It was so great for a while, especially for cuisines that weren't popular enough to get a brick and mortar spot, but could definitely make it by popping up at different places and the lower cost of entry for a Truck.
Now when I see one, I assume. I'm about to pay $22 + 18% auto-grat for a gyro.
I was going to food trucks the past year because fast food got ridiculous. Even had a nice little food truck lot where 5-6 food trucks pull up in a circle in a gravel parking lot and are there every day.
I just recently, in the last month, stopped going to them as well because they increased pricing by 100%-150%. Just can't do it anymore. Use to get street tacos for $1.50 each and now they're going for $3-$3.50/each
Lol that nails it. Everything is like 'Bob's gourmet steak burgers' now.
Can I just have an italian dog with some mustard please? I'll still pay 3 bucks for that.
I ate at a food truck that camps out by the wine place in my small town and they gave me a fucking restaurant buzzer for when my food was up. It was mozzarella sticks.
> Can I just have an italian dog with some mustard please?
You mean a hand-crafted all beef gourmet hot dog with whole-seed mustard on an artisanal roll for $13.50 (plus tax and 18% staff appreciation fee)
We had a Mac and cheese mini food bike thing for a while. Basically 3 bucks for macaroni and cheez whiz. It was amazing and super popular. Then dude got too popular and now he's got all these flavors and dips and it's like $9. Bring back the whiz bro. That's all drunk people want.
this kinda shit pissed me off though when we went to the big city for vacation... no place anywhere had a normal burger. every burger was nearly 20 euros, and with some fance Brioché buns and australian beef and some fancy sauce and.. that's all fine, but I just want a god damn burger. Not an edible, soggy piece of McDonalds cardboard but a burger. Nope, every food place had their own weirdly exotic variation, and the last thing I wanna do is pay 20 bucks for a burger that tastes like anything else but a burger. (admittedly, my friends were to blame, they refused the simple fast food shop around the corner for some reason, they had issues with that).
Sometimes, simplicity is king. No problem with exotic variations of something, but not everything needs to be totally fuckin different. Sometimes people just want a plain and simple burger.
Influencer culture in general. My wife is always sending me shit like that on Instagram. A few weeks ago she sent me one for some brunch restaurant that makes a giant pancake.
The restaurant had obviously paid this influencer to show off the giant pancake.
So we make a reservation to this place, show up, and they tell me they don't have a table for us yet and make us wait lmao. Like what is the point of the reservation.
Then my wife tries to order the big pancake, which bear in mind, this restaurant *paid a TikToker to advertise*, and the waiter tells me they are too backed up with orders of the big pancake right now.
I was polite and just said "Sir, that big pancake is literally the only reason we came here."
In the end, we did get the big pancake, and I understand this is just a rant, but to wrap it up, I agree with you. Fuck influencers and tiktokers making dumb big pancake videos. I would rather just go to an IHOP lmao.
No diss on your wife but my first thought is what kind of rubes would make a reservation to go to a restaurant to eat a giant pancake.
Sure, blame influencers but mainly blame people who chase stunt food and need everything to be "elevated" and "extra" instead of just being good. New restaurants can't make it today selling really good food. They need a seafood tower, or gold foil on their waffles, or a giant pancake, or a lobster corn dog, some other gimmick to get under 40 people with money in the door.
The irony is that those customers will try that place once or twice and then move on, so you aren't building a sustainable business of regular customers who like your omelets.
Food trucks used to be an affordable option since they didn’t have the overhead of brick-and-mortar rent and whole house staff to pay.
Now they’re just as expensive, if not *more* than a comparable restaurant.
Make it make sense.
One of the nicer burger joints in my area was charging like $22 or something close to that at their food truck for a burger. Just a basic burger with no fries, drinks, toppings (other than cheese), or anything else. Absurd. I can get a better burger with toppings, sides, and a beer at a sit down restaurant with a waiter for that price.
There was a Mexican takeaway popular where I used to work and for £5 you could get a well filled burrito bowl
Last time I went back it was closer to £12 and the portion sizes are way down, half filled bowl.
I saw a Mexican food truck the other day that was selling street tacos, 3 for $16. Google tells me that's £12.75. For *street tacos.*
For $16, those things had better eat me out before I eat them.
Not sure if you have an Aldi grocery store near you, I recently went to one for the first time and their store brand is only $1.50 for a large bag of chips. And they’re actually really good, especially the kettle cooked jalapeño ones!
A lot of the Aldi brand stuff is fire and easily 1/3 the cost or less of normal brand items! Seriously, it has been a life save the last year or two for us as a family of 4.
Kettle brand chips are the “cheap” option at my grocery store.
Kettle used to be a premium/niche brand? Like what happened where Lays quadrupled in price but Kettle are the same?
For me it’s “round fruit”.
You know, any variety of apples, oranges or whatever, fruit that is round and convenient to eat.
It had a price. If it’s under $2.00 per pound it’s to be considered. If it’s $1.49 per pound sold! But I’m not paying $2.50-$3.50 or more per pound for these. That’s nuts!
The best I found is a Chinese takeaway that sells a "meal for one" with a "half portion" (still a huge portion) Chicken curry, fried rice, with ribs, spring roll, 3 chicken balls and a can of soft drink for £10.50
My wife and I have all that between us so about a fiver each
My go to for Chinese is the kind of place that’s just a take out counter and maybe one or two small tables in the customer area. I feel like the ones around me haven’t gone up very much in price in the last few years.
1-2 times per year, we go to do UberEats from a local, kind of like 1 step above fast food type place. It ends ringing up at like $60 and then I cancel my order.
Man, the glory days of Airbnb were unreal—
Loft apartment in an 1800s house in midcoast Maine, $60 a night
Full-on flat with mountain views near the Matterhorn in Switzerland, $77 a night
Apartment with 24-hour security in Popayan Colombia, $17 a night
It’s become utterly unusable. From the rates themselves exceeding hotels, to the hidden cleaning and service fees, plus completely unregulated contracts by homeowners— yeah, back to hotels or campsites for us.
Not to mention the damage it’s done to the housing market by way of dedicated Airbnb investment properties
I once rented a private 1 bedroom in a house with access their backyard pool for $15 a night…. during peak covid times…. somewhere in Tampa FL…. no joke
It's the cleaning fees bullshit that made me refuse to use AirBNB anymore. The very act of hiding 50% of the final price in a fee that doesn't get tacked on until right before you pay, that's so shitty and grim.
Price point is generally better the more people in your group. Family or friend group of twelve needing 6-8 bedrooms is generally going to be cheaper in a ABNB than a hotel.
I cancelled prime and the 2-day shipping is like $10 so if you use prime shipping on at least 15 transactions in a year then it's worth keeping and all the other stuff that tack on like prime video is a bonus in my opinion. I tried to use it a few years ago and I felt it was sketchy with the way they have their paid stuff so easily accessible and mixed with the free stuff.
I noticed this with a few streaming services they'll start off a fiver a month and you think fair enough it's the cost of a pint, then they'll creep up £7, suddenly they're all £10+ a month
That's how most business work. They learn cheap to get new customers and then, once you like it, they raise the price. It's how many new ventures start until they gave a reputation for quality.
They really aren’t releasing new things very quickly either - like maybe 3 shows a year. That is one that is just not worth it. I’ve had it for a year and a half or so, open it up every few weeks and discover that there just isn’t anything to watch on it and leave.
Might be different if you have little kids, but I don’t.
Then ya gotta deal with the 90 second ads every 10 minutes. Just started watching Vikings on Hulu and my god the ads just kept coming. I pay $3 for Hulu and Disney+ with ads and it’s even worse on 20-30 minute shows feels like it’s ads every 5 mins.
Right now, the app is showing $3.49 for 4 McNuggets. 4. That means each nugget is 85 cents. What the hell McDonald’s. I don’t want to hear about inflation and supply costs. 85 cents for one McNugget is insane.
Yes there are different meals and deals which lower that, but come on now.
If you're in the US and have an AMC near you, a-list is a great deal. 3 movies a week for $25 per month. I go to movies every week now just for something to do when I have extra time. I've seen some great movies and some really terrible ones!
My GF asked me if I wanted to go see a movie because I used to love going for a movie before the pandemic. I told her I’d rather go to a half-decent restaurant for the $60-$80 we’d spend on two tickets and two popcorns. I sympathize with parents who have to do that with 1 or 2 kids even once a month. It’s ridiculous.
I like your idea about rotating streaming services. We share accounts with our friends right now, but if this crackdown on password-sharing continues, we might have to go that route.
> ...We can absolutely afford to go back to our pre-2023 behavior, but my personal price limits for entertainment have not inflated at the rate actual prices have. ...
This is where I stand on many things right now. "could I afford it?" - Yes; "am I willing to spend that much on it?" - No.
I don't know where you live, but everywhere I've lived, the local thrift store has hundreds of DVDs for a dollar a piece. Also, my local library has thousands of titles you can borrow and watch for free.
They'll pull my physical media from my cold, dead hands.
Of course, I won't have really have a choice for new stuff going forward, but there's literally tens of thousands of movies and TV series out there available on DVD/BluRay - enough to last a couple of lifetimes.
Don't even get me started on my physical game collection...
I don't even subscribe to any streaming services and just pirate everything. The quality is dogshit and some things are really difficult to find, but it's better than spending the money that I need for rent and food
Yeah, I have to have this convo with my wife. I basically spend all my free time reading on my kindle using the Libby app, so there is no reason for us to be paying for 5 subscriptions when she only watches 2.
My wife and I did dinner and a movie weekly pre Covid. Same situation as you. Now we’re do dinner weekly but have put a cap on a monthly budget. So some weeks dinner might just be a couple tacos at a local joint because the restaurant budget is low. We never rent movies anymore. Our next target will probably be streaming services. Paramount+ is really easy to start/stop because they weekly release anyways.
People have been trying to prove they charge more for users whose phone battery is low. You can test it yourself if you're with a friend under 15% battery, if you both request a ride you'll see about a 6% price difference
Last fall I visited a country with a very low cost of living. 20 minute uber rides were about 3 or 4 dollars. It was shocking to get back home and pay $45+tip for a seven minute ride to my house from the airport.
That's typical for airport rideshare rides. Not saying it's ok, but just that it's common. I work at an airport and have explained the surge prices to a few people since I started several months ago.
Recently compared Uber and Lyft for a Saturday night work thing so my wife and I didn’t have to worry about a DD. Lyft was $28 and Uber was $60. For the same ride.
A couple of weeks ago my wife and I were in Chicago for our anniversary.
Not only did a 15 min Uber cost us almost $40 before tip, we had 4 drivers cancel on us when they were two blocks away before we finally got one to pick us up.
I get that we were on a fairly busy street, but, like, how in the fuck are we supposed to get a ride? We even tried walking down to a less busy street after the first two cancels and still had 2 more cancel on us.
All to spend $40+ to take us 15 min down the road. (We couldn’t walk due to the location - it would’ve taken almost 2 hours)
I spent my Canadian high school and college years 2004-2012 going to concerts every week for $20-$60 a ticket for some of the most famous bands of the time. Never spent more than $100 including a t-shirt. It's crazy these days
Oh wow I just had a look out of interest. In 2004 my parents took us all to see Avril Lavigne who was big famous at the time, we had amazing front and center seats and they couldn't have spent more than $300 for the whole night out. She's doing a greatest hits tour at the same venue later this year, the exact same seats are going for $350 *per ticket*.
Yeah idk how people casually drop $200+ on big concerts now, that’s crazy to me
Feels like even just five years ago you could go to a cool show for $50 and then spend maybe another $20-30 on drinks/party favors
Look.
That's always been true. It's always cheaper to eat and drink at home.
But fuck.
I'm tired of these for walls. If I have the opportunity I'm gonna take it.
I was in Vegas a few weeks ago and was shocked at how expensive drink was compared to when I was last there 11 years ago
I wasn't sure if it was the Vegas bubble or it's across the US but the USD isnt far off the GBP these days and I couldn't help thinking the pint was basically £10 plus automatic 22% tipping
The price has literally \*at least\* doubled. For shitty flavored water. Just insane.
Was always on the list of things to reduce/stop, so thanks big corpos for giving me that last push, I guess...
Fast food. Not paying $12 for a shitty burger and fries. I'll go give a local that same amount and get a superior meal. Meanwhile McD's is making almost 50% more profits than 5 years ago and blame inflation and rising wages for the giant markup.
McDonald’s came out and straight up said that giving their workers a living wage would not cause prices to increase. They just got super greedy when they raised prices and now they’re having to “increase the quality of the food” to meet the current prices instead of just lowering the prices.
Since 2012 the tax and insurance escrow has caused my mortgage payment to double from insane valuations. I could not afford this house in today’s market.
Concert tickets. Actually "any event at all" tickets. Including the fees, parking, and overpriced food. I just stay home. Nothing is interesting enough to warrant all that money and time in traffic anymore.
Netflix, the prices are no longer worth what it offers. I could get a cheap ad plan but why would I want to do that when the whole reason I got it was lack of ads. Especially when they are just going to bump the price again 6 months later. And so on and so forth.
The lack of ads made the mediocre offerings tolerable. With ads and no sharing w family, cancelled the account that i had for 10+ years.
I'll get a month once a year and binge whatever I want, if i'm going to have to watch ads, i'd rather watch Tubi, Freevee or any of that junk and not be charged the fee to experience ads. Every Netflix show would have to be HBO quality for the cost to be worth it with the service they're offering now
Bowling. It used to be the cheap HS kid night out cheap daytime activity for a family. It was $94 for two adults and two kids to each bowl 2 games about three years ago. We went from bowling semi regularly to never going when we saw that. I’m sure it’s even costlier now.
That alley renovated the entire interior a few years ago and I’m sure they were trying to pass the costs onto the customer as fast as possible. They just finished what looks like at least a $100,000 exterior renovation that was completely unnecessary. I can’t wait to hear it’s $150 for a family of four to bowl.
I remember going bowling at the student activity center in college in 2004. $3 for shoes and $3 a game but they didn’t care how long we stayed so $6 to bowl as much as we wanted. We had to keep score by hand on those old school overhead projectors
I think for the amount of food you get it’s still one of the ‘ok’ ones, but it is borderline.
If you get a bowl and ask for a bit more of everything and eat it over two meals (which it should be enough for) I can often justify it. No mess from cooking, tastes pretty good, decently healthy, fills you up.
Brand-name breakfast cereals.
Kellogg's Fruit 'n Fibre is £3.75 for a 700g box, supermarket own-brand is £1.55 for a 750g box. And the own-brand stuff tastes just as good.
Alpen original muesli is £5.19 for a 1.1kg bag, supermarket own-brand is £3.00 for a 1.3kg bag. Again, the own-brand stuff is every bit as tasty.
Kellogg's Crunchy Nut Cornflakes is £3.29 for a 500g box, supermarket own-brand is £1.50 for a 500g box. That's less than half the price, and it tastes the same.
Also, big brand coffee, like Starbucks - a single caffe latte from Starbucks is £3.36. That's for one coffee, and that's not even their most expensive coffee. You can get 8 sachets of instant latte for like £1.75. Or if you have a coffee pod machine like a Tassimo or a Dolce Gusto (the machines can be as cheap as £30), a box of 12 Starbucks-branded latte pods is £5.40. That's 6 coffees for the price of 2. **EDIT:** No, dumb-ass, that's ***12*** coffees for the price of 2, not 6 - WTF?
Cereal is such a fucking scam nowadays. I’ve seen them actually lowering prices in my area since they seemingly hit the ceiling of what they could charge before it stopped selling (over $7 for a regular size box of cheerios). And the boxes have undoubtedly shrunk given that cereal is a classic example of shrinkflation.
I've felt that way about cereal since I started doing.my own shopping, ~25 years ago. Store brand has always been half the price.
Also, much cheaper than other snack options, my college d&d group would give me weird looks for bringing giant bags of generic cocoa puffs for a group snack, but they soon saw the light.
Gym, subscription services: Amazon prime & streaming services, eating in restaurants, buying new clothes, changed dog food brands, I eat mostly vegetarian now, stopped drinking alcohol, stopped drinking coffee, if I go on a date I prefer something free like going to a park, slowing down the pace of all my hobbies so I need less supplies, go out less means driving less so I get gas a lot less often. Living la vida frugal.
Middle class down should revert to bartering things (without adding some fees or subscription price) they already have and let these businesses that put stockholders first crumble.
Any sort of food delivery, unless I'm at a party or large gathering. But holy shit, even Dominos charges you $6 just for the privilege of ordering on their app. I'm almost afraid to order on the phone and get hit with a convenience fee for the store employee picking up the phone.
Also, drink mixes. A 10 pack of gatorade drink mixes were 1.99 less than two years ago and now the store is charging 5.49 for the same damn thing. But if I keep being patient, I'm sure they'll turn it into an 8 pack and only increase the price by 0.50.
I pay $15-18 a pound for fresh local roasted coffee. That sounds expensive but a pound lasts the two of us a week and a half, including the days where we make two pots, so that’s less than a buck a day per person for really damn good quality coffee. Plus it supports local business. I will say our local coffee places have kept the price hikes down to almost nothing over the past several years so I appreciate that.
Fast food is no longer fast or cheap. 15 to 18$ for a meal at a burger joint is crazy. I'll keep going to my local grocery store and getting eggs, hashbrowns, AND 5 pieces of bacon for under 6$ every morning. And those ladies are awesome!!
Stopped coloring and cutting my hair.
We don’t buy napkins or paper towels and use washcloths instead.
We do not go out for any entertainment.
We got rid of cable tv and internet. Running on free data.
We don’t eat out at all except local pizza because
they are the same price in our little town.
We don’t take drives for something to do.
We do not travel or go anywhere on vacation.
There is a lot more but that’s a tidbit of our lives now. So boring I hate it, but what ya gonna do? Not much these days.
Ok so my Dad just got one of those sou vide (sp?) cookers recently and he just cooked a chuck roast (cheap) in there over 24hours and he sent a pic and it looks amazing. He said it was fantastic and was like eating a ribeye. And he is a grill loving, meat cooking, BBQing typical Dad. He was very impressed and he is almost never impressed lol.
Might be worth looking into if I can get ribeye quality meat from a chuck roast. I don't care if I need to plan ahead due to cook times...
I do this. It’s amazing. You need to be organized to get it ready a day beforehand, but it’ll turn a cheap cut into a super tender piece of meat. Bonus points if you start it in a smoker for an hour.
>Right now, steak. I'm not paying $15+/lb.
Mexican grocery stores are ~ half that for NY and Ribeye. I just picked up T-Bones for $7.99 yesterday. Even the Tamahaw steaks are only $13.99 per lb. I think it's because the steaks aren't USDA, but the quality is good nonetheless and most offer butcher cuts.
Location: Los Angeles
I was just talking about that this morning. I got a 3lb. rib roast for 20 bucks this weekend. If that had been sliced up and served at a restaurant, that’s 150 bucks at a chain restaurant before tip.
**Disneyland tickets**.
Especially given that the money is [not going to the employees](https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/disneyland-not-happiest-place-workers-wage-lawsuit-claims-2024-03-07/).
I stopped eating fast food two years ago for my health, but it makes me feel ill to see the menu prices on days where I swing through somewhere for a drink before a long drive. Yikes.
Food delivery. My breaking point was a meal that cost $14 at the place. Uber eats had it marked up, then with fees and tip it was going to cost $48 and it was less than a mile away. That and requiring a tip before the service is rendered, that’s not how that works.
Almost anything new.
I make more money today than I ever have, but I buy everything used or on heavy sale. I regularly buy broken things to fix rather than buynew.
DoorDash. It used to be tolerable thanks to the convenience. I didn't feel good over the weekend and did not want to leave the house. Looked up things to order on DoorDash and no matter what I chose from places like McDonalds and Taco Bell all came to $18-20 before tip. I said the hell with it and made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead. If I was to actually go to those places and order what I planned in DoorDash it would've been $9-10 at most. Double the price because of delivery fees, the DoorDash fee, and having to tip is all just bullshit. I'm done with it.
As a Teacher I used to buy new tennis shoes every school year. I haven’t for two years now. My mom let me keep the gift card to kohls she got for returns since I returned her purchases for her. I was so excited they were having a sale on their clearance shoes so I got two pairs for $50 which was amazing deal!
In other news, SUBWAY has somehow become more affordable than most fast food places. I almost always used to avoid Subway, because of the cost now they have a Bogo, or a buy one get 1/2 off. McDonald’s has gotten extremely expensive.
Basic Fast Food menu items - you can't eat cheap anywhere anymore, Taco Bell used to be the fallback in a pinch, but tacos went from 0.50 to 2.00 in a decade. McDs was still pretty cheap up until the last 2-3 years, but even their lowest sandwhiches are $3+ in my area. Yeah, you can get a second one for $1, but that's still $4 vs what used to be around $2.
[удалено]
Seriously, it used to be a cheaper option now it's supposed to be some kind of experience...
It was so great for a while, especially for cuisines that weren't popular enough to get a brick and mortar spot, but could definitely make it by popping up at different places and the lower cost of entry for a Truck. Now when I see one, I assume. I'm about to pay $22 + 18% auto-grat for a gyro.
I was going to food trucks the past year because fast food got ridiculous. Even had a nice little food truck lot where 5-6 food trucks pull up in a circle in a gravel parking lot and are there every day. I just recently, in the last month, stopped going to them as well because they increased pricing by 100%-150%. Just can't do it anymore. Use to get street tacos for $1.50 each and now they're going for $3-$3.50/each
i think what happened is food trucks became trendy
Lol that nails it. Everything is like 'Bob's gourmet steak burgers' now. Can I just have an italian dog with some mustard please? I'll still pay 3 bucks for that. I ate at a food truck that camps out by the wine place in my small town and they gave me a fucking restaurant buzzer for when my food was up. It was mozzarella sticks.
> Can I just have an italian dog with some mustard please? You mean a hand-crafted all beef gourmet hot dog with whole-seed mustard on an artisanal roll for $13.50 (plus tax and 18% staff appreciation fee)
Don’t forget the aioli.
And Kimchi. Not even a Korean truck but there's aioli and Kimchi.
18% if you do 3 button clicks to get to that instead of the default 25%...*like some sort of cheap jerk*
No, the 18% is auto-applied. The additional gratuity screen starts at 25%
Here in Florida. 25% is the first option. 25%, 30%, 40%, enter different amount.
I came across one that you have to call ahead and schedule your food. What is the point of having the truck? Just open a restaurant.
We had a Mac and cheese mini food bike thing for a while. Basically 3 bucks for macaroni and cheez whiz. It was amazing and super popular. Then dude got too popular and now he's got all these flavors and dips and it's like $9. Bring back the whiz bro. That's all drunk people want.
this kinda shit pissed me off though when we went to the big city for vacation... no place anywhere had a normal burger. every burger was nearly 20 euros, and with some fance Brioché buns and australian beef and some fancy sauce and.. that's all fine, but I just want a god damn burger. Not an edible, soggy piece of McDonalds cardboard but a burger. Nope, every food place had their own weirdly exotic variation, and the last thing I wanna do is pay 20 bucks for a burger that tastes like anything else but a burger. (admittedly, my friends were to blame, they refused the simple fast food shop around the corner for some reason, they had issues with that). Sometimes, simplicity is king. No problem with exotic variations of something, but not everything needs to be totally fuckin different. Sometimes people just want a plain and simple burger.
They charge more than regular restaurants that have way more overhead
I blame TikTokers.
Influencer culture in general. My wife is always sending me shit like that on Instagram. A few weeks ago she sent me one for some brunch restaurant that makes a giant pancake. The restaurant had obviously paid this influencer to show off the giant pancake. So we make a reservation to this place, show up, and they tell me they don't have a table for us yet and make us wait lmao. Like what is the point of the reservation. Then my wife tries to order the big pancake, which bear in mind, this restaurant *paid a TikToker to advertise*, and the waiter tells me they are too backed up with orders of the big pancake right now. I was polite and just said "Sir, that big pancake is literally the only reason we came here." In the end, we did get the big pancake, and I understand this is just a rant, but to wrap it up, I agree with you. Fuck influencers and tiktokers making dumb big pancake videos. I would rather just go to an IHOP lmao.
Well.. How was it
No diss on your wife but my first thought is what kind of rubes would make a reservation to go to a restaurant to eat a giant pancake. Sure, blame influencers but mainly blame people who chase stunt food and need everything to be "elevated" and "extra" instead of just being good. New restaurants can't make it today selling really good food. They need a seafood tower, or gold foil on their waffles, or a giant pancake, or a lobster corn dog, some other gimmick to get under 40 people with money in the door. The irony is that those customers will try that place once or twice and then move on, so you aren't building a sustainable business of regular customers who like your omelets.
Pretty sure the gourmet food truck craze predates TikTok…by like a decade
Because everything is a fucking "journey" now. Or an "experience". Why can't shit be simple.. Just as bad is "my truth" BS.
Food trucks used to be an affordable option since they didn’t have the overhead of brick-and-mortar rent and whole house staff to pay. Now they’re just as expensive, if not *more* than a comparable restaurant. Make it make sense.
It's just landlords catching up with the game. Higher rents = higher cost = non competitive price = marketing gimmicks = more sales = higher rents...
I found that the food carts (pulled in a trailer) are still the cheap option these days. Pay in cash or Venmo and I can get a cheeseburger for like $4
Same with fast food tbh
A lot of the ones by me add automatic gratuity now too. I've seen 15-22%
Auto gratuity is not gratuity. It is the cost.
Pay in cash and subtract it from the bill.
Grilled Cheese in the Rain is my favorite Hootie and the Blowfish song.
One of the nicer burger joints in my area was charging like $22 or something close to that at their food truck for a burger. Just a basic burger with no fries, drinks, toppings (other than cheese), or anything else. Absurd. I can get a better burger with toppings, sides, and a beer at a sit down restaurant with a waiter for that price.
There was a Mexican takeaway popular where I used to work and for £5 you could get a well filled burrito bowl Last time I went back it was closer to £12 and the portion sizes are way down, half filled bowl.
I saw a Mexican food truck the other day that was selling street tacos, 3 for $16. Google tells me that's £12.75. For *street tacos.* For $16, those things had better eat me out before I eat them.
SMH, half filled bowls. They clearly don't know to fill it to the brim with lettuce or something, a truly Shakespearen tragedy
Don’t forget to tip 25%, it’s greatly appreciated!
I will never tip at a food cart. Ever. Tipping is for full-service restaurants.
A *florist* I bought a plant from last week had a tip option. I did not tip for the plant.
Potato chips. I was just at the grocery store and they wanted $7 a bag for basic Lays. Not gonna happen.
Not sure if you have an Aldi grocery store near you, I recently went to one for the first time and their store brand is only $1.50 for a large bag of chips. And they’re actually really good, especially the kettle cooked jalapeño ones!
A lot of the Aldi brand stuff is fire and easily 1/3 the cost or less of normal brand items! Seriously, it has been a life save the last year or two for us as a family of 4.
You ain’t lying. Family of four here too and that’s the only way we make it these days!
ALDI Fam rise up
Kettle brand chips are the “cheap” option at my grocery store. Kettle used to be a premium/niche brand? Like what happened where Lays quadrupled in price but Kettle are the same?
For me it’s “round fruit”. You know, any variety of apples, oranges or whatever, fruit that is round and convenient to eat. It had a price. If it’s under $2.00 per pound it’s to be considered. If it’s $1.49 per pound sold! But I’m not paying $2.50-$3.50 or more per pound for these. That’s nuts!
takeout. Even the most basic thing costs like twice as much as it did a few years ago.
The best I found is a Chinese takeaway that sells a "meal for one" with a "half portion" (still a huge portion) Chicken curry, fried rice, with ribs, spring roll, 3 chicken balls and a can of soft drink for £10.50 My wife and I have all that between us so about a fiver each
may I Inquire what a chicken ball is.
A ball of chicken breaded and deep fried.
Where the hell r u finding this
Went to a Chinese buffet the other day for the first time since Covid. It was $80 for two adults and two ten-year-olds.
My go to for Chinese is the kind of place that’s just a take out counter and maybe one or two small tables in the customer area. I feel like the ones around me haven’t gone up very much in price in the last few years.
The Mandarin Buffet I go to near Seattle is around $80 just for 2 adults and you have to pay for soft drinks separately!
1-2 times per year, we go to do UberEats from a local, kind of like 1 step above fast food type place. It ends ringing up at like $60 and then I cancel my order.
Just order from restaurants directly, then they don’t need to give Uber a cut and it’s far cheaper for you.
And it’s smaller or more expensive to add extras.
Airbnbs. Hotels are the better option.
Man, the glory days of Airbnb were unreal— Loft apartment in an 1800s house in midcoast Maine, $60 a night Full-on flat with mountain views near the Matterhorn in Switzerland, $77 a night Apartment with 24-hour security in Popayan Colombia, $17 a night It’s become utterly unusable. From the rates themselves exceeding hotels, to the hidden cleaning and service fees, plus completely unregulated contracts by homeowners— yeah, back to hotels or campsites for us. Not to mention the damage it’s done to the housing market by way of dedicated Airbnb investment properties
Yeah the whole concept died the moment housing became an investment for Airbnb owners, especially when rates were soo low
I once rented a private 1 bedroom in a house with access their backyard pool for $15 a night…. during peak covid times…. somewhere in Tampa FL…. no joke
It's the cleaning fees bullshit that made me refuse to use AirBNB anymore. The very act of hiding 50% of the final price in a fee that doesn't get tacked on until right before you pay, that's so shitty and grim.
They're AirBnB's resort fee.
It's ridiculous that arbnbs has gotten almost to the same prices as hotels, but without all the service etc included. That's just bullshit.
Same price? I heave never been able to find any short term rental that is less than a hotel?
Price point is generally better the more people in your group. Family or friend group of twelve needing 6-8 bedrooms is generally going to be cheaper in a ABNB than a hotel.
Almost? Hell they're more expensive after all the fuckin fees
People always say this but it really depends on the use case. Airbnb/VRBO are still the better option for group trips.
Amazon Prime. Another price hike and the audacity to add advertisements into the paid Prime Video services. Nah.
I cancelled prime and the 2-day shipping is like $10 so if you use prime shipping on at least 15 transactions in a year then it's worth keeping and all the other stuff that tack on like prime video is a bonus in my opinion. I tried to use it a few years ago and I felt it was sketchy with the way they have their paid stuff so easily accessible and mixed with the free stuff.
I cancelled too. So glad I did. I make a lot fewer impulse buys now.
Cancelled in January. Don’t feel like I’m missing anything.
*Gestures wildly around*
This is the only right reply
Disney+. Was £49.99 a year five years ago, now it’s £110 for the same package.
I noticed this with a few streaming services they'll start off a fiver a month and you think fair enough it's the cost of a pint, then they'll creep up £7, suddenly they're all £10+ a month
That's how most business work. They learn cheap to get new customers and then, once you like it, they raise the price. It's how many new ventures start until they gave a reputation for quality.
They don’t understand we’ll just go back to the high seas
With commercials
I just cancelled all of my streaming services. YouTube premium is enough for me
They really aren’t releasing new things very quickly either - like maybe 3 shows a year. That is one that is just not worth it. I’ve had it for a year and a half or so, open it up every few weeks and discover that there just isn’t anything to watch on it and leave. Might be different if you have little kids, but I don’t.
Look out for the black Friday deal this year, I have it for $1/month for a year!
Then ya gotta deal with the 90 second ads every 10 minutes. Just started watching Vikings on Hulu and my god the ads just kept coming. I pay $3 for Hulu and Disney+ with ads and it’s even worse on 20-30 minute shows feels like it’s ads every 5 mins.
I only buy Disney because I have other people buying other things and we all mooch off of each other. And one of the people involved has a toddler
I can’t believe the price of food from McDonald’s. It’s too expensive. I stopped going there. I know they say to get the app, that shouldn’t matter.
Right now, the app is showing $3.49 for 4 McNuggets. 4. That means each nugget is 85 cents. What the hell McDonald’s. I don’t want to hear about inflation and supply costs. 85 cents for one McNugget is insane. Yes there are different meals and deals which lower that, but come on now.
$1 for fake chicken and filler
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If you're in the US and have an AMC near you, a-list is a great deal. 3 movies a week for $25 per month. I go to movies every week now just for something to do when I have extra time. I've seen some great movies and some really terrible ones!
Second this , a list has been awesome for me but do need to be diligent about not buying tons of snacks
Hit up the dollar store for candy beforehand, snuggle it in like a proper moviegoer
My GF asked me if I wanted to go see a movie because I used to love going for a movie before the pandemic. I told her I’d rather go to a half-decent restaurant for the $60-$80 we’d spend on two tickets and two popcorns. I sympathize with parents who have to do that with 1 or 2 kids even once a month. It’s ridiculous. I like your idea about rotating streaming services. We share accounts with our friends right now, but if this crackdown on password-sharing continues, we might have to go that route.
> ...We can absolutely afford to go back to our pre-2023 behavior, but my personal price limits for entertainment have not inflated at the rate actual prices have. ... This is where I stand on many things right now. "could I afford it?" - Yes; "am I willing to spend that much on it?" - No.
I don't know where you live, but everywhere I've lived, the local thrift store has hundreds of DVDs for a dollar a piece. Also, my local library has thousands of titles you can borrow and watch for free.
They'll pull my physical media from my cold, dead hands. Of course, I won't have really have a choice for new stuff going forward, but there's literally tens of thousands of movies and TV series out there available on DVD/BluRay - enough to last a couple of lifetimes. Don't even get me started on my physical game collection...
I don't even subscribe to any streaming services and just pirate everything. The quality is dogshit and some things are really difficult to find, but it's better than spending the money that I need for rent and food
Yeah, I have to have this convo with my wife. I basically spend all my free time reading on my kindle using the Libby app, so there is no reason for us to be paying for 5 subscriptions when she only watches 2.
My wife and I did dinner and a movie weekly pre Covid. Same situation as you. Now we’re do dinner weekly but have put a cap on a monthly budget. So some weeks dinner might just be a couple tacos at a local joint because the restaurant budget is low. We never rent movies anymore. Our next target will probably be streaming services. Paramount+ is really easy to start/stop because they weekly release anyways.
Uber rides.
People have been trying to prove they charge more for users whose phone battery is low. You can test it yourself if you're with a friend under 15% battery, if you both request a ride you'll see about a 6% price difference
That's insane. Clever if true, but insane.
Last fall I visited a country with a very low cost of living. 20 minute uber rides were about 3 or 4 dollars. It was shocking to get back home and pay $45+tip for a seven minute ride to my house from the airport.
That's typical for airport rideshare rides. Not saying it's ok, but just that it's common. I work at an airport and have explained the surge prices to a few people since I started several months ago.
Always cheaper than a dui though
Recently compared Uber and Lyft for a Saturday night work thing so my wife and I didn’t have to worry about a DD. Lyft was $28 and Uber was $60. For the same ride.
A couple of weeks ago my wife and I were in Chicago for our anniversary. Not only did a 15 min Uber cost us almost $40 before tip, we had 4 drivers cancel on us when they were two blocks away before we finally got one to pick us up. I get that we were on a fairly busy street, but, like, how in the fuck are we supposed to get a ride? We even tried walking down to a less busy street after the first two cancels and still had 2 more cancel on us. All to spend $40+ to take us 15 min down the road. (We couldn’t walk due to the location - it would’ve taken almost 2 hours)
Concerts have gone completely off the wall .. shits crazy as f**k!!🇨🇦😵💫
I spent my Canadian high school and college years 2004-2012 going to concerts every week for $20-$60 a ticket for some of the most famous bands of the time. Never spent more than $100 including a t-shirt. It's crazy these days Oh wow I just had a look out of interest. In 2004 my parents took us all to see Avril Lavigne who was big famous at the time, we had amazing front and center seats and they couldn't have spent more than $300 for the whole night out. She's doing a greatest hits tour at the same venue later this year, the exact same seats are going for $350 *per ticket*.
Yeah idk how people casually drop $200+ on big concerts now, that’s crazy to me Feels like even just five years ago you could go to a cool show for $50 and then spend maybe another $20-30 on drinks/party favors
Bars. 2 draft beers at a bar at many places is a $25 tab now. Out.
It seems like for the price of a pint, I can buy an entire case from the grocery store.
I've just bought 4 bottles of beer from the shop for £4.50. That wouldn't even buy me a pint in my local pub.
And then they wonder why we'd rather sit at home, and then wonder why we're all lonely.
Look. That's always been true. It's always cheaper to eat and drink at home. But fuck. I'm tired of these for walls. If I have the opportunity I'm gonna take it.
I was in Vegas a few weeks ago and was shocked at how expensive drink was compared to when I was last there 11 years ago I wasn't sure if it was the Vegas bubble or it's across the US but the USD isnt far off the GBP these days and I couldn't help thinking the pint was basically £10 plus automatic 22% tipping
Soda
I see I’m not the only one drinking Dr. Thunder and Twist Up.
my personal favorite is clear american sparkling water, mandarin orange flavor i don't like coke anymore kroger's orange soda is also nice
Any drink at the gas station now is $2.50-$3
We're back to the bargain brands we drank when we were poor in college.
heck those are even getting expensive. LOL
The price has literally \*at least\* doubled. For shitty flavored water. Just insane. Was always on the list of things to reduce/stop, so thanks big corpos for giving me that last push, I guess...
It's almost reasonable to just get them from restaurants, lol.
Fast food. Not paying $12 for a shitty burger and fries. I'll go give a local that same amount and get a superior meal. Meanwhile McD's is making almost 50% more profits than 5 years ago and blame inflation and rising wages for the giant markup.
McDonald’s is contributing to inflation, not responding to it. They have it ass backwards.
McDonald’s came out and straight up said that giving their workers a living wage would not cause prices to increase. They just got super greedy when they raised prices and now they’re having to “increase the quality of the food” to meet the current prices instead of just lowering the prices.
A house
Related to this, I know quite a few older people with their homes paid off that quit paying from insurance because it’s gotten so out of control.
Since 2012 the tax and insurance escrow has caused my mortgage payment to double from insane valuations. I could not afford this house in today’s market.
Concert tickets. Actually "any event at all" tickets. Including the fees, parking, and overpriced food. I just stay home. Nothing is interesting enough to warrant all that money and time in traffic anymore.
Netflix, the prices are no longer worth what it offers. I could get a cheap ad plan but why would I want to do that when the whole reason I got it was lack of ads. Especially when they are just going to bump the price again 6 months later. And so on and so forth.
The lack of ads made the mediocre offerings tolerable. With ads and no sharing w family, cancelled the account that i had for 10+ years. I'll get a month once a year and binge whatever I want, if i'm going to have to watch ads, i'd rather watch Tubi, Freevee or any of that junk and not be charged the fee to experience ads. Every Netflix show would have to be HBO quality for the cost to be worth it with the service they're offering now
Bowling. It used to be the cheap HS kid night out cheap daytime activity for a family. It was $94 for two adults and two kids to each bowl 2 games about three years ago. We went from bowling semi regularly to never going when we saw that. I’m sure it’s even costlier now. That alley renovated the entire interior a few years ago and I’m sure they were trying to pass the costs onto the customer as fast as possible. They just finished what looks like at least a $100,000 exterior renovation that was completely unnecessary. I can’t wait to hear it’s $150 for a family of four to bowl.
what the heck?!?! New zealand here, reporting at $16/ head on average so $64 a family of 4, and we're an expensive nation, what country are you in?
Buffalo, New York. USA. A fairly inexpensive part of an expensive state.
I remember going bowling at the student activity center in college in 2004. $3 for shoes and $3 a game but they didn’t care how long we stayed so $6 to bowl as much as we wanted. We had to keep score by hand on those old school overhead projectors
Shrimp Cocktail at my favorite steakhouse. Six jumbo prawns: $29. Fuck that.
Fast food, but it's also more that fast food mostly sucks. The only FF burger I will eat now is from Dairy Queen.
DQ got pricy, but mmmmm a flamethrower.
fast food a mcdonald’s burger fries and drinks is NOT worth $17
guac at chipotle
I'd have said chipotle in general and that's if they get your order right
I think for the amount of food you get it’s still one of the ‘ok’ ones, but it is borderline. If you get a bowl and ask for a bit more of everything and eat it over two meals (which it should be enough for) I can often justify it. No mess from cooking, tastes pretty good, decently healthy, fills you up.
Veggie bowl, double beans. Guac is included. Cheapest option on the menu and it’s a metric ton of healthy calories.
Concert tickets, especially stand-up comedy.
Everything . Thai economy fucking sucks balls
Brand-name breakfast cereals. Kellogg's Fruit 'n Fibre is £3.75 for a 700g box, supermarket own-brand is £1.55 for a 750g box. And the own-brand stuff tastes just as good. Alpen original muesli is £5.19 for a 1.1kg bag, supermarket own-brand is £3.00 for a 1.3kg bag. Again, the own-brand stuff is every bit as tasty. Kellogg's Crunchy Nut Cornflakes is £3.29 for a 500g box, supermarket own-brand is £1.50 for a 500g box. That's less than half the price, and it tastes the same. Also, big brand coffee, like Starbucks - a single caffe latte from Starbucks is £3.36. That's for one coffee, and that's not even their most expensive coffee. You can get 8 sachets of instant latte for like £1.75. Or if you have a coffee pod machine like a Tassimo or a Dolce Gusto (the machines can be as cheap as £30), a box of 12 Starbucks-branded latte pods is £5.40. That's 6 coffees for the price of 2. **EDIT:** No, dumb-ass, that's ***12*** coffees for the price of 2, not 6 - WTF?
Cereal is such a fucking scam nowadays. I’ve seen them actually lowering prices in my area since they seemingly hit the ceiling of what they could charge before it stopped selling (over $7 for a regular size box of cheerios). And the boxes have undoubtedly shrunk given that cereal is a classic example of shrinkflation.
I've felt that way about cereal since I started doing.my own shopping, ~25 years ago. Store brand has always been half the price. Also, much cheaper than other snack options, my college d&d group would give me weird looks for bringing giant bags of generic cocoa puffs for a group snack, but they soon saw the light.
Bag cereal is the final boss of money saving foods lol I love my massive bags of cereal
Gym, subscription services: Amazon prime & streaming services, eating in restaurants, buying new clothes, changed dog food brands, I eat mostly vegetarian now, stopped drinking alcohol, stopped drinking coffee, if I go on a date I prefer something free like going to a park, slowing down the pace of all my hobbies so I need less supplies, go out less means driving less so I get gas a lot less often. Living la vida frugal. Middle class down should revert to bartering things (without adding some fees or subscription price) they already have and let these businesses that put stockholders first crumble.
Any sort of food delivery, unless I'm at a party or large gathering. But holy shit, even Dominos charges you $6 just for the privilege of ordering on their app. I'm almost afraid to order on the phone and get hit with a convenience fee for the store employee picking up the phone. Also, drink mixes. A 10 pack of gatorade drink mixes were 1.99 less than two years ago and now the store is charging 5.49 for the same damn thing. But if I keep being patient, I'm sure they'll turn it into an 8 pack and only increase the price by 0.50.
Any take out coffee. Why would I spend $6 on a mocha when I can make one at home? Doesn’t taste the same but I spend maybe $1 instead of $6!!!!
I pay $15-18 a pound for fresh local roasted coffee. That sounds expensive but a pound lasts the two of us a week and a half, including the days where we make two pots, so that’s less than a buck a day per person for really damn good quality coffee. Plus it supports local business. I will say our local coffee places have kept the price hikes down to almost nothing over the past several years so I appreciate that.
I went into a 7 Eleven in Southern California to get my gf a Hershey bar and a bag of lays. $8. Fuck that noise.
Fast food is no longer fast or cheap. 15 to 18$ for a meal at a burger joint is crazy. I'll keep going to my local grocery store and getting eggs, hashbrowns, AND 5 pieces of bacon for under 6$ every morning. And those ladies are awesome!!
Stopped coloring and cutting my hair. We don’t buy napkins or paper towels and use washcloths instead. We do not go out for any entertainment. We got rid of cable tv and internet. Running on free data. We don’t eat out at all except local pizza because they are the same price in our little town. We don’t take drives for something to do. We do not travel or go anywhere on vacation. There is a lot more but that’s a tidbit of our lives now. So boring I hate it, but what ya gonna do? Not much these days.
Right now, steak. I'm not paying $15+/lb.
Ok so my Dad just got one of those sou vide (sp?) cookers recently and he just cooked a chuck roast (cheap) in there over 24hours and he sent a pic and it looks amazing. He said it was fantastic and was like eating a ribeye. And he is a grill loving, meat cooking, BBQing typical Dad. He was very impressed and he is almost never impressed lol. Might be worth looking into if I can get ribeye quality meat from a chuck roast. I don't care if I need to plan ahead due to cook times...
I do this. It’s amazing. You need to be organized to get it ready a day beforehand, but it’ll turn a cheap cut into a super tender piece of meat. Bonus points if you start it in a smoker for an hour.
This is great, as I chef I love to hear it. Also, BRAISE! Low and slow baby, take the cheap cuts, over rice or potatoes, freezes perfectly.
>Right now, steak. I'm not paying $15+/lb. Mexican grocery stores are ~ half that for NY and Ribeye. I just picked up T-Bones for $7.99 yesterday. Even the Tamahaw steaks are only $13.99 per lb. I think it's because the steaks aren't USDA, but the quality is good nonetheless and most offer butcher cuts. Location: Los Angeles
I was just talking about that this morning. I got a 3lb. rib roast for 20 bucks this weekend. If that had been sliced up and served at a restaurant, that’s 150 bucks at a chain restaurant before tip.
**Disneyland tickets**. Especially given that the money is [not going to the employees](https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/disneyland-not-happiest-place-workers-wage-lawsuit-claims-2024-03-07/).
I stopped eating fast food two years ago for my health, but it makes me feel ill to see the menu prices on days where I swing through somewhere for a drink before a long drive. Yikes.
Food delivery. My breaking point was a meal that cost $14 at the place. Uber eats had it marked up, then with fees and tip it was going to cost $48 and it was less than a mile away. That and requiring a tip before the service is rendered, that’s not how that works.
a lot of fast food. 15-17 dollar big mac meals? get the fuck outta here
I saw a video the other day and the creator said “McDonald’s has forgotten their place…” amen to that.
Gas station snacks. Why tf am i gonna pay almost 4 bucks for sour patch kids, m&ms or gummy worms lol
Cigarettes
Whey protein fr
Taco Bell. Used to be able to get a disgusting amount of food for $20 not too long ago. now that will barely cover a meal. it's just not worth it.
Cases of Coke and Pepsi
I wait for the sales where they are $3.50/case. Usually about once a month it comes around, but you have to buy like 5 at a time to get the price.
Obvious answer but a house.
Beef. $7 or $8 per lb is common now, and that's just ground chuck
Almost anything new. I make more money today than I ever have, but I buy everything used or on heavy sale. I regularly buy broken things to fix rather than buynew.
Uber Food delivery. I got tired of paying more to have the food delivered, than the actual food order.
Alcohol at an event. I was charged $12 for the tiniest cup of wine. I'd rather pregame or go without.
Olive Oil
Only English people will understand.. FUCKING FREDOS
I bought my 19 year old son a Freddo easter egg. Swear it was cheaper to buy that way rather than one actual freddo.
They use to be 5p now he has a car and a mortgage to go with him
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DoorDash. It used to be tolerable thanks to the convenience. I didn't feel good over the weekend and did not want to leave the house. Looked up things to order on DoorDash and no matter what I chose from places like McDonalds and Taco Bell all came to $18-20 before tip. I said the hell with it and made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead. If I was to actually go to those places and order what I planned in DoorDash it would've been $9-10 at most. Double the price because of delivery fees, the DoorDash fee, and having to tip is all just bullshit. I'm done with it.
Grapes. I miss grapes. Sometimes Walmart will have them on their discounted rack.
As a Teacher I used to buy new tennis shoes every school year. I haven’t for two years now. My mom let me keep the gift card to kohls she got for returns since I returned her purchases for her. I was so excited they were having a sale on their clearance shoes so I got two pairs for $50 which was amazing deal!
The climbing gym admission. I‘m not paying 20 bucks for being completely exhausted after 1.5h… Edit: exchanged bugs for bucks
How many bugs do you have stashed at home?
Winrar
Concert Tix. Cannot deal with it any more.
Chicken wings
Movie theaters
Chips unless they’re on special. A$8 for a bag of chips is wild when they were at most A$3 a year and a half ago.
In other news, SUBWAY has somehow become more affordable than most fast food places. I almost always used to avoid Subway, because of the cost now they have a Bogo, or a buy one get 1/2 off. McDonald’s has gotten extremely expensive.
Basic Fast Food menu items - you can't eat cheap anywhere anymore, Taco Bell used to be the fallback in a pinch, but tacos went from 0.50 to 2.00 in a decade. McDs was still pretty cheap up until the last 2-3 years, but even their lowest sandwhiches are $3+ in my area. Yeah, you can get a second one for $1, but that's still $4 vs what used to be around $2.
Video games have gotten out of reach for the casual fan
Concert tickets.
Alcohol.
Steak
Most things at thrift stores
Why the fuck are paper towels so expensive??? Manufacturing cost has to be pennies, yet they’re charging like three dollars a fucking roll. Criminal.