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This is the same realization I had recently. The value of my house is likely up 15% from last year. My investments grew 20%, my income went up, getting food fr

This is the same realization I had recently. The value of my house is likely up 15% from last year. My investments grew 20%, my income went up, getting food from any restaurant seems to cost at least $40 for two people, hard to find a bar of chocolate under $4, cup of coffee likewise. There is very little telling me my dollar today is only 1.5%-2% less valuable than last year.

sjg007 6y ago
You can get a cup of coffee at McDonald's for $1. Medium starbucks is ~$2 And obviously it's even cheaper if you make it yourself. I'm not sure what chocolate you buy but I find cadburys dairy milk for $2 or so. Hersheys has a line of chocolate bars at that price point too. You can buy that in bulk too I guess to be even cheaper.
- evanlivingston 6y ago
  No doubt, these are all purchases I don't actually make with any regularity. But it seems to me like the prices you listed are outliers. Hershey's has cheap chocolate, mcdonalds has cheap coffee, but surely we don't take the lowest price as an example of what those things cost. If 90% of the sellers of coffee charge about $4 for a cup of coffee, can we assume that's roughly the price of coffee?
  - sjg007 6y ago
    It’s nowhere near 90%
jfengel 6y ago
The twenty dollar bill was called a "yuppie food coupon" back when yuppies were a thing. You went to a restaurant, and regardless of the price of your meal, you expected that a $20 would be food, tax, beverage, and tip, without expecting all that much change back. So if "food from any restaurant seems to cost at least $40 for two people", that would suggest that the cost of the yuppie food coupon hasn't changed since the 80s. Similarly "Starbucks" has been called "Fourbucks" since at least the 90s. If you don't want to pay that much, it's basically a dollar at any convenience store -- literally for pretty much any volume. As for your investments... yeah, I do think there's inflation there. We're Quantitatively Easing money directly into the stock market, and it doesn't seem to be making its way out. That's a problem, but not a CPI problem. Similarly, the housing market is up in some places and way down in others -- most visibly in New York and San Francisco, where a ton of people had been paying a lot of money. The money appears to have moved without changing the total amount being paid all that much.

sjg007 6y ago

You can get a cup of coffee at McDonald's for $1. Medium starbucks is ~$2 And obviously it's even cheaper if you make it yourself. I'm not sure what chocolate you buy but I find cadburys dairy milk for $2 or so. Hersheys has a line of chocolate bars at that price point too. You can buy that in bulk too I guess to be even cheaper.

evanlivingston 6y ago
No doubt, these are all purchases I don't actually make with any regularity. But it seems to me like the prices you listed are outliers. Hershey's has cheap chocolate, mcdonalds has cheap coffee, but surely we don't take the lowest price as an example of what those things cost. If 90% of the sellers of coffee charge about $4 for a cup of coffee, can we assume that's roughly the price of coffee?
- sjg007 6y ago
  It’s nowhere near 90%

jfengel 6y ago

The twenty dollar bill was called a "yuppie food coupon" back when yuppies were a thing. You went to a restaurant, and regardless of the price of your meal, you expected that a $20 would be food, tax, beverage, and tip, without expecting all that much change back. So if "food from any restaurant seems to cost at least $40 for two people", that would suggest that the cost of the yuppie food coupon hasn't changed since the 80s. Similarly "Starbucks" has been called "Fourbucks" since at least the 90s. If you don't want to pay that much, it's basically a dollar at any convenience store -- literally for pretty much any volume. As for your investments... yeah, I do think there's inflation there. We're Quantitatively Easing money directly into the stock market, and it doesn't seem to be making its way out. That's a problem, but not a CPI problem. Similarly, the housing market is up in some places and way down in others -- most visibly in New York and San Francisco, where a ton of people had been paying a lot of money. The money appears to have moved without changing the total amount being paid all that much.