We bought a house this summer. It was already in the process of being built and one thing we had added into the contract is that we wanted to fence in the yard. We got it added to the contract for an additional 5k. By the time they actually had it built (like 2.5 months later) it cost the company building the house 10k. Luckily for us, we were locked in to the contract price and the company actually building the house had to eat it. But it was wild to me that it would double in such a short period of time.
The episode touched on this briefly, and several others have commented here as well, about the executives and the stock holders still getting rich. I think any discussion about inflation should include the capitalist requirement of a constantly increasing stock price. This pushes executive pay as well. These big publicly held companies drive the costs for everything else, either by raising the costs of materials or labor.
My husband is a bow hunter and part of a town government “wildlife management program” that gives people permits to hunt (bow only) on specific pieces of woodland owned by the town, in order to check of our absolutely out of control deer population a little bit. Here’s a change I have seen this year: normally my husband has text groups going with various guys (plus like one lady who hunts) where they share screen shots from their trail cams, what they are seeing in the woods, who has harvested what deer, etc. This year I am seeing a LOT more texts between the non-hunter wives on these topics. There is a lot of anxiety about getting meat in the freezer because a lot of people can’t afford grocery store prices. One family I know is not going to see family for Thanksgiving next week so the husband can get out hunting every day because he hasn’t gotten a deer yet and they need it. In my social circles, hunting has always felt a bit like a weird hobby guys that bond over and their wives roll their eyes a little bit at, but this year it feels like a survival strategy.
My husband also does most of our grocery shopping (I do Costco and TJs trips as needed) and he is NOT an impulse spender at all. He shops Aldi first then the local grocery store for what Aldi doesn’t carry. This is the number 1 thing keeping our food costs down! We used to dine out 2x a week now usually just 1.
Fast casual restautants SUCK now with private equity buying them up. We no longer eat at Panera or Chipotle because the food is so bad and expensive! I remember 20+ years ago when the quality and price point were great.
I just wanted to say I loved this episode. It was a great processing episode for a really disturbing, shitty political/policy week. I often question as a therapist if validation is enough for my clients who are going through -at times- the unimaginable ..and this in a way was a reminder that sometimes validation is enough. :)
Thank you for giving us a place to feel begrudgingly about prices. I do my best to stay positive but my very middle class family feel so squeezed at every turn. Just yesterday when we checked out at Kroger our bill was $350 and my husband was like “this is not $350 worth of groceries” but now it is. 😢
We owned a restaurant for almost a decade (just closed summer 2024) and I can’t even imagine the stress we would be feeling right now regarding prices on EVERYTHING if the restaurant were still open. Add on increasing minimum wage laws every year and it becomes almost unsustainable for small business owners to keep their doors open let alone make a profit.
Now, let me also say I am all for people making a living wage AND the realities of that, especially in a place like a restaurant where tips are involved/seniority is hard to honor financially and it becomes a very convoluted conversation, particularly when we are neighbors with a county who has an automatic 5% increase on pay due to being a big city. It’s hard to keep good people! Ok, stepping off my soap box now. 😜
thank you so much for this episode. It is so difficult as a young millennial to hear that the economy is “so good” but to be living paycheck to paycheck when both my husband and I have good jobs. I’m so defeated. I was curious that you also didn’t add a piece or comment about the wealth hoarding in this country. A member of my team at work was worried about that her paycheck was messed up so we were looking at it together. More than half went to taxes. Not only that but last year during tax season she owed. I have heard similar things from my friends. I agree that we can’t expect wages to go up without repercussions but also CEOs are making millions and the rest of the workforce is struggling. Am I thinking about this incorrectly?
I laughed out loud when Sarah said “I can’t even imagine building a house right now”, because we are, in fact, building a house right now 😭. We poured the foundation in June 2024. There’s a lot of privileges that have made it possible and not have to totally change our plans or the materials we wanted to use. Namely, we are doing 85% of the labor ourselves (blessed be my family and friends with skills and willingness to work for pizza and pay it forwardness), an excellent relationship with our local small town hardware store (giving us the contractors discount and ordering a lot of what we need special in for us), and a very inexpensive place to stay during construction. It has been very scary and I will be so glad when we are done, moved in, and have the final cost nailed in. We purchased the wood to close in the framing the week before Hurricane Helene came in. Our hardware store manager we have been working with called and said “you’re going to want to order this right now if you’re even remotely close to being ready for it”.
I looked at kid winter boots at Walmart today. $30 for TODDLER boots that were not even decent quality. And FIFTY DOLLARS for boots with a character on them. I'll be looking second hand for my son, and it helps to know that his boots will get handed down to his brother. But still. Walmart used to be the go-to for inexpensive kid stuff. I swear when I bought boots last year they were $22 and held up great. This is only one example of many sticker (and lowering quality) shocks I get on a weekly basis 🫠 if prices were going up and the quality was better, or a plateau, that would be one thing. But it feels like we are all paying more for less.
Even second hand stuff feels expensive! I did a little thrift store shopping for an upcoming coat drive and I couldn’t believe a coat I found that was $70.
So true. Our local Goodwill still has good prices but most people are using Facebook Marketplace for kid stuff, so that's the only spot to find decent quality used items.
So true. Our local Goodwill still has good prices but most people are using Facebook Marketplace for kid stuff, so that's the only spot to find decent quality used items.
I have a small hack for others looking to save a few dollars on their grocery bills right now. If you live close to a university that has a meat sciences department, they often have shops where they sell the meat they process to the public. We live really close to OSU and the prices at their shop are a lot better than the grocery store ($4.25 for ground beef still!!). I googled a few other universities, and it seems fairly common. (I looked at Iowa, Georgia, and Texas A&M). Just Google the university and then “meat sciences shop.” I hope this can help some other folks who might be looking for ways to stretch the budget these days. For reference, here’s OSU’s: https://ansci.osu.edu/sites/ansci/files/imce/images/Copy%20of%20-meat%20sales%20flyer%2011-3-25_1.pdf
The thing about “we want prices to go down and wages to go up and we can’t have both” is…if we slashed C-suite salaries and stopped promising always-growing dividends to shareholders, there’d be plenty of money to pay regular workers more without also raising prices.
I know it’s not that simple and wouldn’t apply to small businesses and the workers they employ, but I saw a meme the other day claiming the Elon Musk is going to make more than all the kindergarten teachers in the country combined this year. I have no idea if that’s true or how you’d even calculate it, but it’s easy to believe. True or not, I’m feeling more democratic socialist every day. Being a billionaire should be illegal.
To the Border Patrol in Charlotte convo - I am inflamed by the whole thing but particularly by why border patrol, which typically has a jurisdiction of 100 miles from a coast, can operate in Charlotte which is well over 100 miles from any N.C. coast. ?!?!? Who can do something about that?? Like a rights group suing the administration? Or could there be a house hearing about why they are operating outside of that jurisdiction?
This episode hit home for me. I am approaching a new baby in 2026, associated medical costs (hello, insurance and deductibles and out of pocket costs), and my car feels like it’s on its last leg. Oh, and I’m paying for my student loans still, working to make a dent in my debt, and saving something every paycheck.
It feels increasingly impossible to imagine adding a daycare expense AND a car payment next year but that’s what I’m looking towards. And I know my fortune 100 job is not going to give me the raise I would need to really make that all work. My husband and I are doing ok right now, but I worry we’re going to turn down a tougher road with the way the economy is shaking out.
Talking about expenses, just this year I finally hit my goal salary of what I had always sort of dreamed of making and being “rich” 😂 What a joke! I mean I’m doing fine. I can afford what I need and many things I want (nothing crazy or extravagant). But this salary is not what I thought it would be. I’m counting down to next summer when I have a car paid off and my daughter’s club swimming ends and the pre-paid tuition account is paid off. But I wonder, what will be the next thing? Probably a new roof! 🤦🏻♀️
Same here, Michelle. A few months ago, the WSJ ran a piece on families whose household income was around $200K-$250K (most had kids at home). The takeaway is that because prices for everything are so high, none of the families felt particularly comfortable despite making a good income on paper.
I watched an otherwise bad movie once that contained this line: "Being rich is hard. You never think you're rich enough." It's way too true. I bet if I had $200 million I'd think "if I only had $300 million..."
I liked this episode but I would love a deep dive into figuring out if the cutting back will even make a difference. Since so much of the wealth is being consolidated at the top I wonder if large businesses will even feel the hit. We have been cutting back for a while and skipping unnecessary items for a couple of years but I feel like the wealthy are stepping in and able to buy all that much more so those businesses haven’t noticed the drop in sales or revenue.
Also, I have been saying to friends our grocery bill isn’t up at all, but I did finally put together that we no longer buy red meat and we are tending to eat a bunch of pasta or other meals that are “cheap” to make. While we have made those changes our grocery bill is still around $1000 a month. So yes our bill hasn’t gone up but we have made big changes in what we are actually buying and still spending the same amount.
I (Maggie) don't know if this is helpful for you. When I was younger (way back like 3 years ago ;) ), I would put a lot of responsibility on myself to "be the change I want to see" in all the ways. I wanted to buy ethically produced clothing, organic food, shop local, vote for the best people, and, and, and.
And what I realized was that I can't afford to live all my values at the same time (because I also value spending less money than I earn and funding my retirement), and I have to prioritize. Don't feel like you have to be the person with your finger in the dam. Prioritize supporting the causes that matter to you and make the difference you can make, and trust that other people will do their part, too. I would personally like to see more room for all of us to do a little than to ask everyone to do everything - because I think that causes people to burn out and tune out. -m
We bought a house this summer. It was already in the process of being built and one thing we had added into the contract is that we wanted to fence in the yard. We got it added to the contract for an additional 5k. By the time they actually had it built (like 2.5 months later) it cost the company building the house 10k. Luckily for us, we were locked in to the contract price and the company actually building the house had to eat it. But it was wild to me that it would double in such a short period of time.
The episode touched on this briefly, and several others have commented here as well, about the executives and the stock holders still getting rich. I think any discussion about inflation should include the capitalist requirement of a constantly increasing stock price. This pushes executive pay as well. These big publicly held companies drive the costs for everything else, either by raising the costs of materials or labor.
My husband is a bow hunter and part of a town government “wildlife management program” that gives people permits to hunt (bow only) on specific pieces of woodland owned by the town, in order to check of our absolutely out of control deer population a little bit. Here’s a change I have seen this year: normally my husband has text groups going with various guys (plus like one lady who hunts) where they share screen shots from their trail cams, what they are seeing in the woods, who has harvested what deer, etc. This year I am seeing a LOT more texts between the non-hunter wives on these topics. There is a lot of anxiety about getting meat in the freezer because a lot of people can’t afford grocery store prices. One family I know is not going to see family for Thanksgiving next week so the husband can get out hunting every day because he hasn’t gotten a deer yet and they need it. In my social circles, hunting has always felt a bit like a weird hobby guys that bond over and their wives roll their eyes a little bit at, but this year it feels like a survival strategy.
I knew so many folks in upstate NY who hunted all of thanksgiving break to fill the freezer.
Yep, I’m outside Rochester!
Also if we had a Publix here I would be in trouble but would have the good subs in my life at least 🤣
My husband also does most of our grocery shopping (I do Costco and TJs trips as needed) and he is NOT an impulse spender at all. He shops Aldi first then the local grocery store for what Aldi doesn’t carry. This is the number 1 thing keeping our food costs down! We used to dine out 2x a week now usually just 1.
Fast casual restautants SUCK now with private equity buying them up. We no longer eat at Panera or Chipotle because the food is so bad and expensive! I remember 20+ years ago when the quality and price point were great.
Private equity ruined Jimmy John’s and I’m heartbroken over it.
Ok also noticed they weren’t as good but couldn’t pinpoint it
I just wanted to say I loved this episode. It was a great processing episode for a really disturbing, shitty political/policy week. I often question as a therapist if validation is enough for my clients who are going through -at times- the unimaginable ..and this in a way was a reminder that sometimes validation is enough. :)
Thank you for giving us a place to feel begrudgingly about prices. I do my best to stay positive but my very middle class family feel so squeezed at every turn. Just yesterday when we checked out at Kroger our bill was $350 and my husband was like “this is not $350 worth of groceries” but now it is. 😢
We owned a restaurant for almost a decade (just closed summer 2024) and I can’t even imagine the stress we would be feeling right now regarding prices on EVERYTHING if the restaurant were still open. Add on increasing minimum wage laws every year and it becomes almost unsustainable for small business owners to keep their doors open let alone make a profit.
Now, let me also say I am all for people making a living wage AND the realities of that, especially in a place like a restaurant where tips are involved/seniority is hard to honor financially and it becomes a very convoluted conversation, particularly when we are neighbors with a county who has an automatic 5% increase on pay due to being a big city. It’s hard to keep good people! Ok, stepping off my soap box now. 😜
thank you so much for this episode. It is so difficult as a young millennial to hear that the economy is “so good” but to be living paycheck to paycheck when both my husband and I have good jobs. I’m so defeated. I was curious that you also didn’t add a piece or comment about the wealth hoarding in this country. A member of my team at work was worried about that her paycheck was messed up so we were looking at it together. More than half went to taxes. Not only that but last year during tax season she owed. I have heard similar things from my friends. I agree that we can’t expect wages to go up without repercussions but also CEOs are making millions and the rest of the workforce is struggling. Am I thinking about this incorrectly?
I laughed out loud when Sarah said “I can’t even imagine building a house right now”, because we are, in fact, building a house right now 😭. We poured the foundation in June 2024. There’s a lot of privileges that have made it possible and not have to totally change our plans or the materials we wanted to use. Namely, we are doing 85% of the labor ourselves (blessed be my family and friends with skills and willingness to work for pizza and pay it forwardness), an excellent relationship with our local small town hardware store (giving us the contractors discount and ordering a lot of what we need special in for us), and a very inexpensive place to stay during construction. It has been very scary and I will be so glad when we are done, moved in, and have the final cost nailed in. We purchased the wood to close in the framing the week before Hurricane Helene came in. Our hardware store manager we have been working with called and said “you’re going to want to order this right now if you’re even remotely close to being ready for it”.
I looked at kid winter boots at Walmart today. $30 for TODDLER boots that were not even decent quality. And FIFTY DOLLARS for boots with a character on them. I'll be looking second hand for my son, and it helps to know that his boots will get handed down to his brother. But still. Walmart used to be the go-to for inexpensive kid stuff. I swear when I bought boots last year they were $22 and held up great. This is only one example of many sticker (and lowering quality) shocks I get on a weekly basis 🫠 if prices were going up and the quality was better, or a plateau, that would be one thing. But it feels like we are all paying more for less.
Even second hand stuff feels expensive! I did a little thrift store shopping for an upcoming coat drive and I couldn’t believe a coat I found that was $70.
So true. Our local Goodwill still has good prices but most people are using Facebook Marketplace for kid stuff, so that's the only spot to find decent quality used items.
So true. Our local Goodwill still has good prices but most people are using Facebook Marketplace for kid stuff, so that's the only spot to find decent quality used items.
I have a small hack for others looking to save a few dollars on their grocery bills right now. If you live close to a university that has a meat sciences department, they often have shops where they sell the meat they process to the public. We live really close to OSU and the prices at their shop are a lot better than the grocery store ($4.25 for ground beef still!!). I googled a few other universities, and it seems fairly common. (I looked at Iowa, Georgia, and Texas A&M). Just Google the university and then “meat sciences shop.” I hope this can help some other folks who might be looking for ways to stretch the budget these days. For reference, here’s OSU’s: https://ansci.osu.edu/sites/ansci/files/imce/images/Copy%20of%20-meat%20sales%20flyer%2011-3-25_1.pdf
The thing about “we want prices to go down and wages to go up and we can’t have both” is…if we slashed C-suite salaries and stopped promising always-growing dividends to shareholders, there’d be plenty of money to pay regular workers more without also raising prices.
I know it’s not that simple and wouldn’t apply to small businesses and the workers they employ, but I saw a meme the other day claiming the Elon Musk is going to make more than all the kindergarten teachers in the country combined this year. I have no idea if that’s true or how you’d even calculate it, but it’s easy to believe. True or not, I’m feeling more democratic socialist every day. Being a billionaire should be illegal.
To the Border Patrol in Charlotte convo - I am inflamed by the whole thing but particularly by why border patrol, which typically has a jurisdiction of 100 miles from a coast, can operate in Charlotte which is well over 100 miles from any N.C. coast. ?!?!? Who can do something about that?? Like a rights group suing the administration? Or could there be a house hearing about why they are operating outside of that jurisdiction?
Chicago is filing suits left and right so there may be one about this too.
This episode hit home for me. I am approaching a new baby in 2026, associated medical costs (hello, insurance and deductibles and out of pocket costs), and my car feels like it’s on its last leg. Oh, and I’m paying for my student loans still, working to make a dent in my debt, and saving something every paycheck.
It feels increasingly impossible to imagine adding a daycare expense AND a car payment next year but that’s what I’m looking towards. And I know my fortune 100 job is not going to give me the raise I would need to really make that all work. My husband and I are doing ok right now, but I worry we’re going to turn down a tougher road with the way the economy is shaking out.
Talking about expenses, just this year I finally hit my goal salary of what I had always sort of dreamed of making and being “rich” 😂 What a joke! I mean I’m doing fine. I can afford what I need and many things I want (nothing crazy or extravagant). But this salary is not what I thought it would be. I’m counting down to next summer when I have a car paid off and my daughter’s club swimming ends and the pre-paid tuition account is paid off. But I wonder, what will be the next thing? Probably a new roof! 🤦🏻♀️
Same here, Michelle. A few months ago, the WSJ ran a piece on families whose household income was around $200K-$250K (most had kids at home). The takeaway is that because prices for everything are so high, none of the families felt particularly comfortable despite making a good income on paper.
I watched an otherwise bad movie once that contained this line: "Being rich is hard. You never think you're rich enough." It's way too true. I bet if I had $200 million I'd think "if I only had $300 million..."
I liked this episode but I would love a deep dive into figuring out if the cutting back will even make a difference. Since so much of the wealth is being consolidated at the top I wonder if large businesses will even feel the hit. We have been cutting back for a while and skipping unnecessary items for a couple of years but I feel like the wealthy are stepping in and able to buy all that much more so those businesses haven’t noticed the drop in sales or revenue.
Also, I have been saying to friends our grocery bill isn’t up at all, but I did finally put together that we no longer buy red meat and we are tending to eat a bunch of pasta or other meals that are “cheap” to make. While we have made those changes our grocery bill is still around $1000 a month. So yes our bill hasn’t gone up but we have made big changes in what we are actually buying and still spending the same amount.
I (Maggie) don't know if this is helpful for you. When I was younger (way back like 3 years ago ;) ), I would put a lot of responsibility on myself to "be the change I want to see" in all the ways. I wanted to buy ethically produced clothing, organic food, shop local, vote for the best people, and, and, and.
And what I realized was that I can't afford to live all my values at the same time (because I also value spending less money than I earn and funding my retirement), and I have to prioritize. Don't feel like you have to be the person with your finger in the dam. Prioritize supporting the causes that matter to you and make the difference you can make, and trust that other people will do their part, too. I would personally like to see more room for all of us to do a little than to ask everyone to do everything - because I think that causes people to burn out and tune out. -m