- cross-posted to:
- greentext@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- greentext@lemmy.ml
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Forgot the gym membership. With a car you can drive to the gym to walk on a treadmill.
these days $45 at costco is like two things, and $50 at a regular grocery store is six things.
but the analogy still holds that walking is much cheaper.
I just spent about 150 my last trip and I’m set for a month. No oj though, it’s expensive there, too. I could have gotten more but I held back in case I don’t get back for a minute.
ETA: I don’t have a car and the walk would take days.
Yeah I’ve been price comparing by unit volume between aldi and BJs cause my dad put me on his BJs membership-
Almost nothing is cheaper at BJs. Rice is. A whole bundle of coconut milk is cheaper.
But like… Unless you’re already buying brand names it’s frankly a bad deal 😅 and even then I’m curious how much better than Walmart it might actually be
BJs offered us a deal so we took it.
Almost every product there (all name brand) costs the same as buying the generic brand at Walmart. Cereal, yogurt, Mac and cheese, toilet paper, I have compared all of it while we have the one year membership.
Sure, I get name brand, and Jif is better than great value, but I have saved nothing. Won’t be renewing when they actually expect me to pay the membership. Sam’s club beats Walmart by a little bit but not a lot, and I dont have a Costco or Aldi’s near me. How does Aldi’s stack compared to BJ’s?
Thank you for sharing, that’s super helpful!
Aldi seem almost always cheaper or the same price compared to BJ’s, as everything at Aldi with a small number of exceptions is store brand. Even buying in smaller quantities many things are cheaper at Aldi, by at least a little bit.
The exceptions I saw were things like rice since you can buy store brand jasmine at BJs in a huge 25 lb bag, which if I remember is a good deal compared to Aldi (obs ignoring membership cause you can’t really factor that in). Basmatti was even steeper of a deal I think, since Aldi sells less basmatti and so only sells a smaller bag and for a bit more money. And I do remember dry black beans being cheaper but I believe that was even cheaper at Walmart. That might also be true for canned coconut milk which I think was cheaper at BJs, but it might be a bit cheaper still at Walmart, I don’t recall.
Milk has weirdly been way cheaper for me at target in my area, than basically anywhere else, which feels very strange, but it’s close to me and I’m usually there to pick up perscriptions anyway so it’s not too inconvenient to get only milk there.
It’s been a bit since I did price comparisons though, and my memory is exceptionally bad 😅. I almost always shop at Aldi so I don’t compare them ongoing, I just went through the process of checking a bunch of things recently.
Shopping at Aldi I would generally expect you to save a bit of money vs BJ’s unless you’re buying stuff you can buy at BJs in much larger volume.
Plus Aldi doesn’t make political campaign donations, and as such isn’t using my money to purchase my political institutions away from me, which I very much appreciate
Cool thanks for the info.
Also didn’t know bjs was donating lije that. Terrible.
Almost all companies do unfortunately, Aldi is a somewhat rare exception
You can look up what companies do or don’t, and which parties they support with the Goods Unite Us app or website, it’s handy :)
There was a comm here on lemmy where people posted screenshots of the apps overview for various companies, which was neat, but I haven’t seen any posts from it for a while
Whoa, you can get a BJ membership? I thought it was something you always had to pay for each time.
Can you shop at BJs without a membership…?
Its a wholesale club, like sams and Costco. But yes, you can get a membership, I think that’s the default/standard way of shopping there, shopping without a membership I think would be an exception to the norm
Is there like an option to pay an added fee on top of whatever you’re buying to be able to shop without membership? If so, how much is it?
And is the membership card called “Happy Endings” or something?
Where are you shopping where you can get a weeks worth of food for only 50
Aldi
Aldi is the shit
If you’re single and no kids, it’s very doable. Considering this person prefers an active lifestyle, they probably don’t spend money on junk food.
Eggs, milk, bread and some vegetables and maybe some fish. Add some soap and hygiene every once in a while then about 50 sounds about right.
My average was around 25 bucks with about a trip every 4 or 5 days or so unless some kind of splurge is added.
Salmon is 9 dollars a pound at Aldi’s milk is 2 bucks eggs are like 2-3.
Deodorant is about 3-4 dollars. Protein powder is like 2 dollars a serving at Aldi’s if I remember right?
Anyways when I go to Aldi’s I usually spend about fifty and that lasts a few days. I have three people in my house though and a growing teen. You can definitely do 50 a week on lean diet that requires you to cook every meal but the more people in the house and the more you work the less this is viable and the more you have to rely on premade shit.
Aldi’s is the shit tho. 8 bucks for three pounds of ground turkey goes a long way
I get groceries for a week in auckland at about 70. Considering auckland is the most expensive city in my country, I reckon 50 is fesible in other cities.
Whangerei about $100 for 2 of us a week and we eat yummy
Hell yea bro! Thats pretty good :)
In the year 2022. As per the date of the post in the screenshot.
Looking back at old receipts is very depressing right now …
Trader Joe’s
Living within 1 kilometer walking distance of a grocery store is amazing. Instead of expensive fast food I can get comparatively inexpensive deli food. And if I want to be frugal and cook meals myself, cheap beans, rice, fresh meat, dairy, and produce are all available. Plus, I get a nice daily walk instead of checks notes from a previous life drive twenty minutes to the gym each day to walk on a treadmill.
I got a rice cooker recently, great investment. I pan fry up whatever, some protein and vegetables, I’ve got a few good recipes going. With rice. I’ve been eating healthier and way cheaper. Tonight was chicken, green beans, and various seasonings. Was delicious af and cost me like 1.50$, if that.
The way to go IMO. I’m on a 20-year streak in not having a car. When I pick a new place to live, walkability to a good grocery store is one of my primary considerations. I only shop for one, so lugging groceries is no big deal, and I enjoy the extra exercise.
Throughout my life I’ve watched people spend all their money on conveniences and degrade physically, mentally, and financially as a result. Why not situate yourself for long-term success from the get-go? I wish more people were conscientious of the energy balance required to sustain a healthy life and best aligns with the environmental impacts we’ve wrought upon ourselves.
I just broke my 12 year streak of not having a car. I took a job as a city bus driver. Whaddya do when you’re supposed to run the first bus out of the garage and it’s too snowy to bike? I feel like a failure and a jerk. But I am trying to move close to the depot, so hopefully I could walk.
I think if anyone gets a pass for needing a car to get to work it’s the early working bus driver, haha.
That sucks, but we gotta do what we gotta do. I don’t begrudge anyone for adapting to the environments society has established. Sticking to ideals is a rarity when things are structured to push us toward consumptive lifestyles. So, I’d not feel like a jerk; heck, just having a modicum of awareness is a step in the right direction.
The gym is such a waste of energy. With proper form you can get that workout doing useful things. For charity if nothing else.
I live less than a kilometer from a grocery store but it takes me a half hour to walk there because I’m in a subdivision and there’s no direct sidewalk.
I used to be able to cut across yards but somebody put up a fence to stop that.
Buy used 110cc motorbike for 250-300USD
pay 30USD a month for fuel because 160mpg
flop over in the middle of traffic because the 25kg bag of rice you’re balancing between your legs shifts
Buy used 110cc motorbike for 250-300USD for faster commute
pay 30USD a month for fuel because 160mpg
get groceries delivered
take tram if it rains or if you feel like it
Which customer buys 25 kg of rice at once? Literally nobody.
Skill issue, regardless.
Hey there, Rice-a-Roni - there are 8 billion other people in the world, so it’s pretty bold and exceedingly stupid to speak for all of them. In fact, I’ll bet there are literally a billion people in the world that buy their rice 25kg at a time. I know it is very common in Hawaiian households, I’d guess that there are more Hawaiians buying 25kg bags of rice than there are Hawaiians buying 1 kg bags.
Dunno why you needed to say ‘Rice-a-Roni’, but I think it’s not stupid to be baffled at buying 25 kg of rice.
Most I see is 1 kg bags.
Right - and my point was that the whole rest of the world doesn’t see or experience life in precisely the same way that you do. It is only stupid to make broad generalizations about the whole rest of the world from your tiny little corner of it.
The same also applies in your way, though. Realise that not everybody buys 25 kg bags. Sure, I learnt something new today. But I think it’s good to keep in mind that the world is a nice varied place where not everyone does the same.
You’re the one that literally said “Which customer buys 25 kg of rice at once? Literally nobody.”
Your attempts at backtracking don’t work when the only thing someone needs to do to refute what you’re saying is looking up.
Extremely common in Asia.
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That’s what the average SEA eats in like 2 days. Its the big bags at any grocery store
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Correct. I have not been riding motorbikes since before I could walk, so I cannot do what the locals do. Yet.
That’s what the average SEA eats in like 2 days. Its the big bags at any grocery store
No the fuck we don’t. A 5kg bag lasts an entire week for a family of four adults
Slight exaggeration for comedic effect.
Slight
I’ll say… 25kg in two days is over 42k calories per day. Either south east Asians are literal human machines that do the hardest physical work imaginable or they’re all fatter than OP’s mom.
I slightly exaggerated how slightly I exaggerated, for comedic effect.
The average south east Asian eats that much? I find that hard to believe. Maybe you mean 2.5 kg? Then I could see that being plausible for a household of four, spread over a week.
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That’s roughly two bags at Costco. Way more than my wife and I would buy for just us, but I could see larger families reasonably buying that much.
I am looking for places to buy 50 lb sacks of people grain, especially barley. Feed stores sell them but idk what chemicals they use. 20 bucks at feed stores for ag.
lb
You and your funny units
What I hate is stores that give the price per unit in ounces. Especially when it is in pounds elsewhere, like the more expensive one the price will be in ounces so then you have to multiply times 16 in the store in your head it is super annoying.
Where I am they also use different units. Could be could be 100g, could be 1kg. But since, well, you know, the metric system, all you have to do is move the decimal point to multiply or divide by 10.
Is that ounces as in mass or ounces as in volume? Or is it both.
Haha, either liquid or dry ounces, fun to do the dividing into 128 for gallons too but 16 is a pint and 32 a quart and 4 to a gallon so it is easier unless the chiseling companies downsized their products to 12 oz from 16.
I buy 5 or 10kg bags of rice at once and i live alone.
My pedal bike can equip pannier carriers - doesn’t something like that exist for motorbikes too?
Yes, but the rack is already being used to hold the rest of your groceries, family of 5, dog, refrigerator, and all the other things car owners claim they absolutely need a car to transport.
Once again a post about zoning laws instead of cars.
“I would like to live in a carless society”
v
“I would like somewhere to park my car”
is a real dichotomy that spans both issues.
A great example is my own hometown of Houston, a city famous for its lack of zoning.
By 1978, the city had gutted itself in order to clear space for more parking. It took decades to reverse that mistake and rebuild the interior of the city. A big part of that was the introduction of (still very modest) bus and light rail.
Still a ton of parking spots I see, could’ve been replaced by bicycle racks, apartments, and parks.
The parking spots could have gone underground.
There’s a series of underground shops and restaurants in downtown Houston, connected by tunnels. Great way for someone working downtown to walk to lunch when it’s too hot to go outside.
There is some underground parking on the edge of downtown.
With that said, it’s actually very difficult to build underground in Houston because of the high water table.
could’ve been replaced by bicycle racks, apartments, and parks.
We did actually have a ton of public racks and even rental bikes installed under Mayors White and Parker. Turner kinda neglected them. Then, over the last year, John Whitmire tore them all out again.
I’ll also note that the Main Street light rail has created a boom in apartment housing along its length. South of downtown was basically a slum until the rail was installed. Now it’s a bunch of 8+ story apartments and a few high rises with shopping/restaurants on the first floor.
Then I hope Whitmire gets ran over by a car. Hope he plucks the sour fruits of his own policies.
Reading more on him and he sounds like an ass. No AC for inmates in hot summers… then he’s a criminal himself for making people die. Maybe he should undergo a lack of AC himself.
He also seems awfully willing to lock people up, instead of actually making the situation better by ending his own life.
here it’s more like this:
don’t own a car no store in reach ??? starve
This is assuming you live in a walkable town or neighborhood. I remember a reddit post (can’t find it anymore) of a guy trying to walk less than 2 miles to an appointment in Orlando. He followed Google Maps directions down the shoulder of a highway that led to a dead-end, backtracked, tried again, and finally made almost all the way to his destination, which was on the opposite side of a 6-lane highway Google wanted him to cross.
I’ve only ever visited the theme parks in Orlando, but I experienced one intersection I had to share with cars. I spent every walk sign waiting for cars making a turn to yield. Even though I had the right of way, literally none of them did, until I finally had to run across the street because the cars at the red light, who could see I was 1/3 through the intersection, floored it the second their light turned green. Sure, fuck all of those car-brained drivers who refuse to yield to pedestrians, but also fuck that city for not fining drivers for shitty behavior, or at least changing their traffic lights so all cars have red lights when pedestrians have the walk sign.
Anyway, point is, personal choices are important, but they can’t overcome the systemic issues created by car culture without collective action. And Orlando sucks ass.
The whole “turn right on red” in north America baffles me as a European.
Oh, this wasn’t even a right on red. The green light for cars was lined up with the walk sign for pedestrians going rhe same direction. In a situation like that, when a car with a green light needs to turn through the crosswalk, they are supposed to yield to any pedestrian crossing at that time, but apparently the people of Orlando have so much car entitlement that they don’t even slow down when a pedestrian is standing in the middle of the crosswalk trying to complete a legal crossing.
I know this is fuckcars, but I personally I think it makes sense. Our brothers in Lithuania are also doing it (tbf there needs to be a specific sign next to the light saying you can do it).
The less people spend waiting on pointless traffic lights, the faster cars get to their destination, the less cars there are on the street. At least that’s how I view it.
All of this is of course keeping in mind to always yield to a pedestrian.
American here, this is just as stupid and dangerous as it sounds. The idea is that it’s very easy to check for pedestrians before turning but literally almost no one even looks. Even if the crosswalk light is lit they don’t notice and just plow right through.
Id argue the idea is that its easy to check for cars as you only need 1 lane of traffic. Traffic engineers don’t really consider the needs and safety of pedestrians, they just do the bare minimum to accommodate them. And the engineers that do try to care about pedestrians are told things like “well thats not how its done in this book from the 50s” or “that would reduce our throughput by 5% meaning we’d need to invest in another car lane”
In NYC it isn’t allowed and now I think it’s insane we allow it everywhere else.
it works great if you just break check the fucker that’s trying to turn, if you lack the confidence it works less well
Congrate, your first sentence figured it out.
Maybe you just got here but bud I’m getting so tired of people assuming that people like the person in the post aren’t also the same people screaming for better infrastructure so we can ditch this high dependence on cars. We know that not everywhere is like this and that’s why we also have a MOUNTAIN of examples of even the shittiest places in the US, but also all over the world, doing things to build better for not that much money.
The entire point of the post is to show that people who fight against that change don’t have much of an argument. We know how things are but they don’t need to be like forever. Nearly every city used to be a 15min city before the car and then 50-100 years ago we fucked it all up(because of bribes from car manufacturers) and kept that shit train rolling.
Yeah, that would be a great point if the entire post wasn’t a 4Channer framing this as personal choices and not systemic ones. The dudes not talking about how the car industry destroyed railcars, he’s dunking on people who drive to the grocery store, and the implication is clearly, “everyone can and should do this,” which is bullshit.
Except there are places where that’s true. There are also people in places with the same mindset who buy trucks for twice the price of a reasonable hatchback and act like the extra $30k+ is less than occasionally renting a U-Haul.
You not being smart doesn’t diminish my point.
Except there are places where that’s true. There are also people in places with the same mindset who buy trucks for twice the price of a reasonable hatchback…
Yeah, I never said this wasn’t true, but again, none of that is in the fucking post. The dude’s not making a nuanced point about people who live in walkable areas but buy large trucks over sensible hatchbacks. He’s making a sweeping statement about how people who don’t walk to the grocery store are idiots, but America has the walking score of a developing nation; if you live somewhere where you can walk to the grocery store, you’re breathing rarefied air, and calling other people stupid for driving is entitled.
Like, what are you so pissy about? That I was responding to the content of the post instead of the points you assume the 4Channer would make, but didn’t? OK buddy, in the future, I’ll try to infer what you presume the OP’s hidden beliefs are and tailor my comment to that. Seems reasonable.
So you get to have all the nuance but they don’t? Ok, buddy.
The fuck are you talking about? Yeah, they don’t get to have the nuance; it’s not in the fucking post. It’s a pithy 50ish words about how they’re so much smarter than other people for not driving to the grocery store. I pointed out the reality is more nuanced than that for most people, and your whole response has been, “yeah, well, they probably know that, so why don’t just act like their response is nuanced?” To which the answer continues to be, “Because that’s not what they fucking said, are you high?”
Wahh wahh oh my god, dude. Congrats, you showed up and started running your mouth like you had access to special information and were teaching people that there are places without good infrastructure. We know this already, and I even showed you other extremely related examples.
Yes, you’re a very special smarty-pants thank you for this wonderful and definitely new take that will totally help and isn’t at all the same old tired shit that constantly bloats the discussion.
My car costed less than 6k. But yeah 1-2k on maintainence, $1200 insurance and probably 2k on gas every year. E-bikes looking very interesting.
Our cargo bike cost 5k€. It basically replaces the car for day to day. Commute, groceries, daycare run. We only use the car for longer trips or the odd airport pick up run.
Gotta be dope having it not be -10°c for 40% of the year…
Cycling in the cold really is no problem.
Well I don’t handle the cold well, and we often have 10-20cm of snow in the winter… no bueno
Finns would like to have a word: Why Canadians Can’t Bike in the Winter (but Finnish people can)
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU
What do you spend 1k a year on maintenance on?
I’ve had two cars before that took about 1k yearly on maintenance. One just had a weird electrical issue that I hoped would actually get fixed eventually (and a tie rod just fell off at one point) and the other car’s A/C went out a couple times, requiring maybe 400USD to recharge. That car was totaled before the AC was ever fixed.
It’s always something with a 20 year old car. Tires, brakes, fluid changes, oh the radiator is leaking, oh a sway bar link broke, oh I destroyed a tire on a pothole, oh I will try in vain to sus out that error code again.
It would be so much we easier if they just admitted they were in highschool. Sure. The only thing I need a car for if groceries. The only thing this person needs a car for is 45$ of Mom’s Costco membership worth of Doritos
Have you heard of public transit? Quite useful for getting places.
I moved to a major European city. Seeing people (and now doing it myself) bringing home furniture on the bus or train is great. I don’t own a car anymore. Between a small wheelie cart and larger stuff coming via delivery with the order, we’ve been furnishing our apartment without trouble.
The percentage of days we needed a big vehicle was always low. Buying and maintaining a car when there’s actual modern public transit is only for extreme edge cases.
What’s public transit? Will that drive me 50 miles to work at the exact time I need it to?
I’m salty my country is like this. Fucking stupid
Not really useful in many places. And for most homes, it’s non existent
A bike maybe. But you can only carry so much groceries on a bike without it being a very frustrating experience.
I’m almost 40 and that’s about all I use mine for, outside of camping trips.
Ok let’s flip this to cherry pick my example.
Don’t need a car most of life, get to 40 and upskill and become a software engineer. Job market is terrible due to saturation and I suck at interviews so can only take a job 40 miles away from home.
No problem.exe. I can take 2.5-3 hour commute each way 5 days a week.
Fast forward a few months and I’m just dead on my feet, do nothing but go to work come home goto bed get up and repeat.
Decide this can’t continue. Can’t afford to move to the bougie town where I work so decide I need a car finally.
Save 12-15 hours per week and it’s not too much more expensive than taking a Metrolink and a train to work with 30 mins of walking too. Plus all the meals you need to eat out of the house when you’re out for 14 hours in a day.
On my days off I’ll take the tram 20 miles each way to go rock climbing but some people actually do need cars and they shouldn’t be made to feel bad for it.
Also the sunk cost of the car’s capital goes toward all the other things you’ll use your car for, like leisure time and driving other humans around. Also the practicality of walking to get groceries decreases as you gain more mouths to feed.
It’s also not super practical to walk to get groceries if you live in a hot climate.
or cold climate
I’ve got a family of four, soon to be five. There’s no way I could possibly do all my grocery shopping on foot. It’s just too much to carry. I’d have to bring a wheelbarrow, and all the ice cream would melt.
Exactly. I’ve actually used the car at weekends to do some work for friends. So can earn more money with it.
Walking to my grocery store and back would be an all day affair and I’d have to have help hauling everything because I’m married with two kids, so our two week grocery bill runs between $200 and $300 depending on what all we need. My closest Walmart is 25 miles away. My closest local grocery store is about 7. And there is no public transportation here.
Rough!
I have 3 large supermarkets in less than a 10 minute walk and another small one that would be “walking from the parking lot” distance.
We also have a local sourdough bakery and a sort of farmers market pickup point within walking distance.
We must have grown up on the same street. Lol
I lived next to a little natural grocery for a few years. Prices were about 20% higher than the ordinary grocery and maybe double what I’d pay at Costco. At first I was resistant because they seemed to be overcharging so much. Overtime I talked to the employees and realized the savings I made on time and not needing a car more than made up for the higher price. Plus they had to keep prices high because shoplifting was very common.
I started figuring my time and car expenses into future shopping trips and now I don’t mind paying a bit more for the local co-op.
Here on Copenhagen:
- Buy a bicycle for 4000 dkk.
- Bike less than 1 km to arrive at Netto/Rema 1000/lidl/Coop 365.
- Buy a kanelsnegle for 8 dkk.
Kanelsnegle doesn’t even sound like a real word.
Edit: It’s a cinnamon bun.
Kanelsnegle is the plural of kanelsnegl, so I understand the confusion. It should’ve been a kanelsnegl.
It literally translates to cinnamon snail.
But as I know the Danish, you probably pronounce it more like Ka
nelsnegle
Usually I need to be at work 08:00 or 08:10. Furthermore, the same trip by car takes approximately 30-35 minutes during rush hour. This means my car saves me approximately 1-3hrs every working day (valued ~4k€/yr based on my current wages).
My car cost ~1k€ 8 years ago and maybe an additional 1.5k€ maintenance per year (a lot of which I do myself) + 2.5k€ fuel + insurance + tax - compared to 800€ for a public transit card.
Our family home is valued at 110k€, the same money would buy a 1 room studio apartment in the city.
conclusión?
The infrastructure is too car dependent and OP is navigating within it really well?
a) Housing is expensive in urban areas.
b) Public transit has difficulty competing outside urban areas due to being relatively slow and inflexible when demand and service is low.
c) Cars win on convenience and service, due to the alternative cost of time.
If I value your time at 99999999999999999€/hour how much do you make?
I’ll give you a 99.99% discount on that rate, when can I start working? Get in touch at Iceblade02@proton.me
;)
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