I'm not so sure it has to do with wealth. There are plenty of people out there who are wealthy who would balk at paying exorbitant amounts for anything, including (perhaps especially) groceries.
It's one thing if you go to one store and it's 30% more than any other store around for the same thing - simple solution, buy from a different store. It's another thing when it's basically inflation or a cartel maybe but there's no options. Or the options are changing things - depends on your willingness to change what you eat, or your energy levels and / or interest in hunting down deals or how far you want to drive or how much extra work you can take on.
I check out each supermarket's weekly flyer via my cell phone. And consider every item for which there's a good sales price as if there just happens to be a harvest for that item so that it's temporarily at a great price. And buy accordingly.
So, I know it's a little hypocritical of me to bring this up on a timeshare / travel hacks forum, but what you're describing is a hobby, not a general savings tip. It can be a good hobby, it can be a fun hobby. Add couponing to the mix too and you can really save money at the cost of time and gas as you drive around to each store. I just don't think not wanting to take on that hobby, just like not wanting to take on travel hacking == being irresponsible with money.
I also balk at crazy restaurant prices that had been reasonable pre-Covid and that in some cases became very much unreasonable after Covid. And I understand why. They had lost a good bit of business during Covid and want to recoup it. And people had been isolated in their "cabins" for so long they just wanted to LIVE again. And restaurants took full advantage with their new pricing. But I won't be paying those oftentimes outrageously increased prices.
Yea, and whats worse is too often the restaurant food is so bad that you're basically paying (and this might be more literal than you think) someone else to pull out a frozen meal and microwave it for you. At that point I often think - I have a dishwasher, I have a microwave - at least some of this stuff if I could easily get frozen versions for less, it'd be well worth it to me. But I've noticed since timeshareing (so I spend a lot more time in different grocery stores than I used to) that frozen meal options also seem to have ended up much more restricted - like less options on the shelf. As a simple example, I'm pretty sure 20ish years ago, you could go into basically any store and there would be 8 or more different Hungry Man varieties, including Max which was even more food. Now I often see 2-3 varieties. I swear 10ish years ago, there were dozens of "skilled meal" options, now I often see about 10 across 3 brands.
Even worse is the massive rise of the "healthy choice steamer" style bowls or just normal bowls that size. This is now something like 60% of the frozen lunch/dinner isle, and the calories are often around 250. Say what you want about losing weight, or eating healthy - 250 calories is not sufficient for most adults as a meal. So you end up needing at least 2, and they're already running you $4 each.
I probably should look into if I can get SYSCO to deliver direct to me lol - Schwanns went out of business much to my dismay.
I've (we've) always thought that one should eat out at restaurants whenever there might be something you can't cook on your own. So I'm more inclined to eat out at Indian, Vietnamese, and Chinese places. I can't attain the same flavors as those ethnic restaurants. And it just so happens most of those ethnic restaurants are relatively inexpensive despite serving delicious food.
They used to be. Now I've noticed the Chinese takeout is $15 a person, the Thai is $20, they all cost around $20 a person no matter what for take out. Eat in and you add $4-$12 for drinks (usually no free refills).
When I cook (most often), I try to limit the costs of my ingredients. And there are many ways to do so.
True - if you take it on as another hobby, you can do meal prep and actually use food bought in bulk and save money. But I have found that way more meals call for 3 hours of prep, cooking, cleanup than take 20 minutes. Even the "fast" pressure cooker recipes never seem to count the "getting up to pressure" and "releasing pressure" time which can be significant. And their prep times can be wildly optimistic IMO. But it's not my hobby, so I'm probably not as fast as someone who works on recipes all day to provide timing on prep.
For example, we eat a lot of chicken thigh meals, Grilled chicken thighs, mulligatawny soup, etc. Boneless, skinless chicken thighs are what many recipes call for. Yet, boneless, skinless chicken thighs costs $3.99 per pound (expensive). But chicken thighs with skin and its bone costs 99 cents per pound (inexpensive).
What I wonder here though is how much do you "lose" of the pound you paid for because of the bone?
It takes a few minutes to cut off the skin with shears and to cut out the bone (if you don't know how, there are many Youtube videos that show you how to do it in perhaps less than a minute). And voila! You have an extraordinary meal for next to nothing in cost.
If you happen to like dark meat chicken, which I do not, but yes - I probably see the same sort of thing for making rice with a rice cooker vs buying the packet microwavable rice say.
