Inflation Watch -- February 21, 2024

Locator: 46859INFLATION.

One of my pet peeves is the exaggerated reporting with regard to the cost of food. 

This is from the Kroger circular this week: bacon, soft drinks, and chips are all on sale this week for half-price. And "party-size" Lays potato chips are being sold for less than half price. And every week, it's something else.

I'll bike to Walmart in a few minutes and check out the price of eggs, which seems to be what the Wall Street Journal journalists seem most interested in. LOL. The NYC and DC folks see a dozen eggs priced at $3.50 a dozen. I'll come back later with the price at Walmart here in north Texas. My hunch? $1.89.

Later: wow, I was wrong! Eggs are back up in price. At Walmart the best I could do was $2.60 for a dozen but no shortage. But the price of eggs is a one-off. It has nothing to do with the price of groceries in general, except on the margin:

But, as usual, the price of eggs did not affect me today -- didn't buy any. We stock up when we find a sale and we still have plenty in the refrigerator. But I had bought them, I could have afforded the extra dollar per dozen with savings elsewhere -- see below. It all averages out.

But on the other hand, prices elsewhere are coming down. My soft drink staple is diet Coke, in the 500 ml 6-pack plastic packs. Recently I've seen a six-pack as high as $5.88 but generally a six-pack is running $4.98, but at Walmart the price has been rolled back to .... drum roll ... $3.98.

Another staple: tuna fish in those little cans. They generally run a bit over $2.00 these days, or maybe around $1.79. Today, four cans for $3.52, less than a buck a tin. 

The interesting thing: my "groceries" were quite expensive today but in fact I had only a few food items. Most of my "groceries" were non-food items, including a ream of printer paper and some bug spray (very, very expensive).