Admittedly, there wasn't a lot of it to begin with, but there were just one or two cereals I would select, a particular brand of bread etc etc.
Now there's just one big brand: cheapest. With a few restrictions:
I still buy Hellmann's Mayonnaise and Land O'Lakes butter.
I eat more chicken...steaks only every now and then.
I eat out less.
All of this is, I believe, fairly typical, no?
Those dollar dominoes tumble downhill, of course, so the people who own the factories making the rejected brand products have a touch less demand, so they pay workers for fewer hours. And those workers reduce their own brand loyalty...so the vicious cycle continues.
Henry Ford famously said he wanted his workers to be paid enough that they could afford to buy the cars they were assembling. Amen, Henry, Amen.
There's a story in this morning's NY Times about China's product counterfeiters adapting to the economy by making less expensive fake goods. There's so much counterfeit product manufacturing in Thailand that they have a museum to it in Bangkok!
I think I still have two books that I purchased in Taiwan during an R&R trip during my tour in Vietnam. I bought them for pennies from a firm that simply took existing books and reproduced them on cheap paper...without paying anything to the authors or publishers, or course.
One of them was titled Military Law is to Law as Military Music is to Music...a fake book about a fake legal system.
If the author is still around, I owe you!
[ADDENDUM: if you want to read a disheatening take on how unnecessary all of this jobless pain is, check out Bob Herbert's column in today's Times.]
Butter is butter. If it's labeled Grade AA, it doesn't matter where it came from. (Imported Irish butter is a different ball game, though.)
ReplyDeleteI watch for sales and if butter is 2 for $4.00, I buy six or eight boxes and put them in the freezer. Likewise with any brand that's on sale.
When you become 60, Tim, you get a 5% discount at Publix on Wednesday, otherwise known as Geezer Day. But you're not there yet.
I won't sacrifice Triscuits, Cheerios or Hellman's mayo. Or Dial soap.
On TP, it's Scott ever since I figured out that they sell the most economical rolls.
Another trick is to buy the smallest package of meat you can find in the store. Even if there's only a few pennies involved, it'll add up.
If the bottom of the sales slip says "You saved $20 today," I mentally annualize it and tell myself, "That's a thousand dollars over a year's time."