Please do not judge a book by its cover. Not everyone is into massive decor. If you walk in my house, you will not see much furniture and wall decor. Why? I detest having too much stuff. Yet our house had been paid off (just like the prior house which had no furniture in the formal living room, and not because we could not afford it).
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Cleaning up is a problem with a lot of stuff, they collect dust. My wall has my paintings, one of these days they will be worth a lot, haha.
No one is doing this TBH. By no furniture in the articles they were meaning no bed, no table, etc, nothing. Not that there simply wasn’t enough for the author’s taste.
We’re like @DrGoogle123 in that our splurges are on travel mostly. Come to our place and most folks would gasp that we have holes in ancient carpets, peeling wallpaper (because the cat sharpened his claws some time ago), and seriously out of date + not matching appliances or furniture. Our view is, “Hey, it still works - why replace it? We could go to X instead!” But we still have chairs to sit in, a bed, and table even if they aren’t modern. And when something needs to be replaced we’re just as likely to search local estate auctions as we are a new or used appliance shop.
I have our deposit in on a new solar EV though. We’ll spend on things important to us. And our charity donations are fairly similar to our retirement fund “donations” because we’re grateful we can do what we want to do.
Should our personal economy take a hit I’m not sure that we would knock out the charity donations before retirement funds. When it did take a hit back in 2009 (ish), we reluctantly cut travel first. Retirement contributions were cut second. It would almost certainly be the same if economic woes reach our area today. (I think we’re doing ok with our retirement fund - I see no need to leave the kids millions TBH.)
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We are also among those who just aggregate assets. Checks and cash coming in from whatever source (including tax refund or any govt payment) go into our joint checking account. We use that to disburse it as needed. We don’t like buying things unless we can afford to pay cash—our PV system, a vehicle, our new A/C system.
We are happy living below our means and having a large cushion in case the sky is falling for whatever reason.
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One of our dog’s (prescription) food items has gone from roughly $3.20 a can to $5 a can.
I am thankful we can afford it, but it’s still pretty surprising that it’s increased so much since August.
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This weekend, the lowest apple price at the 2 supermarkets I visited was $1.69/lb. That’s a 70% increase over typical prices last year. Some of this increase may also relate to an increased emphasis on trademark specialty apples (SweeTango, Lemonade, SnapDragon, Cosmic Crisp, Hunnyz, …) and decreased emphasis on traditional brands (Delicious, Gala, Fiji, …), rather than just inflation effects.
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I just picked up some Red Delicious at Smart and Final for 99c, a store I only discovered recently.
I was able to find some Fuji apples at Costco (our fav variety) in a cardboard box instead of the environmentally unfriendly, hard to open plastic shells. It was 4 pounds for $6, so $1.50/lb, which around here is pretty good. They are tasty and not bruised, so bonus points!
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In keeping with eating what is on sale at the store my wife had me get a pork shoulder that was $0.99 per pound. We will have pulled pork at least twice this week. I am good with that.
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That’s a good price. Last time I bought a pork shoulder, it’s $1.69 a pound. But for $8 I got multiple meals out of it.
I discovered Aldi this past weekend. They don’t carry everything I like to eat, but enough that their low prices should help to mitigate the effect of high gas prices.
I tried putting a quarter in one of the shopping carts so I could use it, but the quarter became stuck. But then someone gave me the cart that she had just finished using, so it worked out fine.
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Lol, I visit Aldi maybe once a month and I have developed cart/quarter anxiety as sometimes I just can’t seem to get the process right! 
Often people will just leave their quarter in for the next person as well.
Like any other store, Aldi has items that are good buys and ones that are not. I regularly buy dairy including milk/half and half/creamer and a lot of my cheese, meats like the 1 pound packages of grain fed ground beef, ground chicken, italian sausage and baking supplies like flour, sugar, chocolate chips, ghee and some random extra canned items I can’t get at Costco in bulk. It’s worth a trip once a month.
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I noticed that our Costco and TJ are getting much busier than regularly. I wonder if that is driven by folks looking for lower prices.
(My favorite beef cut is still $8.99 a pound at Costco. Boneless skinless chicken meanwhile is up to $5.99! Eggs are still limited to 2 cartons per shopping cart).
We switched from brown eggs to white eggs at Costco, my husband has not noticed a difference. This goes to show when inflation is low people don’t really pay attention to prices, but when it’s high like now they do.
Maybe “upper middle class” doesn’t pay attention to the prices when inflation is low however for others this is a constant practice.
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Aldi was definitely on the rotation back when my better half stayed home with the kids. You can get a lot there for little money. I know some of it isn’t brand name. I will say many brands produce both their own brand and then private label in the same facility.
There are million ways to save a buck here or there. Some don’t take that much effort. My wife will call me cheap at times, but it is hard to go against my nature of wasting money.
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Aldi requires payment to use its shopping carts? Forgive my ignorance, but we don’t have any Aldi stores out here in the mountain west.
I saved a bundle on an organic turkey from Whole Foods this weekend. Usually priced at $2.99/lb, it was on sale for $2.49/lb with an additional 10% off for Prime members. With the discounts, it was roughly the same amount I paid last year.
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@abasket - yes. I can buy whatever I want but I do have a rough food budget and the higher the prices get, the more I shop sales and meal plan and think about my choices. Organic eggs are 9.99 a dozen at my local NJ supermarket. So I downgraded to free-range. It’s not an issue but I am being more mindful because I have a thrifty side.
@mountainsoul - also yes, you need a quarter to liberate a cart to use at Aldi. I shop there every once in a while. The convenience factor of my local grocery store keeps me loyal.
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If it’s free range without being Certified Humane, put them back. Buy the regular eggs instead. Free range without being certified humane just means no cages, but chickens are crammed into a building where many attack each other. It’s worse. Ditto “vegetarian fed.” Chickens are omnivores. They’ll eat the weaker chickens if they aren’t getting their protein from other sources.
Both “Free Range” and “Vegetarian Fed” are marketing techniques - not things better for the chickens, unless they’re also Certified Humane.
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You need a quarter to get a shopping cart but you get your quarter back when you return your cart to the cart corral. It is also a strategy for them not to have to use store staff to gather carts. I’d say it’s pretty effective - rarely a cart seen in the parking lot.
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