Shoppers cope using coupons
At Dick's in Bountiful last week, the mother was shopping for a household of nine and found $1 packages of taco shells, 7-cent limes and 50-cent mangoes, and she redeemed a coupon for Ziploc bags. Then she was off to Smith's down the street for the next killing.
"Last week, I bet I saved as much as I spent," Ostler said.
Although certainly not new to bargain hunting — she's refined her technique using the Internet over the past decade — Ostler is part of a rising number of Utahns redeeming coupons to keep their grocery budgets in check as food prices rise.
The Deseret News is tracking prices of common household items to see how they change over time. Tracked prices for food this month actually cost less now than they did a month ago. However, the overall cost of living, loosely measured by prices of 15 items from bananas to blue jeans, went up 1 percent — or 1.3 percent if you don't count discount sales.
The culprits are rising prices of a gallon of gas, a pound of hamburger — and a package of Oreos.
It basically shows that measuring prices, according to Wells Fargo economist Kelly Matthews, is complicated stuff.
Since the baseline check a month ago, our shopping cart of food, diapers, movie tickets, take-out pizza and blue jeans went up $1.60, or about 1 percent. While the 15 selected items certainly aren't a scientific sample of the cost of living, a 1 percent rise is identical to the cost of living increase Wells Fargo reported for the previous month, after examining more than 600 items between February and March.
Most responsible for the 1 percent price increase on our cart was the price of a gallon of gas. Gas at the Maverik station we're tracking went up 6 percent, from $3.20 to $3.40.
A barrel of oil at one point this past month hit $119. And refineries are starting to add the more expensive alkylate to help your car run better in warmer weather and cut back on air pollution, so the prices are going to go up more.
Food prices are connected to pump prices, and gas prices have been skyrocketing due to the weakened U.S. dollar. Transporting farmers' harvests to processing plants and the grocery stores costs more. Globally, demand for basics like wheat, corn and rice is up in developing countries such as India and China, where meat is in high demand, and costs for the grain that feeds livestock are rising. Meanwhile, Congress' push to use corn to make alternative fuel instead of food has helped push prices higher.
Recent comments
Make websites like pinchingyourpennies do the work for you. It doesn...
l | May 5, 2008 at 10:47 p.m.
To those who misunderstood me: I was not saying to buy cheap/worthless...
Denise | May 5, 2008 at 5:14 p.m.
I'm blessed. My wife has all her coupons cataloged, can check...
Jemal | May 5, 2008 at 1:04 p.m.
