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I went to the dollar store today looking for stocking stuffer items. It's now the "dollar twenty-five store" due to inflation, with some items four and five dol

I went to the dollar store today looking for stocking stuffer items. It's now the "dollar twenty-five store" due to inflation, with some items four and five dollars. Here are my observations. * The food will likely make you sick if you eat it regularly, the food options are highly processed and made of cheap, poor quality ingredients. * Kids, lots of kids. Lots of lower income families have multiple kids and the dollar store is one way to stretch the budget. * Dollar stores do a decent job at keeping things at $1.25. There were definitely some products that I would see 2x or 3x the price at other stores. * It was busy, very busy.

SoftTalker 4y ago
I cannot imagine buying food at the dollar store even if you are poor. Eggs, beans, rice, bread, potatoes, apples, bananas, are among the cheapest foods at any grocery store or supermarket.
- pengaru 4y ago
  > I cannot imagine buying food at the dollar store even if you are poor. If DOLLAR GENERAL qualifies, for many poor communities it's the only option in town.
  - neilv 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert
  - nanidin 4y ago
    Dollar General is not a dollar store. Traditionally a dollar store is a store where everything costs one dollar. Dollar General is a general store that has dollar in the name.
    - UncleEntity 4y ago
      I used to go to the “99¢ Only” store and, let me tell you, everything doesn’t cost 99¢. Frozen burritos did so I didn’t complain too much.
      - ridgered4 4y ago
        I once bought a pair of needle nose pliers at the dollar store (actually a dollar) back in the 90s. The first time I used them both the grips immediately bent under a small amount of force, which is actually so funny that I think I got my money's worth in the end.
    - escapedmoose 4y ago
      Regardless, it’s often the only option.
- bluedino 4y ago
  <insert food desert> But you see people with SNAP pushing around carts full of things that aren't eggs and beans and potatoes... and why would they? The maximum monthly benefit for a family of 4 is $939/month, you can buy whatever you want with that. <insert excuse that poor people can't cook or don't have time or ...>
  - KerrAvon 4y ago
    The most corrosive idea in our society is the notion that someone somewhere is getting slightly more than they deserve, just slightly more than you think they earned through their god-given talents, and that it’s therefore worth trying to correct at huge expense, because we certainly can’t have that tiny bit of unfairness in the universe. And the correction, when applied, is always to the detriment of a huge number of other people who actually needed the help. This is how we get means-testing, SALT caps, and bad immigration law. We have got to be more humane than this.
    - ramesh31 4y ago
      >The most corrosive idea in our society is the notion that someone somewhere is getting slightly more than they deserve, just slightly more than you think they earned through their god-given talents, and that it’s therefore worth trying to correct at huge expense, because we certainly can’t have that tiny bit of unfairness in the universe. Maybe. But this is how America works. We wont let you starve to death. If you're truly physically disabled, we won't leave you to die. But beyond that it's up to you. And in exchange, what's "up to you" is limitless and celebrated and compensated endlessly. Other societies make this tradeoff in a different direction. But I'm happy there's at least one place on earth that doesn't.
      - trentgreene 4y ago
        The last number I’d heard was that around 100/year starve to death in the US, but I suspect that number is higher when including deaths from folks who incur fatal health conditions from insufficient nutrition.
      - 4y ago
- trentgreene 4y ago
  I kind of hate that your being downvoted b/c your perspective here is a very common one. It’s not just a matter of unit price, but also time, convenience, and cal/$. Fruit / veg in general is pretty expensive when looked at from a cal/$ perspective — you pay for a lot of water there. Potatoes, beans, rice are pretty slow cooking, and require dealing with dishes after. So for my single mom, it was pretty hard to provide anything but 1) fast food (decent cal/$, extremely convenient) 2) microwaveable tv dinners (Meh cal per dollar, but long shelf life, extremely convenient) 3) PB / lunch meat sandwiches (basically god tier for poor chow) For reference, my mom worked many jobs and got maybe 4-5 hrs sleep a night. Adding 30 minutes for a days worth of meals was a lot.
  - thefounder 4y ago
    I know fast-food and microwaveable tv dinners are cheap and "worry free" but you pay the price with your health. Consider it like achool abuse. You get away with it several times but eventually your health will deteriorate. You have to want to eat healthy and set the appropriate mindset. For example instead to order that fastfood crap just eat some simple raw, "spartan" food(bananas, boiled meat or even fried meat etc). I have some good experience with that working long hours on my own startup(s) without distractions. I doubt you don't have 30 minutes to "prepare" your dinner. After all you don't really prepare much. Just boil or fry whatever raw food you have. Of course convincing kids to eat not very tasty food may be a different story but it's doable because I've seen that too. At some point you may start to appreciate the simple food and hate when the chefs put you sugar and all kinds of "flavours" in your food.
    - trentgreene 4y ago
      I can say with 100% certainty there was not 30 minutes to cook dinner alone. At a certain point you’re balancing how much sleep you need to perform at work (4-5 hours) and the amount of time you’d spend commuting and working (~16 hours a day). When you throw in errands, cleaning, maintenance, and maybe 30 minutes in passing period leisure, there really isn’t time to cook.
      - 4y ago
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  You clearly haven't bought eggs, beans, rice, etc. at the grocery store and been on a budget. In the last two years the price of eggs have easily doubled--a dozen large store brand eggs are over 3 bucks now vs maybe 99 cents pre-pandemic. Every single staple you mention has gone up in price significantly. Food inflation is astronomical and if you don't feel it then it's quite a privilege. If you were struggling to make ends meet two years ago, you are in deep deep trouble or probably completely forgotten by society and/or dead now.
  - mikeyouse 4y ago
    There are unfortunately a bunch of factors that added up to this.. e.g. for Eggs, there's just normal food inflation, but then there's a massive avian flu outbreak that resulted in ~50 million birds culled in the US alone. It doesn't help but either way, prices are indeed up ~100% since pre-pandemic (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000708111 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000708111). https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/11/22/23472207/bird-flu-vaccine-turkey-prices-chickens-hens-cull-depopulation https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/11/22/23472207/bird-...
  - LAC-Tech 4y ago
    In the last two years the price of eggs have easily doubled--a dozen large store brand eggs are over 3 bucks now vs maybe 99 cents pre-pandemic. Food in the US is insanely cheap. Wow. $4.78 USD at the cheapest store here, and this is on special.
    - aix1 4y ago
      > $4.78 USD at the cheapest store here, and this is on special. I was about to say that this is roughly what supermarket eggs cost here in Switzerland but then realised that your price was for a dozen and I was thinking a box of six. Eggs here are often sold in units of one (you fill your own box with however many eggs you need) and cost about US$0.80 per egg.
  - jraby3 4y ago
    $0.25 per egg is still a great value in terms of health and satiety.
WalterBright 4y ago
Lots of times you're better off getting stuff from the thrift store. Lots of lightly used household items, cheap as dirt.
- pubby 4y ago
  Thrift stores in rich neighborhoods have significantly higher quality of items than ones in poor neighborhoods. I would not recommend shopping at poor thrift stores.
  - dmkolobov 4y ago
    In my experience, this is true for just about every type of store. Especially grocery stores. I live on Federal in Denver, and the selection relative to some of the wealthier suburbs is atrocious. The past few years have made me wonder who gets the job of ensuring poor neighborhoods get screwed in the face of nationwide shortages of items.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      Try running a store in a poor neighborhood and it will soon be obvious why they are the way they are.
      - dmkolobov 4y ago
        Fine, the pursuit of profit over all else forces people to make decisions like screwing entire neighborhoods out of access to basic quality food and other goods. Is that better?
        WalterBright 4y ago
        Opening a store is not screwing entire neighborhoods.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    I've been in thrift stores in both neighborhoods. Found lots of nice stuff in the poor one.
medellin 4y ago
Yes but almost everything is going to break quick and you will be back buying more soon.
- ramesh31 4y ago
  > Yes but almost everything is going to break quick and you will be back buying more soon. Hence, the entire point of the article. Beginning with the boots paradox.
RandallBrown 4y ago
Much of the food at dollar stores is the same stuff you'll find in regular grocery stores, just in smaller packages.
- prawn 4y ago
  I always got the impression that it was largely things with a long shelf life, to minimise waste. Which doesn't discount what you've said, but just worth asserting that it's a subset (not always healthy) of regular grocery stuff AND in smaller packages.
  - bruceb 4y ago
    I would say 90% of the food in dollar stores is high in oil, salt, or sugar and most of the time all three. Most of it is cookies, crackers, potato chips, sauces, soda, etc. I have seen a few with decent staples such as wheat bread, eggs, meat but that is small pct of all foods. Rarely vegetables (or ever). Would be hard to eat healthy if got most of your food there. Regular supermarkets have plenty of bad food but still wide selection of nutritious food.
maria2 4y ago
Nutritious food can be very cheap. Others have mentioned beans and rice. Beans are an amazing source of nutrition. Dried beans are dirt cheap and require little work to prepare. Organic bananas from Whole Foods are about $0.50 each. I'm pretty sure you can find a cheaper banana elsewhere. Broccoli costs less than a $1 per head, typically. Organic rainbow carrots are $1.50 a pound. I could go on. The point is, good food can be cheap. And yes, food deserts exist. And yes, people buy poor quality food from stores like Dollar General. But perhaps there is a correlation here? Maybe (some) food deserts exists because there is little demand for fresh food in those regions.
- Quarrelsome 4y ago
  might also be hard to find the time to cook when you got two kids and three jobs.
- satellites 4y ago
  As mentioned in the article, some low income housing units literally don’t have kitchens or don’t allow cooking. This blew my mind and is a facet of poverty I hadn’t even considered. Also, are you actually making the point that food deserts exist because all the people in the area just decided not to buy groceries? I haven’t read such a blatant “blame the poors for their situation” take in a while.
  - qbasic_forever 4y ago
    If you've really fallen out of society and gone through an eviction or foreclosure then your credit is shot so badly you can only afford to live at a weekly rate motel (you'll never pass a real apartment's credit check). Those places don't have or allow any kind of cooking. A mini fridge and a microwave that's hopefully still working is all you have.
    - satellites 4y ago
      Good point. I hadn’t considered that type of housing. It got me thinking though. My partner got evicted when she was younger (early twenties) because her roommate was lying and stealing rent money. Her credit was shot and she had to live with family for years while getting her record cleared. It’s sad to think that if she hadn’t had family to fall back on, she could’ve ended up in that situation. More people than one would think are just one bad situation away from falling into that trap.
anon291 4y ago
Food is really cheap. In my experience, American born people assume that immigrants and poor people are buying packaged foods. In my experience as a child of immigrants, my parents bought actual bulk food items and produce at stores. It's exceptionally cheap unless you're shopping at a DINK store like whole foods. Dollar stores are amazing for kids things. For example, balloons are a dollar at the dollar store and ten dollars for the same balloon at Safeway.
FrontierPsych 4y ago
Dollar stores are awesome. If you buy crap at the dollar stores, then you are buying crap, but if you buy Cheetos at the dollar store or at the regular grocery shop, they are the same crap. Crap is crap no matter where you buy it. Any food will make you sick. You can find crap food at any store. Dollar stores don't have the monopoly on that. I think that 90% of "food" at ANY store is crap. Food is extremely inexpensive if you learn how to make stuff yourself and don't buy anything that is prepackaged. Don't buy Thousand Island dressing for example, make it from base ingredients. Instead of paying $3 at a regular grocery store, you can make it for 25 cents, if that. Croutons? Costs $2.50 at the store, or make them at home in your oven for 10 cents or whatever. All you need is bread and spices, and as I said, this is not a $2.40 savings, oh no. it is a 2,500% return on your money.
- leereeves 4y ago
  Don't forget to include the value of the time spent making food yourself.
  - FrontierPsych 4y ago
    Yes, but that is often calculated incorrectly. Like it might take 4 hours to make beans, and people say that. But really, it takes 15 minutes. This is the amount of time to sort and was the dried beans, put the beans in the water. That's it. Then you let the beans simmer for 3 1/2 hours. But people will count the entire 4 hours as time they spent making food. Not saying you do that, but many do. Also, the more one cooks, the faster it gets. First time it might take 45 minutes to make something, but after you make it 15 times, it gets down to 10 minutes. Also, it is about making staple foods, like pasta. Of course if you make some complex dish for the first and only time, every night, that will take a lot of time. But if one has many easy dishes to make, then it is fast. I like oil and balsamic vinegar dressing - to make it from scratch takes me less than a minute to make a big jar of it that will last me 2 or 3 months. It really does not take too long to make one's own food, if one does it correctly.

SoftTalker 4y ago

I cannot imagine buying food at the dollar store even if you are poor. Eggs, beans, rice, bread, potatoes, apples, bananas, are among the cheapest foods at any grocery store or supermarket.

pengaru 4y ago
> I cannot imagine buying food at the dollar store even if you are poor. If DOLLAR GENERAL qualifies, for many poor communities it's the only option in town.
- neilv 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert
- nanidin 4y ago
  Dollar General is not a dollar store. Traditionally a dollar store is a store where everything costs one dollar. Dollar General is a general store that has dollar in the name.
  - UncleEntity 4y ago
    I used to go to the “99¢ Only” store and, let me tell you, everything doesn’t cost 99¢. Frozen burritos did so I didn’t complain too much.
    - ridgered4 4y ago
      I once bought a pair of needle nose pliers at the dollar store (actually a dollar) back in the 90s. The first time I used them both the grips immediately bent under a small amount of force, which is actually so funny that I think I got my money's worth in the end.
  - escapedmoose 4y ago
    Regardless, it’s often the only option.
bluedino 4y ago
<insert food desert> But you see people with SNAP pushing around carts full of things that aren't eggs and beans and potatoes... and why would they? The maximum monthly benefit for a family of 4 is $939/month, you can buy whatever you want with that. <insert excuse that poor people can't cook or don't have time or ...>
- KerrAvon 4y ago
  The most corrosive idea in our society is the notion that someone somewhere is getting slightly more than they deserve, just slightly more than you think they earned through their god-given talents, and that it’s therefore worth trying to correct at huge expense, because we certainly can’t have that tiny bit of unfairness in the universe. And the correction, when applied, is always to the detriment of a huge number of other people who actually needed the help. This is how we get means-testing, SALT caps, and bad immigration law. We have got to be more humane than this.
  - ramesh31 4y ago
    >The most corrosive idea in our society is the notion that someone somewhere is getting slightly more than they deserve, just slightly more than you think they earned through their god-given talents, and that it’s therefore worth trying to correct at huge expense, because we certainly can’t have that tiny bit of unfairness in the universe. Maybe. But this is how America works. We wont let you starve to death. If you're truly physically disabled, we won't leave you to die. But beyond that it's up to you. And in exchange, what's "up to you" is limitless and celebrated and compensated endlessly. Other societies make this tradeoff in a different direction. But I'm happy there's at least one place on earth that doesn't.
    - trentgreene 4y ago
      The last number I’d heard was that around 100/year starve to death in the US, but I suspect that number is higher when including deaths from folks who incur fatal health conditions from insufficient nutrition.
    - 4y ago
trentgreene 4y ago
I kind of hate that your being downvoted b/c your perspective here is a very common one. It’s not just a matter of unit price, but also time, convenience, and cal/$. Fruit / veg in general is pretty expensive when looked at from a cal/$ perspective — you pay for a lot of water there. Potatoes, beans, rice are pretty slow cooking, and require dealing with dishes after. So for my single mom, it was pretty hard to provide anything but 1) fast food (decent cal/$, extremely convenient) 2) microwaveable tv dinners (Meh cal per dollar, but long shelf life, extremely convenient) 3) PB / lunch meat sandwiches (basically god tier for poor chow) For reference, my mom worked many jobs and got maybe 4-5 hrs sleep a night. Adding 30 minutes for a days worth of meals was a lot.
- thefounder 4y ago
  I know fast-food and microwaveable tv dinners are cheap and "worry free" but you pay the price with your health. Consider it like achool abuse. You get away with it several times but eventually your health will deteriorate. You have to want to eat healthy and set the appropriate mindset. For example instead to order that fastfood crap just eat some simple raw, "spartan" food(bananas, boiled meat or even fried meat etc). I have some good experience with that working long hours on my own startup(s) without distractions. I doubt you don't have 30 minutes to "prepare" your dinner. After all you don't really prepare much. Just boil or fry whatever raw food you have. Of course convincing kids to eat not very tasty food may be a different story but it's doable because I've seen that too. At some point you may start to appreciate the simple food and hate when the chefs put you sugar and all kinds of "flavours" in your food.
  - trentgreene 4y ago
    I can say with 100% certainty there was not 30 minutes to cook dinner alone. At a certain point you’re balancing how much sleep you need to perform at work (4-5 hours) and the amount of time you’d spend commuting and working (~16 hours a day). When you throw in errands, cleaning, maintenance, and maybe 30 minutes in passing period leisure, there really isn’t time to cook.
    - 4y ago
qbasic_forever 4y ago
You clearly haven't bought eggs, beans, rice, etc. at the grocery store and been on a budget. In the last two years the price of eggs have easily doubled--a dozen large store brand eggs are over 3 bucks now vs maybe 99 cents pre-pandemic. Every single staple you mention has gone up in price significantly. Food inflation is astronomical and if you don't feel it then it's quite a privilege. If you were struggling to make ends meet two years ago, you are in deep deep trouble or probably completely forgotten by society and/or dead now.
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  There are unfortunately a bunch of factors that added up to this.. e.g. for Eggs, there's just normal food inflation, but then there's a massive avian flu outbreak that resulted in ~50 million birds culled in the US alone. It doesn't help but either way, prices are indeed up ~100% since pre-pandemic (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000708111 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000708111). https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/11/22/23472207/bird-flu-vaccine-turkey-prices-chickens-hens-cull-depopulation https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/11/22/23472207/bird-...
- LAC-Tech 4y ago
  In the last two years the price of eggs have easily doubled--a dozen large store brand eggs are over 3 bucks now vs maybe 99 cents pre-pandemic. Food in the US is insanely cheap. Wow. $4.78 USD at the cheapest store here, and this is on special.
  - aix1 4y ago
    > $4.78 USD at the cheapest store here, and this is on special. I was about to say that this is roughly what supermarket eggs cost here in Switzerland but then realised that your price was for a dozen and I was thinking a box of six. Eggs here are often sold in units of one (you fill your own box with however many eggs you need) and cost about US$0.80 per egg.
- jraby3 4y ago
  $0.25 per egg is still a great value in terms of health and satiety.

WalterBright 4y ago

Lots of times you're better off getting stuff from the thrift store. Lots of lightly used household items, cheap as dirt.

pubby 4y ago
Thrift stores in rich neighborhoods have significantly higher quality of items than ones in poor neighborhoods. I would not recommend shopping at poor thrift stores.
- dmkolobov 4y ago
  In my experience, this is true for just about every type of store. Especially grocery stores. I live on Federal in Denver, and the selection relative to some of the wealthier suburbs is atrocious. The past few years have made me wonder who gets the job of ensuring poor neighborhoods get screwed in the face of nationwide shortages of items.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Try running a store in a poor neighborhood and it will soon be obvious why they are the way they are.
    - dmkolobov 4y ago
      Fine, the pursuit of profit over all else forces people to make decisions like screwing entire neighborhoods out of access to basic quality food and other goods. Is that better?
      - WalterBright 4y ago
        Opening a store is not screwing entire neighborhoods.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  I've been in thrift stores in both neighborhoods. Found lots of nice stuff in the poor one.

medellin 4y ago

Yes but almost everything is going to break quick and you will be back buying more soon.

ramesh31 4y ago
> Yes but almost everything is going to break quick and you will be back buying more soon. Hence, the entire point of the article. Beginning with the boots paradox.

RandallBrown 4y ago

Much of the food at dollar stores is the same stuff you'll find in regular grocery stores, just in smaller packages.

prawn 4y ago
I always got the impression that it was largely things with a long shelf life, to minimise waste. Which doesn't discount what you've said, but just worth asserting that it's a subset (not always healthy) of regular grocery stuff AND in smaller packages.
- bruceb 4y ago
  I would say 90% of the food in dollar stores is high in oil, salt, or sugar and most of the time all three. Most of it is cookies, crackers, potato chips, sauces, soda, etc. I have seen a few with decent staples such as wheat bread, eggs, meat but that is small pct of all foods. Rarely vegetables (or ever). Would be hard to eat healthy if got most of your food there. Regular supermarkets have plenty of bad food but still wide selection of nutritious food.

maria2 4y ago

Nutritious food can be very cheap. Others have mentioned beans and rice. Beans are an amazing source of nutrition. Dried beans are dirt cheap and require little work to prepare. Organic bananas from Whole Foods are about $0.50 each. I'm pretty sure you can find a cheaper banana elsewhere. Broccoli costs less than a $1 per head, typically. Organic rainbow carrots are $1.50 a pound. I could go on. The point is, good food can be cheap. And yes, food deserts exist. And yes, people buy poor quality food from stores like Dollar General. But perhaps there is a correlation here? Maybe (some) food deserts exists because there is little demand for fresh food in those regions.

Quarrelsome 4y ago
might also be hard to find the time to cook when you got two kids and three jobs.
satellites 4y ago
As mentioned in the article, some low income housing units literally don’t have kitchens or don’t allow cooking. This blew my mind and is a facet of poverty I hadn’t even considered. Also, are you actually making the point that food deserts exist because all the people in the area just decided not to buy groceries? I haven’t read such a blatant “blame the poors for their situation” take in a while.
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  If you've really fallen out of society and gone through an eviction or foreclosure then your credit is shot so badly you can only afford to live at a weekly rate motel (you'll never pass a real apartment's credit check). Those places don't have or allow any kind of cooking. A mini fridge and a microwave that's hopefully still working is all you have.
  - satellites 4y ago
    Good point. I hadn’t considered that type of housing. It got me thinking though. My partner got evicted when she was younger (early twenties) because her roommate was lying and stealing rent money. Her credit was shot and she had to live with family for years while getting her record cleared. It’s sad to think that if she hadn’t had family to fall back on, she could’ve ended up in that situation. More people than one would think are just one bad situation away from falling into that trap.

anon291 4y ago

Food is really cheap. In my experience, American born people assume that immigrants and poor people are buying packaged foods. In my experience as a child of immigrants, my parents bought actual bulk food items and produce at stores. It's exceptionally cheap unless you're shopping at a DINK store like whole foods. Dollar stores are amazing for kids things. For example, balloons are a dollar at the dollar store and ten dollars for the same balloon at Safeway.

FrontierPsych 4y ago

Dollar stores are awesome. If you buy crap at the dollar stores, then you are buying crap, but if you buy Cheetos at the dollar store or at the regular grocery shop, they are the same crap. Crap is crap no matter where you buy it. Any food will make you sick. You can find crap food at any store. Dollar stores don't have the monopoly on that. I think that 90% of "food" at ANY store is crap. Food is extremely inexpensive if you learn how to make stuff yourself and don't buy anything that is prepackaged. Don't buy Thousand Island dressing for example, make it from base ingredients. Instead of paying $3 at a regular grocery store, you can make it for 25 cents, if that. Croutons? Costs $2.50 at the store, or make them at home in your oven for 10 cents or whatever. All you need is bread and spices, and as I said, this is not a $2.40 savings, oh no. it is a 2,500% return on your money.

leereeves 4y ago
Don't forget to include the value of the time spent making food yourself.
- FrontierPsych 4y ago
  Yes, but that is often calculated incorrectly. Like it might take 4 hours to make beans, and people say that. But really, it takes 15 minutes. This is the amount of time to sort and was the dried beans, put the beans in the water. That's it. Then you let the beans simmer for 3 1/2 hours. But people will count the entire 4 hours as time they spent making food. Not saying you do that, but many do. Also, the more one cooks, the faster it gets. First time it might take 45 minutes to make something, but after you make it 15 times, it gets down to 10 minutes. Also, it is about making staple foods, like pasta. Of course if you make some complex dish for the first and only time, every night, that will take a lot of time. But if one has many easy dishes to make, then it is fast. I like oil and balsamic vinegar dressing - to make it from scratch takes me less than a minute to make a big jar of it that will last me 2 or 3 months. It really does not take too long to make one's own food, if one does it correctly.