduce the health care costs back to what they were before….

So for example, in case you missed it…Enjoy bending over because you fell for the “please conserve our resources to save money” B.S.

Water:

http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2010/world/u-s-urban-residents-cut-water-usage-utilities-are-forced-to-raise-prices/

Last week the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, one of the nation’s largest municipal water suppliers, announced that along with requiring its customers to use less water under mandatory conservation measures it also would hike up the price for water by 15 percent over the next two years.

SDGE:

http://www.kusi.com/story/13865477/sdge-pkg

Since the recession hit, San Diegans have made great efforts to conserve energy, despite that
SDG&E residential electric rates went up at the start of the year because SDG&E say they took in less money than expected last year.

San Diego Gas and Electric is taking great pains to explain why selling less power to its residential customers in 2010 translates into those customers having to pay 2-to 3-percent more for their electricity at the start of 2011.

Well, no sh!t sherlock….. Because the utility companies have no interest in reducing the $$$ they bring in…Afterall, all those pension benefits have to come from somewhere if they are public co’s…And if the for-profit public, they aren’t going to see their bottom lines come down either….

So remember…If you want to conserve because you want to save precious resources. By all means, that’s a good thing to do… But don’t believe the hype that it will actually save you money…

Now where’s my brokerage count to purchase energy/utility company shares and where is my gas-guzzling 4.8 twin-turbo V8…. 🙁

[bearishgurl]

[quote=briansd1]I was talking to my auntie about this the other day. She has a vegetable garden and cooks her own food from scratch. Her grocery bill is probably around $150/month.

She was born in 1922 and she’s seen the evolving American diet.

Today, food is a smaller proportion of income than it ever was.

Cut out all the restaurant, packaged, and pre-cooked food and cook your own, and you can save money.

The choices are also much greater. Previously expensive imported “luxury” stuff is now common place and widely available. . . .[/quote]

Also, brian, in your “auntie’s day,” even in the absence of “convenience food,” there was no toothpaste, Motrin, Excedrin, allergy meds, wide variety of produce, pre-cut bacon/ham, cut-up chicken, hair “conditioner” and other hair stuff we take for granted, paper sanitary products, disposable diapers, pre-made baby formula, paper towels or wipes, a wide variety of laundry aids, etc. All of this stuff and more takes up a huge chunk of today’s “grocery bill.”

In addition, until the early 50’s there were no “fast food” drive-ins.

In the first half of the 20th Century, there wasn’t anywhere NEAR the amount of stuff available to buy as there is now. If a person caught a cold, they just used a “folk remedy” and/or held their head over a pot of steam. If they wanted pancake syrup, they often just mixed brown sugar and water. If they wanted chicken tonight, they just went outside and strangled one, lol!

[bearishgurl]

[quote=briansd1]I was talking to my auntie about this the other day. She has a vegetable garden and cooks her own food from scratch. Her grocery bill is probably around $150/month.

She was born in 1922 and she’s seen the evolving American diet.

Today, food is a smaller proportion of income than it ever was.

Cut out all the restaurant, packaged, and pre-cooked food and cook your own, and you can save money.

The choices are also much greater. Previously expensive imported “luxury” stuff is now common place and widely available. . . .[/quote]

Also, brian, in your “auntie’s day,” even in the absence of “convenience food,” there was no toothpaste, Motrin, Excedrin, allergy meds, wide variety of produce, pre-cut bacon/ham, cut-up chicken, hair “conditioner” and other hair stuff we take for granted, paper sanitary products, disposable diapers, pre-made baby formula, paper towels or wipes, a wide variety of laundry aids, etc. All of this stuff and more takes up a huge chunk of today’s “grocery bill.”

In addition, until the early 50’s there were no “fast food” drive-ins.

In the first half of the 20th Century, there wasn’t anywhere NEAR the amount of stuff available to buy as there is now. If a person caught a cold, they just used a “folk remedy” and/or held their head over a pot of steam. If they wanted pancake syrup, they often just mixed brown sugar and water. If they wanted chicken tonight, they just went outside and strangled one, lol!

[bearishgurl]

[quote=briansd1]I was talking to my auntie about this the other day. She has a vegetable garden and cooks her own food from scratch. Her grocery bill is probably around $150/month.

She was born in 1922 and she’s seen the evolving American diet.

Today, food is a smaller proportion of income than it ever was.

Cut out all the restaurant, packaged, and pre-cooked food and cook your own, and you can save money.

The choices are also much greater. Previously expensive imported “luxury” stuff is now common place and widely available. . . .[/quote]

Also, brian, in your “auntie’s day,” even in the absence of “convenience food,” there was no toothpaste, Motrin, Excedrin, allergy meds, wide variety of produce, pre-cut bacon/ham, cut-up chicken, hair “conditioner” and other hair stuff we take for granted, paper sanitary products, disposable diapers, pre-made baby formula, paper towels or wipes, a wide variety of laundry aids, etc. All of this stuff and more takes up a huge chunk of today’s “grocery bill.”

In addition, until the early 50’s there were no “fast food” drive-ins.

In the first half of the 20th Century, there wasn’t anywhere NEAR the amount of stuff available to buy as there is now. If a person caught a cold, they just used a “folk remedy” and/or held their head over a pot of steam. If they wanted pancake syrup, they often just mixed brown sugar and water. If they wanted chicken tonight, they just went outside and strangled one, lol!

[bearishgurl]

[quote=briansd1]I was talking to my auntie about this the other day. She has a vegetable garden and cooks her own food from scratch. Her grocery bill is probably around $150/month.

She was born in 1922 and she’s seen the evolving American diet.

Today, food is a smaller proportion of income than it ever was.

Cut out all the restaurant, packaged, and pre-cooked food and cook your own, and you can save money.

The choices are also much greater. Previously expensive imported “luxury” stuff is now common place and widely available. . . .[/quote]

Also, brian, in your “auntie’s day,” even in the absence of “convenience food,” there was no toothpaste, Motrin, Excedrin, allergy meds, wide variety of produce, pre-cut bacon/ham, cut-up chicken, hair “conditioner” and other hair stuff we take for granted, paper sanitary products, disposable diapers, pre-made baby formula, paper towels or wipes, a wide variety of laundry aids, etc. All of this stuff and more takes up a huge chunk of today’s “grocery bill.”

In addition, until the early 50’s there were no “fast food” drive-ins.

In the first half of the 20th Century, there wasn’t anywhere NEAR the amount of stuff available to buy as there is now. If a person caught a cold, they just used a “folk remedy” and/or held their head over a pot of steam. If they wanted pancake syrup, they often just mixed brown sugar and water. If they wanted chicken tonight, they just went outside and strangled one, lol!

[bearishgurl]

[quote=briansd1]I was talking to my auntie about this the other day. She has a vegetable garden and cooks her own food from scratch. Her grocery bill is probably around $150/month.

She was born in 1922 and she’s seen the evolving American diet.

Today, food is a smaller proportion of income than it ever was.

Cut out all the restaurant, packaged, and pre-cooked food and cook your own, and you can save money.

The choices are also much greater. Previously expensive imported “luxury” stuff is now common place and widely available. . . .[/quote]

Also, brian, in your “auntie’s day,” even in the absence of “convenience food,” there was no toothpaste, Motrin, Excedrin, allergy meds, wide variety of produce, pre-cut bacon/ham, cut-up chicken, hair “conditioner” and other hair stuff we take for granted, paper sanitary products, disposable diapers, pre-made baby formula, paper towels or wipes, a wide variety of laundry aids, etc. All of this stuff and more takes up a huge chunk of today’s “grocery bill.”

In addition, until the early 50’s there were no “fast food” drive-ins.

In the first half of the 20th Century, there wasn’t anywhere NEAR the amount of stuff available to buy as there is now. If a person caught a cold, they just used a “folk remedy” and/or held their head over a pot of steam. If they wanted pancake syrup, they often just mixed brown sugar and water. If they wanted chicken tonight, they just went outside and strangled one, lol!

[Hobie]

Flu: 100% agree.

The device I was referring to was not the Wattsaver but Kill-A-Watt. My bad. Want to measure how many kwh this thing pulls during a month to help me justify running a spare freezer. Especially while giving up garage floor space.

[Hobie]

Flu: 100% agree.

The device I was referring to was not the Wattsaver but Kill-A-Watt. My bad. Want to measure how many kwh this thing pulls during a month to help me justify running a spare freezer. Especially while giving up garage floor space.

[Hobie]

Flu: 100% agree.

The device I was referring to was not the Wattsaver but Kill-A-Watt. My bad. Want to measure how many kwh this thing pulls during a month to help me justify running a spare freezer. Especially while giving up garage floor space.

[Hobie]

Flu: 100% agree.

The device I was referring to was not the Wattsaver but Kill-A-Watt. My bad. Want to measure how many kwh this thing pulls during a month to help me justify running a spare freezer. Especially while giving up garage floor space.

[Author]

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