As I'm looking at our food budget & seeing that over time - our grocery bill has gone up.
Immediately I thought - it must be inflation.
So I look at the latest inflation rates that say in 2009, we actually experienced DEflation of -1.3%
Regardless, it seems I'm having to increase our food budget to $600-$700/mo for a family of 6.
It could be entirely possible the kids are just eating more. We've curbed going out to eat as well.
In addition, our insurance covers the baby's formula (She is on a special high calorie drink due to being "Failure to Thrive") so if we had to pay for that on top of our other groceries, I could easily see us spending around $1000/mo on groceries.
How?
Our menus literally look like:
Skillet Lasagne (uses sausage, ricotta, marinara, parsley, lasagne noodles...one box of lasagne noodles makes 2 dinners of this)... This is homemade & made in 30 minutes
Spaghetti & Meatballs
Tacos
Beef Stroganoff
Turkey Burgers
Tortellini
Family Burrito (4 Flour tortillas folded over to make a square, using refried beans, chopped chicken, cheese, onion, taco seasoning & salsa, then topped w/cheese & tomatoes)
and other stuff like that... mostly pastas though.
We buy about 6-8 boxes of cereal for a 2 week period.
I clip coupons and price compare.
*shrug*
There has to be an answer to this, I can't imagine why my grocery bill would go up if the economy is deflating.
If inflation is down, why do things seem to cost more?
November 4th, 2009 at 01:55 pm
November 4th, 2009 at 03:07 pm 1257347259
As far as I can tell, over the past 6 months, while we've been experiencing deflation, the Consumer Price Index has nevertheless been increasing.
So, while our dollar has actually strengthened, the price of goods has also been on the rise. However, that doesn't mean it translates to a perfect balance, and it's likely that we are in a situation where the price of goods is out-pacing the short-term strengthening of the dollar.
Here's a chart on the CPI.
Here's a chart on inflation.
November 4th, 2009 at 10:42 pm 1257374520
November 4th, 2009 at 11:24 pm 1257377085
No answers here.
November 5th, 2009 at 02:10 am 1257387008
November 5th, 2009 at 07:04 am 1257404677
Also, deflation and inflation are reflections of the amount of money floating around - inflation is too much money while deflation is the scarcity of money. After all, if your house was worth 500K in 2006, but now is worth 350K, what happened to that 150K. You could say that it didn't exist, or you can say that it was destroyed somehow.