Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. annual inflation rate drops to 8.5%

bls.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

741–750 of 918 posts

Re: U.S. annual inflation rate drops to 8.5%

#741

Post by _-david-_ »

anotherman554 wrote: post #538
_-david-_ wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear. The person did not say it his personal inflation is 100%. He said prices increased by 100-150%. If item X usually costs $3 and now it costs $6. The price of that item increased by 100%. Perhaps he is only spending 10% of his income, but it doesn't really matter for what he is talking about.

He said the things he care about doubled in price. This is a remarkable claim. Even gas appears to have only gone up around 30% year over year: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=e...

Gas prices doubled in my area (Southern California) for a short period of time a few months ago. Some of our gas stations were just a few cents short of $7. They have now down a bit (in the $5 - $6 range), but at one point it did get to double. I don't have any receipts to give you the exact dates and prices though.

I would say that you can't just look at average prices for the US. Look at the California version of that chart [1].

July 2021 to July 2022 is an increase of about 38%.

If you look at June to June it is 50%.

While not double, it is quite a bit more than 30%. Depending on the area the person quite possibly did recently experience double the price like I did.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=E...

Re: U.S. annual inflation rate drops to 8.5%

#742

Post by UncleMeat »

fuckcensorship wrote: post #663
UncleMeat wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point at specific goods? I can't think of a single thing that I buy on a regular basis that is twice as expensive as it was a few years ago.

I just looked at my older Walmart receipts. The cost of milk went from $1.35/gallon in February 2020 to over $4/gallon in 2022. Milk is just a quick and easy example. I’m sure I could find countless other examples if I took the time.

That's wild. For me, 1/2 gallons of milk is up like 15%.

Re: U.S. annual inflation rate drops to 8.5%

#743

Post by GloriousKoji »

88913527 wrote: post #607
gt565k wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I do is buy meat in bulk from costco and marinate and preseason then cut it up and vacuum seal it with a $30 vacuum sealer and sousivide bags from amazon. I can then stuff my freezer with ready to cook chicken, steak, fish, etc. I just take it out the night before to thaw in the fridge.

I find that grocery stores offer better pricing on occasion: ribeyes more than half off the ordinary market price, etc. If you have the vacuum sealing technology, you can be selective in your bulk purchases to maximize the financial benefits of timed purchases. Costco comes with a baseline level of quality but is less competitive on price. As you stock your freezer, you have the bandwidth to 'wait it out' until the n…

My experience is that the grocery stores around me with meats cheaper than Costco is not the meat you want to buy in bulk and save for later use. The quality is fine but the meat has been sitting on the shelf for a couple of weeks and is near or past the best by date, which is why it's marked way below market price. That being said the solution is to buy a whole bunch, cook it he same day and freeze that. Doesn't work well if you want cooked whole cuts (roast chicken, pan seared steak, etc.) but for the more processed recipes (stews, stir fry, etc.)

Re: U.S. annual inflation rate drops to 8.5%

#744

Post by thrashh »

dangus wrote: post #675
weberer wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you live in the USA, a Costco membership is very worth it.

Unpopular opinion, Costco isn't that great. - Too many items force you to buy insane quantities that don't make sense even for a 4 person family. The meat, for example, is great quality and value, but it's very hard to make steak or chicken taste good after being frozen, and in no universe should I be eating 4 huge steaks within the refrigeration shelf life. I can never use their giant tub of sour cream or shredded c…

I think most of your problem points are for newer Costco shoppers.

I walk in and buy the same stuff every time. I never buy anything I end up tossing anymore. I know where everything is because they don’t change the store much.

Costco isn’t my main grocery store but I’m only in the Costco warehouse 1-2 times per month anyway.

And the lower price of gas makes up for the price of admission for me

Re: U.S. annual inflation rate drops to 8.5%

#745

Post by anotheracctfo »

collegeburner wrote: post #657
spoonjim wrote: post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trimmed inflation is a better measure than non-trimmed for goods with substitutes. Bacon going up 1000% in price is not as bad as all food going up 5% in price because you can just stop eating bacon, but you can't just stop eating.

wrong, it's a shitty metric. consumers care about inflation bc it represe ts their quality of life getting more expensive. trimming is the equivalent of saying "lol just downgrade" which is not a good answer. you can't watch people switch their crab and milk for krab and powdered milk then be like "oh we'll just trim that out of inflation lmao". inflation is not supposed to measure change in average cost of necessiti…

Its supposed to measure the effects of inflation on the wealthy, which is why substitutes are important, because it impacts their grocery stocks.

You can starve.

Re: U.S. annual inflation rate drops to 8.5%

#746

Post by gambiting »

rand49an wrote: post #401
gambiting wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

£0.03/kWh to £0.18/kWh. Yes the number overall is tiny - but it still means that whatever I used to spend on heating/hot water, is now 6x higher.

Damn what tariff are you on? My gas is currently 7.34p/kWh with Octopus.

I'm with octopus. 7.34p/kWh is their flexible tariff, 18p/kWh is their fixed deal at the moment. My old 3p/kWh just expired and I'm not risking the price increasing even further, so I think the fixed deal is still the right way to go, even though it means increasing my price 6x right now.

Re: U.S. annual inflation rate drops to 8.5%

#747

Post by anotheracctfo »

scottLobster wrote: post #345
dmix wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm doing the same (mostly just to buy a house) and I've been using YNAB to budget money: https://www.youneedabudget.com/ It's really good, knowing where you're money is going ahead of time removes so much guilt and anxiety.

Oh yeah, I use Mint for the same. It's really fun watching my cost-cutting measures getting eaten alive by inflation in real-time :) I also find myself slowly sliding down Maslow's hierarchy. I used to be focused on achieving my dream job, now I'm strongly considering work I don't like because it pays more (being the sole income for my family is a major factor there as well). "Good enough pay for awesome work" is not…

Yeah its been wild seeing my grocery budget max out before the end of the month, despite having a good buffer a year before. YNAB has a great "cover overspending from" feature that got a good workout this year. Fortunately I got a raise so I used that to bump my food budget.

Anybody who doesn't demand a raise in this environment is a fool.

Re: U.S. annual inflation rate drops to 8.5%

#748

Post by fleddr »

_-david-_ wrote: post #490
fleddr wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree that CPI "feels" to be consistently lower compared to what actual people experience. But you can't have a meaningful discussion about it if you do not list the weight of the price hike in your expense pattern. When gas for your car normally takes up 10% of your income, and this price doubles, your personal inflation is 10%, not 100% (assuming no other price hikes).

Just to be clear. The person did not say it his personal inflation is 100%. He said prices increased by 100-150%. If item X usually costs $3 and now it costs $6. The price of that item increased by 100%. Perhaps he is only spending 10% of his income, but it doesn't really matter for what he is talking about.

What he implied with the term "conspiracy theory" in relation to inflation is that there's a vast mismatch between reported CPI and experienced CPI, hence the reported CPI is a conspiracy theory or corrupted.

Typically statements like "this increased 100-150%" are used to support the theory. The only thing I'm saying is that individual price hikes are meaningless without any information about the total expense breakdown.

That said, I do agree that CPI is typically slightly optimistic.

Re: U.S. annual inflation rate drops to 8.5%

#749

Post by antisthenes »

jdhn wrote: post #253
metatranca wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar in Florida with FPL(the utility company) [0]. We are now paying more. These are the new rates [1]. [0] https://cleanenergy.org/blog/fpls-holiday-surprise-810-milli... [1] https://www.fpl.com/content/dam/fplgp/us/en/rates/pdf/res-ju...

I'd love to know what Duke is going to do. I have a 1950s block home with less than 3 inches of insulation in the attic (Duke Energy efficiency audit put it at a charitable R-11) and original windows that I was told by the HVAC person "leak like a sieve". Electric bill this month may hit $400.

My house is built in the 1950s as well, probably with comparable amounts of insulation.

My electric bill has never been higher than $150, and maybe $175 this summer.

Stop putting your AC on 68 and you'll have a lower bill.

Re: U.S. annual inflation rate drops to 8.5%

#750

Post by hunterb123 »

banannaise wrote: post #650
hunterb123 wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or pull your generator out and power your cooler and other essentials. Much easier than trying to get and find dry ice in an emergency.

A standard residential generator typically holds a gallon of fuel and will burn through that in about 8-12 hours, which is not the ideal way to run a refrigerator. If you run the generator constantly, you'll burn through substantial amounts of fuel, and if you run it only occasionally, you're going to get the kind of temperature fluctuations we're trying to avoid here. I have a 1kW power station with solar charging,…

My generator holds 2.5 gallons and runs a bit over 24 hours, so that's about right, but I generally have a 15 gallon tank in the shed. That generator can power the A/C, fridge, everything, without having to open it and let cold air out and transfer items.

Power outages typically aren't more than one day, and dry ice is not going to help you for those outages.

I don't have any dry ice suppliers nearby (no the Walmart doesn't stock it), it's not a low-tech solution.

The low tech solution would be a bigger gas canister. 2 gallons a day is not bad at all.

In an apartment building or something I can certain see the use case for dry ice though.

Post reply on HN