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Dollar Tree says US$1.25 price point to become new standard

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Re: Dollar Tree says US$1.25 price point to become new standard

#241

Post by HWR_14 »

bluedino wrote: post #150
gkoberger wrote: post #126

I don't think that people in this thread appreciate how prevalent grocery shopping in dollar stores is. In the US, half of shoppers buy groceries from a dollar store. They do it because it's literally all they can afford anything else. There are more dollar stores than Walmart, Starbucks and McDonald’s combined. "Kyle Dishman can’t afford to shop at the local grocery store anymore. Instead he goes to Dollar General,…

If you want to save money on groceries you should be going to Aldi or Sav a Lot, not Dollar stores. Their products are terrible (mostly house brands) and prices aren't even good.

Neither of those are in rural areas. Heck, people I know in urban areas are still excited when the Aldi's come to town.

Re: Dollar Tree says US$1.25 price point to become new standard

#242

Post by throwaway0a5e »

HWR_14 wrote: post #237
jodrellblank wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His Chrysler 300? This thing Wikipedia describes as a V8 powered “full-size luxury car”? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_300

And there are 2006 Chrysler 300s in the Bay Area for under $4 grand a piece on craigslist. As an asking price. The parts seem fairly affordable as well, judging from the parted out ones also on the bay area craiglist. It's entirely reasonable that poor people have older model luxury cars, either purchased 3rd hand or from when they were better off financially. After all, how much do you think you'd pocket selling you…

Yeah. If you want a V8 sedan on a budget Chrysler 300s are a great option (as were the used Ford panther family of cars that preceded them in that market niche).

....which is why they're so stigmatized by the white collar well to do crowd.

Re: Dollar Tree says US$1.25 price point to become new standard

#243

Post by flatt »

heartbreak wrote: post #221
wly_cdgr wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 50lb bag of white rice can be had on Amazon for $88, which translates into roughly 1k calories/$1 delivered to your doorstep for free in two-three days. You can get similar calorie/$ value with pasta, peanut butter, oatmeal. No one who has $40/week to spend on food in America needs to go anywhere close to hungry if they don't waste their money and time driving to dollar stores to buy overpriced non-bulk groceries.…

> A 50lb bag of white rice can be had on Amazon for $88 There's an obvious problem with cost per unit tricks like this. You have to be able to front the money to buy the big bag of rice. If your food budget is $40/wk, how are you going to spend $88 on a bag of rice? With your non-existent savings account? By eating plain rice and literally nothing else for > two weeks?

I think the point is that people on the poverty line eventually have to start making decisions that will break them out of the cycle. There are plenty of programs out there that will do just that. A 50lb bag of rice might very well be too much upfront but it might mean hitting the local food pantry while building up a pantry full of staples from EBT. I don't pretend this is an easy process but continuing to do that same and getting the same results shouldn't be surprising to anyone. Additionally, it can't be stated enough how important it is to build up credit for these people.

Re: Dollar Tree says US$1.25 price point to become new standard

#244

Post by generalizations »

gkoberger wrote: post #126

I don't think that people in this thread appreciate how prevalent grocery shopping in dollar stores is. In the US, half of shoppers buy groceries from a dollar store. They do it because it's literally all they can afford anything else. There are more dollar stores than Walmart, Starbucks and McDonald’s combined. "Kyle Dishman can’t afford to shop at the local grocery store anymore. Instead he goes to Dollar General,…

That's the significance of Dollar Tree making this announcement - they are the dollar store chain that does actually price everything at $1.

Re: Dollar Tree says US$1.25 price point to become new standard

#245

Post by Strom »

heartbreak wrote: post #221
wly_cdgr wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 50lb bag of white rice can be had on Amazon for $88, which translates into roughly 1k calories/$1 delivered to your doorstep for free in two-three days. You can get similar calorie/$ value with pasta, peanut butter, oatmeal. No one who has $40/week to spend on food in America needs to go anywhere close to hungry if they don't waste their money and time driving to dollar stores to buy overpriced non-bulk groceries.…

> A 50lb bag of white rice can be had on Amazon for $88 There's an obvious problem with cost per unit tricks like this. You have to be able to front the money to buy the big bag of rice. If your food budget is $40/wk, how are you going to spend $88 on a bag of rice? With your non-existent savings account? By eating plain rice and literally nothing else for > two weeks?

You could do a community purchase with your neighbors. Where I'm from people even register officially as cooperatives in order to buy stuff at bulk with proper accounting. Now some people who are super poor might also have horrible social skills, but that is already a compounding issue and moves goal posts.

Re: Dollar Tree says US$1.25 price point to become new standard

#246

Post by bserge »

HWR_14 wrote: post #225
javagram wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$100 is plenty to afford groceries at a grocery store. If they only had $4 or something your point would make more sense. You can take $30 to a grocery store and walk out with a decent quantity of rice and beans, at good prices per ounce.

I'm not sure where "poor people should subsist on only rice and beans" became a valid idea. Sure, I mean, it's a cheap meal. But it's also boring and soulcrushing to have everyday. You're also aside the fact that rice and beans takes a good amount of time to prepare, which is a problem if you're working 16 hours a day - making rice takes 30 minutes and that is coming out of your sleep. But most importantly, only havi…

Probably because they're cheap food calories and nutrition wise.

But you definitely need a lot of extra shit to make them taste good, and especially taste different every now and then.

Beans can be baked, fried, boiled, turned into paste. But they'll taste 10x better with at least mayo and ketchup, and rather lots of it.

At the end of the day, a frozen pizza or a discount big burger is only 30 cent more if you eat it throughout the day, and it tastes good.

30 cents is something you can find on the ground and few will bother picking up. That's how poor the poor are in "developed countries".

In Germany, people rifling through trash for bottles/cans is a common sight, and many would think "you can do much better than 25 cent per 5-10 minutes".

But no, that's how poor the poor are. And 90% of people on this site are out of touch with that reality.

Re: Dollar Tree says US$1.25 price point to become new standard

#247

Post by jandrese »

jaywalk wrote: post #215
jandrese wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big problem with this is that Dollar Stores generally don't have a produce section. Everything is in a box, bag, or can. This is not healthy. $40/week for a single person isn't an easy food budget, but I think could manage that at my grocery store. It's $5.71 per day for three meals. You really need to optimize for calories. Pasta, dried beans, potatoes, not much meat or dairy, even produce is a bit of a luxury.…

> $40/week for a single person isn't an easy food budget What? One person can easily get by on $40/week for food.

Start working it out at your grocery store. It's not as easy as it looks.

I'm not saying it is impossible, far from it, but you do have to be conscious of every single purchase. That head of broccoli is $2 this week? Maybe not in the budget. Apples are up to $1/each again, those are right out. These aren't crazy organic prices either, this is regular produce and store brands. This goes double if you're trying to eat a healthy balanced diet and not going for a college kid ramen diet.

Even worse with a budget so small it is hard to take advantage of buying in bulk to save money. Buy a 50lb sack of potatoes and you can't afford to each much of anything else for the week. Buying flour to make bread is a great cost saver when you are buying in 40lb bags, but not so great in the 5lb bags with the markup.

Re: Dollar Tree says US$1.25 price point to become new standard

#248

Post by mynameishere »

wly_cdgr wrote: post #209
gkoberger wrote: post #126

I don't think that people in this thread appreciate how prevalent grocery shopping in dollar stores is. In the US, half of shoppers buy groceries from a dollar store. They do it because it's literally all they can afford anything else. There are more dollar stores than Walmart, Starbucks and McDonald’s combined. "Kyle Dishman can’t afford to shop at the local grocery store anymore. Instead he goes to Dollar General,…

A 50lb bag of white rice can be had on Amazon for $88, which translates into roughly 1k calories/$1 delivered to your doorstep for free in two-three days. You can get similar calorie/$ value with pasta, peanut butter, oatmeal. No one who has $40/week to spend on food in America needs to go anywhere close to hungry if they don't waste their money and time driving to dollar stores to buy overpriced non-bulk groceries.…

All of the people objecting to your comment seem to believe that the poor have no access to credit. Obviously, they do, often to a dangerous extent. And obviously, a wise use of the same credit that gets plastic trash at Walmart could get bulk food. But there are people (and not just "the poor") who simply don't plan ahead, ever, and sure don't plan ahead something that will require very bland-sounding food prep, week after week after week.

Re: Dollar Tree says US$1.25 price point to become new standard

#249

Post by throwaway0a5e »

kevinob11 wrote: post #178
jodrellblank wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His Chrysler 300? This thing Wikipedia describes as a V8 powered “full-size luxury car”? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_300

In my experience it is incredibly common for people without much money to have cars that seem impractical, because they are easy to buy but hard to maintain. I think this is pretty common with cars that were very popular when they were first released (the 300 was) so the market is saturated with old ones in rough condition that are cheap to purchase but terrible to maintain. Sample size of 1, but my roommate in colle…

Well cared for FCA products (and several other makes) are rare because they offer permissive financing and tons of incentives and intentionally design to keep low MSRPs. This results in lots of of people of more modest means owning them initially. That is a recipe for hard miles and minimal maintenance.

Your average Chrysler 300 is likely to have far more wear on the bump stops and in the back seats and trunk and far fewer scheduled maintenance items done than a 4Runner or some other car that has high class first owners.

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