Or refuse to buy
SD cards. Used to be able to get 32 or even 64GB cards for basically pocket money, and now it’s something you’d have to save for
Yeah, I sure could use some cheap SD cards now. I feel like a lot of the more privacy conscious gadgets use SD cards to save you from the menace of manufacturer-controlled cloud storage, rightly so!
I remember USB thumb drives hitting crazy lows at one point too, to the point where I was getting some decently sized drives as promo items. I think I paid $40 or so for my very first 250MB USB stick, maybe it was even smaller than that. I also distinctly remember buying a 128GB USB stick for a very similar price in the last decade or two and seeing them even cheaper than that. You do notice a build quality difference between them when you hold them side by side. The old Sandisk feels solid, the led, the cap, the enclosure are all solid and feel super sturdy and like they’re one single piece. The newer 128GB PNY is cheap, rattly, trashy plastic wrapped around a circuit board with a goofy retractable usb connector, but obviously outperforms the old one by miles. Would love to have cheap and quality. :-)
Basically any fast food. Within my lifetime fast food went from cheap end of week treat, to being a complete ripoff that’s almost never worth shelling out for…
Which is weird cause the price of actual restaurants hasn’t gone up as much during that time, so it now oftentimes makes more sense to just go to an actual restaurant where you’ll (usually) get better food in better portions
Yeah when taco bell is $40 for two of us and going to the sit down Mexican restaurant is $40, I’m going to pick food that gives me leftovers every time.
Taco Bell being cost-prohibitive is so wild to me. I remember going there so many times in high school in the 90’s and being able to get a veritable feast for $5.
No matter what you get it’s 90% beans, veggies, cheese, and corn. There’s no reason for this product to be high dollar except for motherfucking CEO’s.
I remember the taco bell challenge, order 10 dollars of food and try to finish it all. Now you can’t get a meal for that price…
I remember getting veritable feasts from Taco Bell for $5 in like 2018
I can still get my bean burritos and a drink for like $8. That being said I haven’t been to one in months
The $.99 bean burrito? Well, it was like $1.29 cause I’d get sour cream.
It’s like $1.50 now 😭
I figure it this way too, but then after I’ve eaten at the sit-down place the bill turns out to be $80.
My wife and I went out this year and the bill was $200 for a sit down Italian in our suburban town. I don’t even like Italian.
We did a tiki lounge more recently in the city and it was $150.
These are nicer ish places but like, that’s a lot.
$200 is crazy! We have some places like that here but, I live in a tourist town where the shitty chilli’s is $26 for one meal of burger and fries. But then you go one town over and everything is so much cheaper.
40$ is on the low end, think 70-100+ $, for people addicted to eating out.
family dinners events can be hundreds or up to a 1000$+
Yeah it very much depends where we go near me. Place we went to a few Fridays ago $40+tip for two of us, good portions, good food. Other place we go to, slightly smaller portions but still good food, $65+tip. I literally order the same thing at both places.
I remember $0.39 cheeseburgers at McDonalds and $0.79 bean burritos at Taco Bell.
But this was when gas was $0.89/g and we didn’t live under fascism.
Well, they were still that price when gas was much more expensive too. That price point was an awesome low point though.
I spontaneously went through a mcdonald’s drive through yesterday to pick up breakfast while i was in a hurry. I ordered one sausage biscuit with egg and cheese. $7.50
I was shocked and checked the receipt. The default sandwich was 5-something (which is ridiculous by itself) and the “cheese” was $1.50.
I think i’m just done with McDonald’s as an occasional thing.
I stopped most fast food years ago. It’s basically only an option in the rare situation that I need food “fast” and wont be home to eat it, and even then I avoid them more and more.
If I’m going home, I’ll order delivery or take out from a real restaurant. More-better food for same-less money.
That’s not even considering that I meal prep and cook at home even more, but even what little bit I still want to not cook myself… It’s not going to be restaurant prices for worse food.
You have to use there apps and points and shit to get it cheap, but it can be cheap. They’re basically in the business of wasting poor people’s time and collecting their data these days
I’ve seen people say this about Taco Bell, and I refuse to put that trash on my phone.
Just food in general.
I could conceivably budget for beef, but the price pisses me off so much I’ll go for a pork steak instead.
I get burgers to go from sit down places cause they’re better, full on burgers and not some slice of meat and filler measurable in the millimeters for the same price if not cheaper. I get a mushroom Swiss from IHOP for like $12 plus tip(yes typing culture sucks, but it’s the system we live in and I’m not going to stiff a kid cause I don’t agree with someone they have little control over). And I get legit big onion rings to boot!
I’ve found some places are still affordable, like small local establishements or even A&W, their trio of the day is still like only 10$CAD
Theres a perfectly good bbq resturant near me thats typically cheaper than mcdonalds.
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I don’t know but in general I’ve just stopped consumering. I get what I need and that’s about it. It’s my way of protesting not just prices but just how shit everything is today.
I buy independent media now, thats still cheap. I can pay the monthly subs for two indie news orgs for the same price I pay for four beers.
Note: I’m Australian, yeah beers a bit expensive here, but come on, value for money!
Computer memory (RAM)
Storage too
I bought 64 gigabytes of ram in 2019 on a laptop.
Did you swap it for a house this year or are you waiting for whole block of flats?
haha no joke. I was thinking of selling the sticks for a whole graphics card.
I wish I could just payoff my house.
I bought a laptop when I migrated. EIGHT FUCKING YEARS AGO.
Fast Food. Went in to Subway yesterday and got a single sandwich meal and it was 25 bucks. Hell, McDonalds isn’t even really cheap, the sandwiches that used to be on the dollar menu are like 4 bucks a pop now.
Who goes to Subway? Is it 2002?
I ask this question every time I’m reminded that it’s the most popular fast food chain in the US by some metrics.
Shit is disgusting.
You have to use the app. A footlong is like $7.
If I have to use an app to use a restaurant, I’m not.
Using an app does seem to be the deal now.
If things are cheaper in the app and the app is free, there is a hidden cost that makes them want you to use the app more than paying the higher price for sandwiches. Falling into this trap repeatedly is how we got here. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Drinks in a restaurant. I always order water. One day I was in the mood for tea until I looked down at the $4.99 price. Strangely, soft drinks we’re $3.99. I guess many of you aren’t surprised, but like I said, I never really order drinks with a meal so it had been a while since I had seen the price.
I honestly just finds it absurd that soda is usually as expensive as water. Or water is a few cents cheaper. I mean i drink water anyway, but still.
Wait… you have to pay for water at a pub or restaurant or cafe? Where are you from?
He’s probably referring to bottled water.
Right, that makes sense!
(Not that bottled water is as expensive as soda, that’s borderline criminal imo)
Depends where it is. Wetherspoons still does £1.99 a pint. I also found a place recently that I can abuse their system to get double my drinks order but even with that little cheat its still like £3.50/pint so I don’t go there much. Its mostly a human engineering attack combined with a little bit of knowledge of POS systems.
Streaming services.
Thank god piracy is free and it’s easier than ever.
I love piracy. It’s never let me down.
Exactly. I’ve been pirating content for 20+ years, except for a small period where Netflix was actually good. Now, I regret even paying for that short period; they don’t deserve any of my money.
Everyone’s talking tech, but I’ll add car parts.
Everything from aftermarket parts to basic things like filters or even windhsield wipers.
$25/blade. If you have a 3-blade car, that’s $75.
Had to replace a battery. They used to be $100-125 for a good one. Nope. $200 for a mid grade replacement.
It wasn’t cheap, but they were affordable. Not so much anymore.
RAM used to be so cheap they basically gave it away.
Bitcoin
More drives for my NAS - 16tb was about A$250 4 years ago. Same drives are now nearly A$1200.
In 2024, I bought 5 14 terabyte hard drives for about $600 for my NAS.
Thank God I have gotten nowhere near close to filling those up yet.
Just one additional drive is like 350 bucks now.
I’m limping along with one surviving 10tb, it’s twin mirror is dead. All non media data is backed up across smaller drives that still have pools/mirrors, but TB* of media is living on the edge untill something changes.
Edit, T not G
All my media is on a single drive, send help
I’m contemplating actually deleting shit. Or, if not that, storing offsite (deep storage) and then deleting, ready for that mythical time when drives become more affordable.
Did something similar and have 20TB of solid state in a Beelink ME Mini.
Same, Seagate exos x18 18TB drives. Four of them.
Now cost a fortune to replace
I would buy a drive with the expectation of being able to buy another drive twice the size for the same price by the time I could fill it.
A 4TB drive in 2026 costs more than it did in 2016.
I should sell some old 2tb ones I have lying about.
RAM! 😭
Also see: SSDs, HDDs, GPUs and CPUs
😢
Especially Crucial RAM, since Micron stopped selling to consumers in favour of datacentres.
Hard drives. They’ve gone up like 400%
And don’t even get me started on RAM
I refuse to purchase anything from Amazon. Bezos is not getting any of my money.
I feel like I should stop buying on eBay.
Actually, I kind of want to see a price fixing lawsuit against eBay now. They are explicitly telling sellers what price to list their items at, raising the prices of goods sold on eBay to the detriment of buyers so that they can get more money out of the commission fees.
The funny thing is my income has risen dramatically in the last few years, but I’m still approximately at the same level of purchasing power that I was six years ago.
If you had told me in 2012 I would be making low-mid six figures and still feel poor, I would have laughed at you.
I just bought some things on ebay to avoid Amazon. They dropshipped Amazon to me, individual packages and all, for nearly 100% markup. I don’t know how to avoid that and find “real” sellers dropshipping non-branded warehoused Chinese goods like the good old days.
- sponsored posts are usually drop shippers
- free returns are usually drop shippers
- check reviews and search for amazon or usps or post office to see if anyone mentions how they ship
- be wary of sellers with tens of thousands of feedback
If you get drop shipped, report a problem say it’s damaged or whatever, and don’t let them send you the Amazon return - use the eBay generated label. Then they have to pay for it and returns absolutely destroy drop shippers. Then leave feedback saying they just drop ship from Amazon
Thanks for the actual tips. It feels like this will just kill my hobby/craft desires if I have to do all this vetting for basic shit to avoid Amazon but not pay extra for poor selection from the local store. I’ll see, I guess. I suppose I could just braid my own weeds instead of crafting big things. That’s still free and local, right?
aliexpress, get it from the source.
You went to one giant corporation to avoid another giant corporation. Buy directly from sellers, ideally locally. Find their own actual websites. Ask word of mouth for recommendations.
This only works if you don’t live in the middle of fucking nowhere. Buying directly from a local seller for me means Walmart or Dollar General. After a 25-minute one-way drive, I can choose from a few more big chain stores. If I’m lucky, there’s a private business that sells what I need 9a-4p, Mon-Fri for 1.5x the price anywhere else IF it’s in stock.
Recently, I needed a network switch. Walmart didn’t have any in stock, but I could order ome online and have it in 5-7 business days and pay $15 for shipping. Best Buy said they could order one and have it for me in 7-10 business days, then I could make the 50-minute round trip to pick it up. There are no other stores within a two-hour drive that might even have one in stock. Amazon had it for $10 less than WM and BB and had free shipping in 2-3 days without Prime.
I needed a switch. I can’t build one. I can’t do my job without it. I can’t afford to wait for one to appear on Craigslist. I don’t want to support any of those companies; they’re all union busters and Trump donors. What’s a person to do in that situation?
Even if you live somewhere dense, there’s so many niche things, no brick and mortar place stocks it. For my own router, I had to find one recommended by forum users a decade ago for a specific disconnect issue within the Xbox One’s internal 360 emulator. BB and WM didn’t have the known-good options. In my recent case here, it was hobby stuff that my local craft store doesn’t have at all, despite carrying similar items. And I mean my classic example is I used to dabble in LEDs before everyone was just buying mains bulbs and 12v strips. The price of a single blue 5mm LED in the hobby electronic store was the same as 100 on ebay.
newegg or something other than Amazon / Walmart. at least that’s what I try to do. find a company whose leadership is furthest away from being oligarchic shitheads (even if that’s what they aspire to be)
Newegg is just as bad as Amazon, or were the last time I bothered to try them to avoid Amazon. They burned all the good will they had with me over a decade ago.
That typically doesn’t work well for hobby and craft supplies. Limited selection at the physical stores, if there’s any at all, and there’s no individuals selling raw supplies.
The funny thing is my income has risen dramatically in the last few years, but I’m still approximately at the same level of purchasing power that I was six years ago.
Fucking same. I basically doubled my salary a couple of years ago and it seems like I’m not getting anywhere…
Yep. Same boat, its insane.
I honestly do not know how anybody that is making less than $50,000 a year is even surviving right now.
With seven roommates I assume?
Making low 5 figure £ and don’t really know what to spend it on. A lot of things people are listing I don’t buy not because I couldn’t afford it, but it doesn’t seem worth it.
I could probably afford most things listed in the comments here, but my main reaction to most of them is why would I want to? Doesn’t seem worth it to me.
Never learnt to drive because I couldn’t afford it. Now I probably could afford it. At a push even around £500/month exploitative loan used by multiple people I know, would only cause minor financial issues. But I don’t want it. My bike is doing fine.
Wtf do you spend money on when you are doing fine and happy as you are with £100s extra a month than you know what to do with, despite earning only a bit over minimum wage?
Only thing I can really think of is save it and eventually pay off the mortgage early then work part time.
I went on eBay for the first time in years the other cat looking for a few cookbooks. Holy fuck. No thanks. I’m not paying retail plus shipping on the cheapest USED book. Get the fuck out.
Where are you shopping these days? My area has a Walmart and a dollar general. Love the mega corps…
Did you try ThriftBooks by chance?
That’s where I got one of the ones I was looking for!
Glad to hear it!
I scored the $50 premium hardback of ‘World of Ice and Fire’ for $11 off TB earlier this year. It also has a really cool inscription on the inside cover from the previous owner. I love used books.
Yeah I have a couple I’m still watching over there because they’re still out of my price range (I’m broke lol) but we’ll see 🤞
I’m in the same boat with Amazon. Doubly irritating that sometimes I’ll buy an item from eBay and it’s just drop shipped Amazon shit. Also I can’t count the amount of times I’ve ordered something that is advertised as “fast 2-4 day shipping” and the seller immediately creates a label only for the status to sit at “label created” for 6 days.
If you’ve never used SlickDeals, I highly recommend it.
Is SlickDeals only North America? Or do they deliver worldwide?
Hi there!
SlickDeals isn’t actually a retailer, but a community for bargain hunters. Basically someone sees a good deal and posts about it, and the community sees these posts and upvotes the best deals, but the best thing about it is you can create an email alert to yourself and add keywords, so you get an email when someone posts a deal matching that keyword. If you have a regular shopping list you use or staple products you know you’ll need interminably, like toilet paper (or for me, crew neck t shirts) it’s a really great way to get around price gouging or find a good bulk purchase to stock up.
I’m guessing there’s a non US equivalent if it doesn’t work in your country, since price gouging’s happening everywhere, but I can’t say for sure what it might be.
Brisket
Fast food
Fast casual food
Applebee’s-tier restaurants
Japanese cars
Used cars, motorcycles, ATVs, boats
Camping
Skiing
Taxi rides
Corn mazes
Pumpkin patches
Escape rooms
Concerts
Bars/Clubs
Retro video games and consoles
Thrift stores
Storage units
Apartments in the bad part of town
There’s no more middle class :( can’t afford a house, can’t afford “affordable” entertainment, can’t afford shit
Go have some kids
Shitty life protip: can’t afford life as it is? Have some kids, that way you won’t be miserable alone!
Just send them down the mines to help earn rent
Finally someone gets it!
It’s so hard raising kids in this climate that I constantly feel like a bad parent no matter what age they are :'(
Yeah the applebeees-tier really has a lot of fuckin nerve these days. Especially since it’s not like they’re paying their waitstaff much (or any?) more than they did in the late 90s.
Somehow camping had seen airbnb price increases without the amenities. And its just nature.
✅✅✅✅✅ yep!
