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I lived next to a little natural grocery for a few years. Prices were about 20% higher than the ordinary grocery and maybe double what I’d pay at Costco. At first I was resistant because they seemed to be overcharging so much. Overtime I talked to the employees and realized the savings I made on time and not needing a car more than made up for the higher price. Plus they had to keep prices high because shoplifting was very common.
I started figuring my time and car expenses into future shopping trips and now I don’t mind paying a bit more for the local co-op.
You don’t go to Costco to save money, you go so you have an excuse to buy a box of instant ramen.
Just one box? Look over here at Mr. Self Control!
This is assuming you live in a walkable town or neighborhood. I remember a reddit post (can’t find it anymore) of a guy trying to walk less than 2 miles to an appointment in Orlando. He followed Google Maps directions down the shoulder of a highway that led to a dead-end, backtracked, tried again, and finally made almost all the way to his destination, which was on the opposite side of a 6-lane highway Google wanted him to cross.
I’ve only ever visited the theme parks in Orlando, but I experienced one intersection I had to share with cars. I spent every walk sign waiting for cars making a turn to yield. Even though I had the right of way, literally none of them did, until I finally had to run across the street because the cars at the red light, who could see I was 1/3 through the intersection, floored it the second their light turned green. Sure, fuck all of those car-brained drivers who refuse to yield to pedestrians, but also fuck that city for not fining drivers for shitty behavior, or at least changing their traffic lights so all cars have red lights when pedestrians have the walk sign.
Anyway, point is, personal choices are important, but they can’t overcome the systemic issues created by car culture without collective action. And Orlando sucks ass.
The whole “turn right on red” in north America baffles me as a European.
In NYC it isn’t allowed and now I think it’s insane we allow it everywhere else.
Oh, this wasn’t even a right on red. The green light for cars was lined up with the walk sign for pedestrians going rhe same direction. In a situation like that, when a car with a green light needs to turn through the crosswalk, they are supposed to yield to any pedestrian crossing at that time, but apparently the people of Orlando have so much car entitlement that they don’t even slow down when a pedestrian is standing in the middle of the crosswalk trying to complete a legal crossing.
Ok let’s flip this to cherry pick my example.
Don’t need a car most of life, get to 40 and upskill and become a software engineer. Job market is terrible due to saturation and I suck at interviews so can only take a job 40 miles away from home.
No problem.exe. I can take 2.5-3 hour commute each way 5 days a week.
Fast forward a few months and I’m just dead on my feet, do nothing but go to work come home goto bed get up and repeat.
Decide this can’t continue. Can’t afford to move to the bougie town where I work so decide I need a car finally.
Save 12-15 hours per week and it’s not too much more expensive than taking a Metrolink and a train to work with 30 mins of walking too. Plus all the meals you need to eat out of the house when you’re out for 14 hours in a day.
On my days off I’ll take the tram 20 miles each way to go rock climbing but some people actually do need cars and they shouldn’t be made to feel bad for it.
Also the sunk cost of the car’s capital goes toward all the other things you’ll use your car for, like leisure time and driving other humans around. Also the practicality of walking to get groceries decreases as you gain more mouths to feed.
I’ve got a family of four, soon to be five. There’s no way I could possibly do all my grocery shopping on foot. It’s just too much to carry. I’d have to bring a wheelbarrow, and all the ice cream would melt.
It’s also not super practical to walk to get groceries if you live in a hot climate.
Exactly. I’ve actually used the car at weekends to do some work for friends. So can earn more money with it.
here it’s more like this:
don’t own a car no store in reach ??? starve
Anon obviously has never been to Costco. No way you can leave that place without parting with $100
And no way you only save $5, long as you only buy what you need. We got a sectional for $2k that would have cost $3k elsewhere, and far less than the $5500 LoveSac we were eyeballing.
This is also coincidentally how the math works on big box stores.
- Big box parking lot/strip mall opens
- Save $100 on groceries annually
- Pay $150 extra in taxes and gas to maintain and drive on an additional 10 miles of road
- Local options shut down, prices go up, and it takes 5 extra minutes to get to box store with increased traffic.
- Box store eventually closes due to not being in suburb anyway.
Once again a post about zoning laws instead of cars.
“I would like to live in a carless society”
v
“I would like somewhere to park my car”
is a real dichotomy that spans both issues.
A great example is my own hometown of Houston, a city famous for its lack of zoning.
By 1978, the city had gutted itself in order to clear space for more parking. It took decades to reverse that mistake and rebuild the interior of the city. A big part of that was the introduction of (still very modest) bus and light rail.
Still a ton of parking spots I see, could’ve been replaced by bicycle racks, apartments, and parks.
The parking spots could have gone underground.
could’ve been replaced by bicycle racks, apartments, and parks.
We did actually have a ton of public racks and even rental bikes installed under Mayors White and Parker. Turner kinda neglected them. Then, over the last year, John Whitmire tore them all out again.
I’ll also note that the Main Street light rail has created a boom in apartment housing along its length. South of downtown was basically a slum until the rail was installed. Now it’s a bunch of 8+ story apartments and a few high rises with shopping/restaurants on the first floor.
Then I hope Whitmire gets ran over by a car. Hope he plucks the sour fruits of his own policies.
Reading more on him and he sounds like an ass. No AC for inmates in hot summers… then he’s a criminal himself for making people die. Maybe he should undergo a lack of AC himself.
He also seems awfully willing to lock people up, instead of actually making the situation better by ending his own life.
If it weren’t for weather I wouldn’t have a car. Sure, 90 minutes by ebike is a serious time commitment, but I’d save so much money a year it makes sense as a part time job.
But fuck riding a bike on ice for two months lol
I haven’t had a car for two years now. Well technically i had the car i use for my job, but i never use that in my free time. While public transportation is pretty good here, i still live close to nowhere and i have to get to the next bus stop. Ebikes are fantastic but they do have their limits. Gettig groceries on a nice sunday morning, i can go on a 90min trip without any roads and no cars and a view that would blow most people’s mind. But a rainy Thursday evening in the cold, there are just days that i’m not in the mood for that.
For the rainy days you could get a quality rain jacket. Works pretty well. We got rainproof backpacks too.
Ice ? Canadians do bike in winter too.
Ice isn’t the worst IMO, it’s the sloshy zero degree sludge, ice cold rain and biting wind.
Do they do it for 20+ miles? In the dark?
Maybe they do.
I don’t want to die.
you don’t want to die? that doesn’t sound like weather is what matters to you, that sounds like safety from traffic is what matters.
and if you’re talking about slipping on ice, uh… studded tyres exist.
It’s a pretty hilly commute. Besides the ever present threat of being murdered in traffic (and this is a rural area, so traffic actually is a lesser concern), I have to contend with going up and down half a dozen steep slopes.
On ice in the dark.
I might just wreck my bike and freeze to death.
studded tyres make biking on ice feel like biking on asphalt, and you can buy very good rechargable LED lamps. I had a teacher who biked ~20km in the winter, through rural areas and during the dark since it becomes night at 17:00.
I have lights and ride in the dark already.
But we’re talking 11pm, if I get in a bad accident on a dark farm-to-market road I’ll just die. No one will see or hear me.
Also 20km is only 12.4 miles.
And I outright don’t believe riding on a steep icy hill with studs is like riding on asphalt. I’m sure it’s doable, I just don’t believe it’s easy or safe.
I ride a bike in winter, though admittedly it’s in a city where frequent plowing and ambient heat make it less of an issue. Funny thing is, I bought my bike in December.
I wear thick winter gear, including gloves, socks, and mask. If I drove, I’d want that sort of gear as soon as I exit my car at the parking lot, so I’d rather just have that all on beforehand and be warm the whole way.
It’s also just not that snowy/icy around here anymore. You might get it for a few days but otherwise it’s just cold and dry.
Studded tires make this a non issue.
Does it really? I’d think they would help, but actually a non-issue? I’m skeptical.
Also getting sprayed by a passing
assholecar showering me with slush+sand+road salt doesn’t sound great either.Personal experience, yes. I’ve biked trails in all conditions and only had any trouble on one of them. It had snowed a bunch, thawed, froze again, and then rained. I could still generally bike around and never fell, but didn’t have enough traction for the short steep climbs found on trails.
My commute is pretty hilly, doesn’t sound like I’d have a good time on ice.
Some people in this community are nuts. They expect people to bike 15-20 miles though snowy mountains carrying a weeks worth of breakfast, lunch, and dinners.
I often choose to ride my bike in the winter on super icy (side roads, no traffic) it’s fun for recreational purposes if you’re into that. On a commute or something else, i really wouldn’t recommend.
But it cold and I don’t want to bundle up like that kid from A Christmas Story.
Physically impossible in the north outside of cities and even then not often possible. What with snow and all. And it is 6 months here.
Yeah I lived a car-free life when I lived in Seattle, working on Magnolia Hill, living on Capitol Hill. That was doable year round. The midwestern flyover states I grew up and live in, tho, no it’s not workable. In the North there’s snow for months, in the South we have monsoon season where it rains for weeks, in the summer heat index gets above 110 regularly and these people don’t plant shade trees. Plus nearest grocery stores are miles away (I live downtown in a capital city).
Even though I work a few blocks from my home, I can’t live car free here without significant ride-sharing expenses (the bus system is a joke and only runs part of the day, grocery shopping would eat an entire day of my week that way), if I did that I couldn’t go on roadtrips on weekends either, unless I rented a car - and all that is more expensive than my (20k, not 40k) car.
But I do love this community and it’s coastal approach to shaming people who rely on cars… take the tram or train, lmao
I do not use my car for weeks at a time, but I need one in the country especially, also in the city when there.
“I can’t put my arms down!!”
90 Minutes??? Jesus christ
I do it about once a week. Plenty of time for audiobooks and podcasts!
That sucks, where I live I’m a 3 minute walk from two supermarkets, with like 4 more in a 15m radius.
I don’t say this to brag, but that’s why I reacted incredulously to your original comment, it just seems crazy to me.
Living in between supermarkets sonds like absolute hell to me.
why? Genuinely curious bc for me it’s fine
In urbania
Buy used 110cc motorbike for 250-300USD
pay 30USD a month for fuel because 160mpg
flop over in the middle of traffic because the 25kg bag of rice you’re balancing between your legs shifts
My pedal bike can equip pannier carriers - doesn’t something like that exist for motorbikes too?
Yes, but the rack is already being used to hold the rest of your groceries, family of 5, dog, refrigerator, and all the other things car owners claim they absolutely need a car to transport.
Buy used 110cc motorbike for 250-300USD for faster commute
pay 30USD a month for fuel because 160mpg
get groceries delivered
take tram if it rains or if you feel like it
Which customer buys 25 kg of rice at once? Literally nobody.
Skill issue, regardless.
Hey there, Rice-a-Roni - there are 8 billion other people in the world, so it’s pretty bold and exceedingly stupid to speak for all of them. In fact, I’ll bet there are literally a billion people in the world that buy their rice 25kg at a time. I know it is very common in Hawaiian households, I’d guess that there are more Hawaiians buying 25kg bags of rice than there are Hawaiians buying 1 kg bags.
Dunno why you needed to say ‘Rice-a-Roni’, but I think it’s not stupid to be baffled at buying 25 kg of rice.
Most I see is 1 kg bags.
Right - and my point was that the whole rest of the world doesn’t see or experience life in precisely the same way that you do. It is only stupid to make broad generalizations about the whole rest of the world from your tiny little corner of it.
The same also applies in your way, though. Realise that not everybody buys 25 kg bags. Sure, I learnt something new today. But I think it’s good to keep in mind that the world is a nice varied place where not everyone does the same.
You’re the one that literally said “Which customer buys 25 kg of rice at once? Literally nobody.”
Your attempts at backtracking don’t work when the only thing someone needs to do to refute what you’re saying is looking up.
I buy 5 or 10kg bags of rice at once and i live alone.
That’s roughly two bags at Costco. Way more than my wife and I would buy for just us, but I could see larger families reasonably buying that much.
Extremely common in Asia.
I am looking for places to buy 50 lb sacks of people grain, especially barley. Feed stores sell them but idk what chemicals they use. 20 bucks at feed stores for ag.
lb
You and your funny units
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That’s what the average SEA eats in like 2 days. Its the big bags at any grocery store
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Correct. I have not been riding motorbikes since before I could walk, so I cannot do what the locals do. Yet.
That’s what the average SEA eats in like 2 days. Its the big bags at any grocery store
No the fuck we don’t. A 5kg bag lasts an entire week for a family of four adults
Slight exaggeration for comedic effect.
Slight
I’ll say… 25kg in two days is over 42k calories per day. Either south east Asians are literal human machines that do the hardest physical work imaginable or they’re all fatter than OP’s mom.
The average south east Asian eats that much? I find that hard to believe. Maybe you mean 2.5 kg? Then I could see that being plausible for a household of four, spread over a week.
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Living within 1 kilometer walking distance of a grocery store is amazing. Instead of expensive fast food I can get comparatively inexpensive deli food. And if I want to be frugal and cook meals myself, cheap beans, rice, fresh meat, dairy, and produce are all available. Plus, I get a nice daily walk instead of checks notes from a previous life drive twenty minutes to the gym each day to walk on a treadmill.
The way to go IMO. I’m on a 20-year streak in not having a car. When I pick a new place to live, walkability to a good grocery store is one of my primary considerations. I only shop for one, so lugging groceries is no big deal, and I enjoy the extra exercise.
Throughout my life I’ve watched people spend all their money on conveniences and degrade physically, mentally, and financially as a result. Why not situate yourself for long-term success from the get-go? I wish more people were conscientious of the energy balance required to sustain a healthy life and best aligns with the environmental impacts we’ve wrought upon ourselves.
I just broke my 12 year streak of not having a car. I took a job as a city bus driver. Whaddya do when you’re supposed to run the first bus out of the garage and it’s too snowy to bike? I feel like a failure and a jerk. But I am trying to move close to the depot, so hopefully I could walk.
I live less than a kilometer from a grocery store but it takes me a half hour to walk there because I’m in a subdivision and there’s no direct sidewalk.
I used to be able to cut across yards but somebody put up a fence to stop that.
The gym is such a waste of energy. With proper form you can get that workout doing useful things. For charity if nothing else.
do grocery stores where you live not have frozen food? that’s the ideal in my book: perfectly decent quality and you just have to heat it.
This is the best one i’ve tried, it’s literally just frozen veggies, precooked pasta, chicken, and sauce. Healthy as fuck while tasting great and taking 0 effort to prepare.Healthy as fuck is a bit of a stretch for industrially-processed food grown with pesticides. It’s better than fast food.
Come off it, chopping veggies up and freezing them (‘industrial processing’) doesn’t make them unhealthy. There’s also not a way to guarantee that your food has no pesticides (it’s permissible under the organic label in some conditions) unless you grow it yourself.
Hell studies show that frozen and then cooked food is the easiest to absorb nutrients from so in a sense it’s even healthier.
Oh boy, if you really think these are healthly I have bad news for you… Sure there are worst options around, but that still counts as processed food on my book!
so, respectfully, what the absolute fuck are you on about? do you only eat roots you dig up in the forest?
The secret is cooking yourself.
The pasta you sent, have a Nova Score of 4, which means ultra processed food:
https://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/7310500184180/tagliatelle-chicken-findusNutri-Score A
Very good nutritional quality
The science on “ultra-processed” foods is scattered because even dietitians can’t agree on what an ultra-processed food is, or agree on what exactly it is that’s so harmful about it. If it’s high sugar and salt then the processing has fuck all to do with it. If it’s specific preservatives then processing has fuck all to do with it, it’s those specific things that are bad.
Until it’s something other than vibes-based, it’s a bad idea to exclude affordable vegetables or fruit from your diet solely because they’re processed.
For me its about what you said: processed is adding stuff to preserve and “improve”. Nothing bad about frozen basic ingredients that arent cooked. Also in my country fresh veggies and fruit are cheaper than frozen ones.
so clearly you didn’t read your own link, because that is literally based on the fact that it contains glucose, that is the ONLY reason it’s classed as ultra-processed.
you cannot seriously look at this and conclude it’s processed, there’s no way in hell you’re here in good faith and i very much suspect your upvotes are fake.
i very much suspect your upvotes are fake.
k
Maybe its a cultural thing, but mostly fresh vegetables, fresh fruits, fresh meat, fresh fish… I think you got the idea. Frozen veggies are good too (if not pre-cooked or seasoned).
Yeah, but these frozen meals aren’t much more processed than frozen veggies, at least the good ones. Can be a little pricey for what you get though.
I think you’re right about that. They’re just frozen veggies mixed together with chopped meat. The main thing I’d look at is how much salt they dump into these things.
Spices wouldn’t be fresh, either, but that’s more of a taste issue than health issue.
I got a rice cooker recently, great investment. I pan fry up whatever, some protein and vegetables, I’ve got a few good recipes going. With rice. I’ve been eating healthier and way cheaper. Tonight was chicken, green beans, and various seasonings. Was delicious af and cost me like 1.50$, if that.
Forgot the gym membership. With a car you can drive to the gym to walk on a treadmill.
Where the fuck is this guy buying a week’s groceries for $50? My kids eat more than $50 in cereal per month.
Well yeah if they eat $40 worth of sugar a month, it can get pretty expensive
maybe uh, maybe don’t buy a bunch of overpriced cereal?
sounds unhealthy, NGL
Aldi is your best bet if nearby. More than 50 a week outside of rice and beans meals but you will not go through 50 a week of cereal. Admittedly their granola is lacking, but it is hard to find good granola anywhere.
Other stores here are approaching $10 (!) for a bag of granola with minimal add-ins, Aldi is a little plainer but it’s a no-brainer when the same size there is like $3.
$10? Jesus. Many of these big box or City grocery stores have always had really high prices especially on some Goods. All of the name brand cereals are especially High everywhere, Kellogg’s and Post Cereal are like twice as high as the generic brands. Which for things like Raisin Bran are about the exact same cereal. Granola is the only one I have noticed a quality difference on.
I sort of quit milk for the past 18 months or so but if I get back into it, whole milk in the winter tastes really good when you work outside, I might just make my own granola. And by 50 lb bags of grain if I can find them.
I just got diapers according to the store it was a great discount, they where from the stores own brand (not even a “premium” brand)
Anyway I paid 26 cents per diaper (for my daughter)
When my son was born 6 years ago I paid 12 cents per diaper.
Every government chart about inflation is just not accurate for your groceries. The official inflation numbers tell me it’s about 25% inflation, but in reality for a lot of things it doubled.
The CPI has been changed a number of times over the past 5 decades, each change lowering the rate. By the old rate just in 2008 social security checks would be on average some 1,200 more a month.
22
Obviously you arent familiar with the wood and paint chip hack
Just start grinding down the foundations of your home and add the sawdust to your rice crispy treats for some extra filling
Have them eat oatmeal with fresh berries and (plain) yoghurt instead of industrially processed sugary garbage.
Overnight oats are a game changer. Even if my nephew makes them super sweet, it’s still only like a quarter of the sugar of cereals.
Lookin back this is irrelevant
these days $45 at costco is like two things, and $50 at a regular grocery store is six things.
but the analogy still holds that walking is much cheaper.
I just spent about 150 my last trip and I’m set for a month. No oj though, it’s expensive there, too. I could have gotten more but I held back in case I don’t get back for a minute.
ETA: I don’t have a car and the walk would take days.
Yeah I’ve been price comparing by unit volume between aldi and BJs cause my dad put me on his BJs membership-
Almost nothing is cheaper at BJs. Rice is. A whole bundle of coconut milk is cheaper.
But like… Unless you’re already buying brand names it’s frankly a bad deal 😅 and even then I’m curious how much better than Walmart it might actually be
BJs offered us a deal so we took it.
Almost every product there (all name brand) costs the same as buying the generic brand at Walmart. Cereal, yogurt, Mac and cheese, toilet paper, I have compared all of it while we have the one year membership.
Sure, I get name brand, and Jif is better than great value, but I have saved nothing. Won’t be renewing when they actually expect me to pay the membership. Sam’s club beats Walmart by a little bit but not a lot, and I dont have a Costco or Aldi’s near me. How does Aldi’s stack compared to BJ’s?
Thank you for sharing, that’s super helpful!
Aldi seem almost always cheaper or the same price compared to BJ’s, as everything at Aldi with a small number of exceptions is store brand. Even buying in smaller quantities many things are cheaper at Aldi, by at least a little bit.
The exceptions I saw were things like rice since you can buy store brand jasmine at BJs in a huge 25 lb bag, which if I remember is a good deal compared to Aldi (obs ignoring membership cause you can’t really factor that in). Basmatti was even steeper of a deal I think, since Aldi sells less basmatti and so only sells a smaller bag and for a bit more money. And I do remember dry black beans being cheaper but I believe that was even cheaper at Walmart. That might also be true for canned coconut milk which I think was cheaper at BJs, but it might be a bit cheaper still at Walmart, I don’t recall.
Milk has weirdly been way cheaper for me at target in my area, than basically anywhere else, which feels very strange, but it’s close to me and I’m usually there to pick up perscriptions anyway so it’s not too inconvenient to get only milk there.
It’s been a bit since I did price comparisons though, and my memory is exceptionally bad 😅. I almost always shop at Aldi so I don’t compare them ongoing, I just went through the process of checking a bunch of things recently.
Shopping at Aldi I would generally expect you to save a bit of money vs BJ’s unless you’re buying stuff you can buy at BJs in much larger volume.
Plus Aldi doesn’t make political campaign donations, and as such isn’t using my money to purchase my political institutions away from me, which I very much appreciate
Cool thanks for the info.
Also didn’t know bjs was donating lije that. Terrible.
Almost all companies do unfortunately, Aldi is a somewhat rare exception
You can look up what companies do or don’t, and which parties they support with the Goods Unite Us app or website, it’s handy :)
There was a comm here on lemmy where people posted screenshots of the apps overview for various companies, which was neat, but I haven’t seen any posts from it for a while
