Or refuse to buy

Beer! I can still afford it, I just won’t so I quit.

all sorts of thing. I used to be the type of big money person that bought fast food and named brand soda in a can. also electronics was a bit of a thought about if to buy or not but not something expected to break the bank. like I would not buy it all willy nilly but I generally got something if I thought I would use it.

Anything that comes in pods.

Waste of money and terrrible for the environment.

I agree, nuke the whales!

Gotta nuke something

Computer memory (RAM)

chicken wings!

If I was more familiar with it, I'd replicate Bane's speech from the Dark Knight Rises on being born in the darkness, but replace darkness with poverty.

So, just pretend I did and that it was awesome.

Everything

I remember 1 cent wings. I am old.

More drives for my NAS - 16tb was about A$250 4 years ago. Same drives are now nearly A$1200.

RAM

Honestly! You gotta pull out a mortgage these days to eat at wild wing!

MicroSD cards

Going bowling.

Ardebg Alligator.
Had it in a bar on a night out, and was was phenomenal. It was expensive per shot, but I feel we cleaned them out.
It was really really good

Wanted to buy it, was £150 a bottle. Way too much for a whisky.
Finally had some disposable income, £150 for a bottle between friends seemed alright... Now it's £250.
Got to the point where a good memory, nice whisky and friends is worth £250... And its £400 per bottle.
Now it's £500 per bottle, still not worth it.
So many good whiskies for less than £100.

It's not an "investment" whiskey at all. That's the span of 15 years or so. Maybe 500% net over 15 years is a good investment, I don't think so.

One of my mates got married recently, would've been a great opportunity to buy a bottle.
Kinda wish I had... but I also painted his house, helped with a TON of DIY stuff, and a bunch of wedding stuff.
The actual on-the-day-stuff was "just turn up" as far as I was concerned.

One day, the price of Ardbeg Alligator will match disposable income and the occasion.
Till then, I'm sure it will keep increasing beyond my means & commitment

Fast food for sure.

Oh, you think poverty is your ally? You merely adopted it. I was born in it. Molded by it. I didn't see wealth until I was already a man, and by then, it was nothing to me but sickening. The bargains betray you, because they belong to me. I will show you where I have made my home, whilst preparing to bring taxation. Your precious hoard, gratefully accepted. We will need it. Ah yes, I was wondering what would break first. Your spirit, or your property.

Not perfect, but is that what you wanted?

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

Eating out. 60% of my hourly wage for a beer and a meal was acceptable but it's well over 100% now.

Skirt steak is getting pretty pricey these days

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.

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.

Ramen.

McDonald's prices are insane!

Masterfully done!

Subway

Brisket

Did something similar and have 20TB of solid state in a Beelink ME Mini.

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.

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.

In fairness, the five dollar footlongs were not sustainable for them - corporate pushed it because they made money while the franchisees didn't, but they didn't care.

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

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.

Husband says helium and gas when I was trying to get him to guess two things...

Ground beef used to cheap.

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...

And their shit is so bland compared to what it used to be.

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.

like...instant ramen or actual ramen? Isn't a bag of top ramen still like 50 cents?

Soy yogurt for some reason got expensive. No idea why.

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.

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.

If you've never used SlickDeals, I highly recommend it.

Did you try ThriftBooks by chance?

This was me and soda. The off-brand soda I'd started buying was unavailable for three weeks last summer, and Coke, RC Cola, and Pepsi were all price-fixed at the same price... so I said fuck those guys and just weaned myself off it with what I had left.

Some prices just piss a consumer off.

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 bought a laptop when I migrated. EIGHT FUCKING YEARS AGO.

I can still get my bean burritos and a drink for like $8. That being said I haven't been to one in months

Same, Seagate exos x18 18TB drives. Four of them.

Now cost a fortune to replace

I figure it this way too, but then after I've eaten at the sit-down place the bill turns out to be $80.