Surprisingly Expensive Things?

[mcppalmbeach]

Everything feels expensive to me now, especially activities with a family of 5. I just saw one of the local Escape Rooms had a Christmas themed room and I thought that could be a fun activity next week while the kids were off. I figured it would be $100 - $125ish…$186 for the 5 of us! Ouch! Anything you’ve had sticker shock on lately?

Eta…I just went back and tried to see if there was a coupon code and there was not. Price with taxes and fees actually put us at $205 and change. Definitely not worth $40 a person.

[eb777888]

I now spend $6.99 for a bag of clementines. That just blows my mind.

[orval]

Eggs -- the price is killing me. Early in the year I was paying $4.38 for 36 eggs. I just paid 6.49 for 18 eggs.

[spindle92]

Dec 23, 2022 12:20:17 GMT -5 orval said:

Eggs -- the price is killing me. Early in the year I was paying $4.38 for 36 eggs. I just paid 6.49 for 18 eggs.

This was going to be my response too.

[sparty04]

I had a $21 chicken Caesar salad at a brewery yesterday. Christmas Brunch at a golf course was $54 for adults and $18 for kids. My kids ate a plate of bacon and some ice cream. Adds up with 4 kids!

[onomatopoeia]

Ditto on the experiences. We tried to find a sports game or a fun play to take the kids too, and it was all way out of our range for the 4 of us. It's frustrating.

DS and I also love diet coke, it's our "treat". The price of a pack of coke is crazy, even on sale. Gum is also getting expensive, a 99 cent pack is now $2.39.

[sugarbear1]

I'm in Disneyland and have been having heart palpitations all week! It is INSANE.

[dexteroni]

I'm still not into the habit of checking prices, which means when I get to the checkout and see my total, I'm like wow wtf how. But I did notice that organic broccoli was $6 recently and was like I could buy this frozen for $3. Although even frozen vegetables are probably more now.

[dexteroni]

Dec 23, 2022 12:26:02 GMT -5 onomatopoeia said:

DS and I also love diet coke, it's our "treat". The price of a pack of coke is crazy, even on sale. Gum is also getting expensive, a 99 cent pack is now $2.39.

Soda is insane! We don't really drink it much at home, for me it's a rare treat when we get fast food or go out for something like wings. But I wanted to buy some to have on hand for Christmas guests, and holy lord it was $8 for a 12-pack. I did find a 3/$12 sale at Walgreens so I'm all stocked up, but most stores were way more.

[mcppalmbeach]

Dec 23, 2022 12:30:32 GMT -5 dexteroni said:

Dec 23, 2022 12:26:02 GMT -5 onomatopoeia said:

DS and I also love diet coke, it's our "treat". The price of a pack of coke is crazy, even on sale. Gum is also getting expensive, a 99 cent pack is now $2.39.

Soda is insane! We don't really drink it much at home, for me it's a rare treat when we get fast food or go out for something like wings. But I wanted to buy some to have on hand for Christmas guests, and holy lord it was $8 for a 12-pack. I did find a 3/$12 sale at Walgreens so I'm all stocked up, but most stores were way more.

I was just talking to a friend about this. She got a coke 12 pack that was bad and she called to get a replacement coupon. She said they sent her a replacement coupon valued at $3.99 and she was like it’s $8 now lol!

[jinkies]

Bowling. I remember being shocked last winter, so I just looked again-- it would be around $300 for my family of 4 to bowl for 2 hours tomorrow. That does include $20/pp food and beverage credit that is required during high demand time periods. But even without that, it's over $200. To bowl.

[abs]

Chips. Why is a bag of Ruffles over 5 dollars??

[kath16]

grapes.

i dont even buy them anymore. a regular sized bag comes out to like $9 and i just can't.

[kath16]

Dec 23, 2022 12:35:56 GMT -5 jinkies said:

Bowling. I remember being shocked last winter, so I just looked again-- it would be around $300 for my family of 4 to bowl for 2 hours tomorrow. That does include $20/pp food and beverage credit that is required during high demand time periods. But even without that, it's over $200. To bowl.

omg yes!!!

for my H and i to take our two young (6 and 8) year old kids for two frames cost more almost $150!!! A HUNDRED AND FIFTY AMERICAN DOLLARS! and we didn't even eat!

[heygrey]

Broccoli crowns are $5/lb! Iceburg lettuce is $5/head!

House related things - light fixtures. omg. I don't have super high end taste, but it's looking like $300-500 per fixture for the 5 I'd like to replace.

[quesyrah]

Bowling. My kids joined a bowling league through our school and wanted to go as a family to practice their skills.

1 hour of bowling for the 4 of us was $100

[heygrey]

I just looked up bowling because H wants to go next week when we have guests. I don't know if the price is per person or not? It says $27 per lane for 1 hour, including shoe rental. Can 4 people bowl on one lane? Because that would be super cheap. But $27 per person is kind of steep.

ETA: It's normally $54/1 hour per lane, but they have half price lanes from 11am-3pm, hence $27. I guess I need to call and clarify. 

[Velar Fricative]

Dec 23, 2022 12:45:53 GMT -5 heygrey said:

I just looked up bowling because H wants to go next week when we have guests. I don't know if the price is per person or not? It says $27 per lane for 1 hour, including shoe rental. Can 4 people bowl on one lane? Because that would be super cheap. But $27 per person is kind of steep.

Ha, I did the same exact thing. It's $28 per lane for one hour (or $35 if we go after 6:00 pm), and that's for up to 6 people in one lane. Does not include shoe rental. So I'm guessing it could be close to $75 or so for the four of us? To me, that seems reasonable. But, this bowling alley we go to also offers discount deals during school breaks and stuff, so we take advantage of that too. It's also a massive bowling alley with tons of lanes; smaller ones may have higher costs because they can't serve as many people. Ours always has a full-service cafe and tons of birthday party rooms (we had DD1's party there in October and they were very reasonably priced to us). 

Reading this thread, I'm wondering if inflation is hitting in different ways in different places. I live in a VHCOL place so may our prices haven't gone up compared to the regional norm as much as they may have in other places?

[dochas]

Dec 23, 2022 12:35:56 GMT -5 jinkies said:

Bowling. I remember being shocked last winter, so I just looked again-- it would be around $300 for my family of 4 to bowl for 2 hours tomorrow. That does include $20/pp food and beverage credit that is required during high demand time periods. But even without that, it's over $200. To bowl.

I was shocked last winter too. Then this summer they had a big discount and I had my son's birthday party with food and toms of arcade credits for less than what it would have cost the three of us to bowl in the winter.

I'm sad that the escape rooms are so expensive. There's a virtual reality place by is too, $55 for an hour per person. I can't spend $110 to take my son and a friend out for 1 hour. Then there would have to be lunch or something after too.

[turkletsmom]

I came in here to say eggs and iceberg lettuce.
Also domestic flights and basic haircuts.

[court26]

So far it feels like everything except bananas and peanut butter. Seriously. I’m sure they are next.

[momin2013]

Hotels. Gas.

And every single item at the grocery store. I just paid $8 for strawberries! With us all being home for the holidays we’ll definitely go through them faster so I debated buying two cartons, but I just couldn’t stomach spending $16!

[meganew]

EVERYTHING. I can’t even think of one specific thing, because I feel like anytime I’ve bought anything over the last 4-5 months and they tell me the total I’m like “what?? How?? For this??”

[supertrooper1]

It won't help for winter break but for summer break, check out kidsbowlfree.com. There's a bowling alley in my area that uses this program and I thought it was a scam when I kept seeing it on FB, but I tried it out this summer and saved a ton of money. Once you sign up your kids for free, they get 2 free games per day, and they offered a $30 pass for up to 4 adults to bowl 2 games per day. We just had to pay shoe rental. I bought my own shoes. I paid for DS's shoe rental because I can't see paying $50 for bowling shoes he's going to grow out of in a few months.

[ssmjlm]

Eggs, OMG I feel like I need to start raising chickens or make nice with my neighbors that do have chickens or something.

[gretchenindisguise]

All the things.

Literally every single thing.

My vegan cinnamon rolls from the refrigerated section -$10. My vegan butter - $6-7.

Bowling. Gas. Baseball games. Theater tickets. Flights. Soda.

[RoxMonster]

In general the cost of food just kills me. I remember ten or so years ago, H and I would go out to dinner at a casual place for dinner, say, Chili’s. And including a 20% tip, we’d pay like 40 bucks for both our dinners, sodas and an appetizer. Now it’s double that.

When we had Covid last week, we Door Dashed McDonald’s. Before tip and their fee, it was over $30!! Over 40 after everything considered.

[Velar Fricative]

Aside from my post above, restaurants are definitely way more expensive. And it stinks, because we're finally back to normal from covid times but people have to reduce their own restaurant spending so we've noticed a few restaurants closing recently.

[loira]

I just spent $125 on 3 bags of groceries. I didn't even buy anything fancy! Unless you call fruit and vegetables "fancy". I see a lot of frozen peas in my future.

[dexteroni]

Dec 23, 2022 13:15:15 GMT -5 RoxMonster said:

When we had Covid last week, we Door Dashed McDonald’s. Before tip and their fee, it was over $30!! Over 40 after everything considered.

Oh yes to fast food! One day while I was out Christmas shopping I got Wendy’s for probably the first time in 2022, and it was $10 for a single combo. I was shocked! I usually eat about half of any fast food I order, but I finished almost all of this out of principle (and then regretted it afterward).