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
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?
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
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
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?
£50 would be pushing 2 weeks for both of us. We normally spend £20-30 a week between us. May reduce it further as my garden becomes more productive, already never need to buy rosemary, thyme, sage, chives or mint again.
I'm intrigued what you could be buying where a weeks worth of food for a couple only costs you £30. Like, what do your daily meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner) look like?
IIRC the following is roughly what we bought for this week, obviously some ingredients left over from previous weeks and some won't be completely used and gets used in following weeks.
Other: 500g rice, 1kg pasta, quite a bit of honey/vinegar for making chuntey, frozen peas, 1.5kg flour, cinnamon, cloves
I grow quite a few of my own herbs to help as well: Rosemary, sage, thyme, chives, mint. Adding oregano soon. My garden is fairly small so only growing herbs rather than veg but hopefully getting an allotment soon. I also forage for fruits when they are in season, made 2L of apple chutney this week which is why I needed the honey/vinegar, though could do with a proper stockpot to do it in larger quantities.
If you don't have a garden, the herbs I am growing would be pretty easy options for some guerilla gardening. Maybe not the mint as it can be a bit invasive. There is even a large rosemary bush near one of the supermarkets in town here that I have taken cuttings from before. A little cheeky but you could probably even take a little cutting from someones front garden if you are desperate.
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.
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 wish Aldi stocked dried beans here, only get tinned. Rice is fine though, they also sell oats and they come in compostable paper bags now which is nice, rice is still plastic.
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.
do grocery stores where you live not have frozen food? that's the ideal in my book: perfectly decent quality and you just have to heat it.
This is the best one i've tried, it's literally just frozen veggies, precooked pasta, chicken, and sauce. Healthy as fuck while tasting great and taking 0 effort to prepare.
Come off it, chopping veggies up and freezing them (‘industrial processing’) doesn’t make them unhealthy. There’s also not a way to guarantee that your food has no pesticides (it’s permissible under the organic label in some conditions) unless you grow it yourself.
Oh boy, if you really think these are healthly I have bad news for you...
Sure there are worst options around, but that still counts as processed food on my book!
The science on “ultra-processed” foods is scattered because even dietitians can’t agree on what an ultra-processed food is, or agree on what exactly it is that’s so harmful about it. If it’s high sugar and salt then the processing has fuck all to do with it. If it’s specific preservatives then processing has fuck all to do with it, it’s those specific things that are bad.
Until it’s something other than vibes-based, it’s a bad idea to exclude affordable vegetables or fruit from your diet solely because they’re processed.
For me its about what you said: processed is adding stuff to preserve and "improve".
Nothing bad about frozen basic ingredients that arent cooked. Also in my country fresh veggies and fruit are cheaper than frozen ones.
For me its about what you said: processed is adding stuff to preserve and "improve".
Which is why it’s a bad, wobbly standard to use. Lactofermented vegetables are incredibly healthy for the gut microbiome, but would fall under this processed label. Processing isn’t inherently bad, and neither is preserving.
so clearly you didn't read your own link, because that is literally based on the fact that it contains glucose, that is the ONLY reason it's classed as ultra-processed.
you cannot seriously look at this and conclude it's processed, there's no way in hell you're here in good faith and i very much suspect your upvotes are fake.
Maybe its a cultural thing, but mostly fresh vegetables, fresh fruits, fresh meat, fresh fish... I think you got the idea. Frozen veggies are good too (if not pre-cooked or seasoned).
I think you're right about that. They're just frozen veggies mixed together with chopped meat. The main thing I'd look at is how much salt they dump into these things.
Spices wouldn't be fresh, either, but that's more of a taste issue than health issue.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The only thing costco really has going for it is the odd item that is truly on sale, dependable low prices on some stuff, and quality control. Quality control is the big one. I can't remember most of the tests now, but when olive oil was being looked at, costco was one of the two brands out of something like 32 that was actually what it said on the label. On a couple of other things as well that I remember, like honey, they had the same finding.
It's also ignoring how this person spent so much in gas if they're able to walk everywhere. Surely they're talking public transportation, biking, or they simply have 4 extra hours a day.
But yes owning a car is an expensive grift, but it's one that's hard to avoid in many parts of the US
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.
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.
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.
All american cities were built that way until the suburbs were deliberately built to destroy that, because there was more profit in the system of private vehicles. (Along with everything else that falls on each individual in the suburbs, which also prevents us from organizing, which benefits the designers of this system)
Your problem is assuming if it can't be done by one person, single-handedly, then it can't be done at all. For every person that thinks like this, our capacity as a class is reduced.
Sure, we have leftists in America; we just removed on Lemmy instead of actually stand on street corners handing out pamphlets.
lmao, speak for yourself dude. There are plenty organizations doing this work; not just handing out pamphlets but actual organizing, direct action, education, mobilization, etc; you just haven't gone looking for them and by default you exist in an ecosystem that suppresses them from your view.
Sure, and you let me know when your city council; or any politician at any level of government for that matter; does anything to materially improve conditions for the working class, completely unprompted by working class people organizing and making demands. And you let me know too if they are faithful to those demands and give any credit to the organizations that pushed it through, or give just enough to shut people up and present it as if it was all part of their plan the whole time.
AFAIK the other EU/EFTA countries aren't much better when it comes to rightwing authoritarianism. Even the ones that currently have center-left governments usually have a strong far right opposition waiting for next election, and a lot of the time the center-left governments are already enacting rightwing authoritarian policies (see UK).
But fair, Germany should know better given its history, but instead it just made them more vulnerable to Israeli propaganda and blackmail.
If it weren't for weather I wouldn't have a car. Sure, 90 minutes by ebike is a serious time commitment, but I'd save so much money a year it makes sense as a part time job.
It's a pretty hilly commute. Besides the ever present threat of being murdered in traffic (and this is a rural area, so traffic actually is a lesser concern), I have to contend with going up and down half a dozen steep slopes.
studded tyres make biking on ice feel like biking on asphalt, and you can buy very good rechargable LED lamps. I had a teacher who biked ~20km in the winter, through rural areas and during the dark since it becomes night at 17:00.
But we're talking 11pm, if I get in a bad accident on a dark farm-to-market road I'll just die. No one will see or hear me.
Also 20km is only 12.4 miles.
And I outright don't believe riding on a steep icy hill with studs is like riding on asphalt. I'm sure it's doable, I just don't believe it's easy or safe.
I haven't had a car for two years now. Well technically i had the car i use for my job, but i never use that in my free time. While public transportation is pretty good here, i still live close to nowhere and i have to get to the next bus stop. Ebikes are fantastic but they do have their limits. Gettig groceries on a nice sunday morning, i can go on a 90min trip without any roads and no cars and a view that would blow most people's mind. But a rainy Thursday evening in the cold, there are just days that i'm not in the mood for that.
Personal experience, yes. I’ve biked trails in all conditions and only had any trouble on one of them. It had snowed a bunch, thawed, froze again, and then rained. I could still generally bike around and never fell, but didn’t have enough traction for the short steep climbs found on trails.
Some people in this community are nuts. They expect people to bike 15-20 miles though snowy mountains carrying a weeks worth of breakfast, lunch, and dinners.
I often choose to ride my bike in the winter on super icy (side roads, no traffic) it's fun for recreational purposes if you're into that. On a commute or something else, i really wouldn't recommend.
Yeah I lived a car-free life when I lived in Seattle, working on Magnolia Hill, living on Capitol Hill. That was doable year round. The midwestern flyover states I grew up and live in, tho, no it's not workable. In the North there's snow for months, in the South we have monsoon season where it rains for weeks, in the summer heat index gets above 110 regularly and these people don't plant shade trees. Plus nearest grocery stores are miles away (I live downtown in a capital city).
Even though I work a few blocks from my home, I can't live car free here without significant ride-sharing expenses (the bus system is a joke and only runs part of the day, grocery shopping would eat an entire day of my week that way), if I did that I couldn't go on roadtrips on weekends either, unless I rented a car - and all that is more expensive than my (20k, not 40k) car.
But I do love this community and it's coastal approach to shaming people who rely on cars... take the tram or train, lmao
Studded tires are illegal on public roads where I live (i'm pretty confident it applies to bikes too), but i do fine with fat tires. My chain slips if its actively snowing though and for some reason my bolts loosen rather quickly in winter.
I ride a bike in winter, though admittedly it’s in a city where frequent plowing and ambient heat make it less of an issue. Funny thing is, I bought my bike in December.
I wear thick winter gear, including gloves, socks, and mask. If I drove, I’d want that sort of gear as soon as I exit my car at the parking lot, so I’d rather just have that all on beforehand and be warm the whole way.
It’s also just not that snowy/icy around here anymore. You might get it for a few days but otherwise it’s just cold and dry.
More like box store closes to cash in on real estate sale and then opens new location just a few blocks down the road on the outskirts. Rinse and repeat.
The price of new cars has gone insane since covid. I regularly watch car reviews and the prices are always shocking - SKODA's costing nearly £40,000, which a few years ago would have got you a decent BMW or Merc.
My parents have two Toyota RAV4s one at $23000 the other at $25000 -- $31000 or something (don't remember cuz it's not my car lol), one was pre-covid, the other was post-covid.
I don't have a license, I suppose I could borrow one if I need to to somewhere (if they have a good mood, that is)
I just got diapers according to the store it was a great discount, they where from the stores own brand (not even a "premium" brand)
Anyway I paid 26 cents per diaper (for my daughter)
When my son was born 6 years ago I paid 12 cents per diaper.
Every government chart about inflation is just not accurate for your groceries. The official inflation numbers tell me it's about 25% inflation, but in reality for a lot of things it doubled.
The CPI has been changed a number of times over the past 5 decades, each change lowering the rate. By the old rate just in 2008 social security checks would be on average some 1,200 more a month.
Aldi is your best bet if nearby. More than 50 a week outside of rice and beans meals but you will not go through 50 a week of cereal. Admittedly their granola is lacking, but it is hard to find good granola anywhere.
Other stores here are approaching $10 (!) for a bag of granola with minimal add-ins, Aldi is a little plainer but it’s a no-brainer when the same size there is like $3.
$10? Jesus. Many of these big box or City grocery stores have always had really high prices especially on some Goods. All of the name brand cereals are especially High everywhere, Kellogg's and Post Cereal are like twice as high as the generic brands. Which for things like Raisin Bran are about the exact same cereal. Granola is the only one I have noticed a quality difference on.
I sort of quit milk for the past 18 months or so but if I get back into it, whole milk in the winter tastes really good when you work outside, I might just make my own granola. And by 50 lb bags of grain if I can find them.
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.
And no way you only save $5, long as you only buy what you need. We got a sectional for $2k that would have cost $3k elsewhere, and far less than the $5500 LoveSac we were eyeballing.
Must be nice to live where public transit works. 2h to get to and from work each way not including daycare dropoff just ain't it. Give me feasible public transit and a walkable city and I'll get rid of my car.
Only the rich or the dumb buy new. You can still get decent used cars for a fair bit cheaper.
Used car market is getting cooked. People are holding onto their cars longer. When they get into even a minor crash, they are often totalled because of how expensive parts are. Independent mechanics are being pushed out because there's nothing worth fixing.
I hate cars and love walkable cities as much as the next guy in this community, but this comparison is just nonsense.
If the only thing you do and are comparing is 4 trips a month to the grocery store that is in walkable distance you are not spending $200 a month on gas and probably also less on maintenance and stuff. And if you are only doing that you also don't need the newest and best car.
I feel like this type of bad faith analogies just hurts the message.
It would be so much we easier if they just admitted they were in highschool. Sure. The only thing I need a car for if groceries. The only thing this person needs a car for is 45$ of Mom's Costco membership worth of Doritos
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.
I would walk with my backpack full of grocceries about once a week. The execise is great, walking with extra weight is called rucking and many athletes train by rucking as it builds muscle, endurance, and a bit of cardio while being easier on the joints than running.
Im sure your physical health will thank you for that in the long run. Granted most people live farther than a 15-20 minute walk from their nearest groccer and thats the bigger problem.
Lol I've seen contractors and day laborers get on the bus with pressure washers, tool boxes, etc. And don't even get me started about what the fent fiends bring on the bus
@destructdisc this is pretty close to the reasoning I used to talk myself out of car ownership. The big thing for me was the realization I mostly used the car to go literally nowhere. Most of my driving was just aimless time wasting. I can waste time at home on my couch thank you very much.
Let green text guy live his own definition of an ideal life, but it would be a pretty pathetic life for me if the only place I ever had to go was the grocery store.
If you live in a place where walking to the grocery store is feasible, chances are pretty good that you can get to your job and most other important places via sidewalk, bicycle or public transport.
But I like traveling. My boyfriend is in arizona, and my two favorite beaches are in California 2 hours apart from each other. I like to drive and travel. Some people prefer car-free life for its simplicity & economy, but freedom & travel define my whole life.
A month ago, I took a bus to a beach and was literally the only person at that beach. You get much greater freedom when public transit goes everywhere.
But also cars aren't the epitome of individual transport, lightweight motorbikes are. Last week I saw a mountain and was like "there's farms up there, I can probably ride to the top", and then I did.
how much do you spend on fuel commuting to the city? that 1M in the city is buying you a lot more than the 600 sq ft.
from your 420k suburban home, what's the average distances to your: doctor, groceries, place of worship or study or work?
Do you own a car? Whats the median distance of commutes in a typical year for you?
We also shouldn't forget time cost of your commutes. Median time spent commuting in a year you could have spent doing other things.
Sure i agree with you that suburb is better if you have public transit connecting you to the city from your home in the suburbs and you use it regularly.
About 2k miles a year. I'm my f150 I spend about $800 a year in gas. Maybe 15 minutes a day.
Ignoring every other part of cost of living, it'll never be even, it's not even close.
Oh and the time, it's 10 minutes through my neighborhood. I don't get on a road with a speed limit above 35 and I have a single stop sign along the way. My daughter is with me, we're going to daycare, and I'm going to miss it now that bus service picks her up literally in my driveway.
now imagine this same scenario where you have a choice between driving your truck vs. public transit or bicycle infrastructure. Sure you may not use it but others may no longer be required to own a car and drive it for such short distances in the first place.
the net difference of owning a car vs not needing one and hence not owning it goes beyond just monetary gains.
The argument is not one based on changing behavior at an individual level. Its about policy and urban design.
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
£50 would be pushing 2 weeks for both of us. We normally spend £20-30 a week between us. May reduce it further as my garden becomes more productive, already never need to buy rosemary, thyme, sage, chives or mint again.
I'm intrigued what you could be buying where a weeks worth of food for a couple only costs you £30. Like, what do your daily meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner) look like?
IIRC the following is roughly what we bought for this week, obviously some ingredients left over from previous weeks and some won't be completely used and gets used in following weeks.
I grow quite a few of my own herbs to help as well: Rosemary, sage, thyme, chives, mint. Adding oregano soon. My garden is fairly small so only growing herbs rather than veg but hopefully getting an allotment soon. I also forage for fruits when they are in season, made 2L of apple chutney this week which is why I needed the honey/vinegar, though could do with a proper stockpot to do it in larger quantities.
If you don't have a garden, the herbs I am growing would be pretty easy options for some guerilla gardening. Maybe not the mint as it can be a bit invasive. There is even a large rosemary bush near one of the supermarkets in town here that I have taken cuttings from before. A little cheeky but you could probably even take a little cutting from someones front garden if you are desperate.
That does not sound like enough for six meals per day...
I don't eat 6 meals per day
No, but as a couple you probably eat three each?
Aldi is the shit
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 :)
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
Salmon is one of the more expensive fishes. Try something cheaper like pollock, or just buy chicken instead.
Also, no shit your bill goes up when you add more people to the household!
In the year 2022. As per the date of the post in the screenshot.
Looking back at old receipts is very depressing right now …
How much are rice and dried beans per pound in your parts?
I wish Aldi stocked dried beans here, only get tinned. Rice is fine though, they also sell oats and they come in compostable paper bags now which is nice, rice is still plastic.
Damn, that sucks. Maybe lentils? Or try a mexican, indian etc. store?
We don't have those. Pretty sure I can get lentils, at least from some shops if not Aldi.
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.
do grocery stores where you live not have frozen food? that's the ideal in my book: perfectly decent quality and you just have to heat it.
This is the best one i've tried, it's literally just frozen veggies, precooked pasta, chicken, and sauce. Healthy as fuck while tasting great and taking 0 effort to prepare.
Healthy as fuck is a bit of a stretch for industrially-processed food grown with pesticides. It's better than fast food.
Come off it, chopping veggies up and freezing them (‘industrial processing’) doesn’t make them unhealthy. There’s also not a way to guarantee that your food has no pesticides (it’s permissible under the organic label in some conditions) unless you grow it yourself.
Hell studies show that frozen and then cooked food is the easiest to absorb nutrients from so in a sense it's even healthier.
Oh boy, if you really think these are healthly I have bad news for you... Sure there are worst options around, but that still counts as processed food on my book!
so, respectfully, what the absolute fuck are you on about? do you only eat roots you dig up in the forest?
The secret is cooking yourself.
The pasta you sent, have a Nova Score of 4, which means ultra processed food:
https://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/7310500184180/tagliatelle-chicken-findus
The science on “ultra-processed” foods is scattered because even dietitians can’t agree on what an ultra-processed food is, or agree on what exactly it is that’s so harmful about it. If it’s high sugar and salt then the processing has fuck all to do with it. If it’s specific preservatives then processing has fuck all to do with it, it’s those specific things that are bad.
Until it’s something other than vibes-based, it’s a bad idea to exclude affordable vegetables or fruit from your diet solely because they’re processed.
For me its about what you said: processed is adding stuff to preserve and "improve". Nothing bad about frozen basic ingredients that arent cooked. Also in my country fresh veggies and fruit are cheaper than frozen ones.
Which is why it’s a bad, wobbly standard to use. Lactofermented vegetables are incredibly healthy for the gut microbiome, but would fall under this processed label. Processing isn’t inherently bad, and neither is preserving.
so clearly you didn't read your own link, because that is literally based on the fact that it contains glucose, that is the ONLY reason it's classed as ultra-processed.
you cannot seriously look at this and conclude it's processed, there's no way in hell you're here in good faith and i very much suspect your upvotes are fake.
k
Maybe its a cultural thing, but mostly fresh vegetables, fresh fruits, fresh meat, fresh fish... I think you got the idea. Frozen veggies are good too (if not pre-cooked or seasoned).
Yeah, but these frozen meals aren't much more processed than frozen veggies, at least the good ones. Can be a little pricey for what you get though.
I think you're right about that. They're just frozen veggies mixed together with chopped meat. The main thing I'd look at is how much salt they dump into these things.
Spices wouldn't be fresh, either, but that's more of a taste issue than health issue.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That's what the average SEA eats in like 2 days. Its the big bags at any grocery store
Correct. I have not been riding motorbikes since before I could walk, so I cannot do what the locals do. Yet.
No the fuck we don't. A 5kg bag lasts an entire week for a family of four adults
Slight exaggeration for comedic effect.
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.
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.
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.
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 buy 5 or 10kg bags of rice at once and i live alone.
Big sack cheap. And motorcycle lifestyle is a sea thing.
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.
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.
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.
here it’s more like this:
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.
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.
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.
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.
In NYC it isn't allowed and now I think it's insane we allow it everywhere else.
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"
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.
it works great if you just break check the fucker that's trying to turn, if you lack the confidence it works less well
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…
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
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
https://youtu.be/Uhx-26GfCBU
What do you spend 1k a year on maintenance on?
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.
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.
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.
Ok everyone. Make weekly groceries $200 and Costco $190. Does that make a difference about the point of this post? Ya’ll…
I looked at their website and I don't get it, Aldi seems to be cheaper already so why would I bother with costco?
The website has higher prices than in store
The only thing costco really has going for it is the odd item that is truly on sale, dependable low prices on some stuff, and quality control. Quality control is the big one. I can't remember most of the tests now, but when olive oil was being looked at, costco was one of the two brands out of something like 32 that was actually what it said on the label. On a couple of other things as well that I remember, like honey, they had the same finding.
It's also ignoring how this person spent so much in gas if they're able to walk everywhere. Surely they're talking public transportation, biking, or they simply have 4 extra hours a day.
But yes owning a car is an expensive grift, but it's one that's hard to avoid in many parts of the US
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.
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.
It's also not super practical to walk to get groceries if you live in a hot climate.
or cold climate
Exactly. I’ve actually used the car at weekends to do some work for friends. So can earn more money with it.
Here on Copenhagen:
Only in Nørrebro.
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
nelsnegleWalking 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.
US pilled
All american cities were built that way until the suburbs were deliberately built to destroy that, because there was more profit in the system of private vehicles. (Along with everything else that falls on each individual in the suburbs, which also prevents us from organizing, which benefits the designers of this system)
Your problem is assuming if it can't be done by one person, single-handedly, then it can't be done at all. For every person that thinks like this, our capacity as a class is reduced.
lmao, speak for yourself dude. There are plenty organizations doing this work; not just handing out pamphlets but actual organizing, direct action, education, mobilization, etc; you just haven't gone looking for them and by default you exist in an ecosystem that suppresses them from your view.
Sure, and you let me know when your city council; or any politician at any level of government for that matter; does anything to materially improve conditions for the working class, completely unprompted by working class people organizing and making demands. And you let me know too if they are faithful to those demands and give any credit to the organizations that pushed it through, or give just enough to shut people up and present it as if it was all part of their plan the whole time.
My call out was not constructive, but it wasn't intended to be. You can always emigrate.
Germany is going to turn you away because they're also becoming rightwing authoritarian, not because they think US immigrants are too fascist.
Also, they're too scared of the US to officially grant US citizens asylum, even if they did want to do that.
AFAIK the other EU/EFTA countries aren't much better when it comes to rightwing authoritarianism. Even the ones that currently have center-left governments usually have a strong far right opposition waiting for next election, and a lot of the time the center-left governments are already enacting rightwing authoritarian policies (see UK).
But fair, Germany should know better given its history, but instead it just made them more vulnerable to Israeli propaganda and blackmail.
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
If it weren't for weather I wouldn't have a car. Sure, 90 minutes by ebike is a serious time commitment, but I'd save so much money a year it makes sense as a part time job.
But fuck riding a bike on ice for two months lol
Ice ? Canadians do bike in winter too.
Ice isn't the worst IMO, it's the sloshy zero degree sludge, ice cold rain and biting wind.
Do they do it for 20+ miles? In the dark?
Maybe they do.
I don't want to die.
you don't want to die? that doesn't sound like weather is what matters to you, that sounds like safety from traffic is what matters.
and if you're talking about slipping on ice, uh.. studded tyres exist.
It's a pretty hilly commute. Besides the ever present threat of being murdered in traffic (and this is a rural area, so traffic actually is a lesser concern), I have to contend with going up and down half a dozen steep slopes.
On ice in the dark.
I might just wreck my bike and freeze to death.
studded tyres make biking on ice feel like biking on asphalt, and you can buy very good rechargable LED lamps. I had a teacher who biked ~20km in the winter, through rural areas and during the dark since it becomes night at 17:00.
I have lights and ride in the dark already.
But we're talking 11pm, if I get in a bad accident on a dark farm-to-market road I'll just die. No one will see or hear me.
Also 20km is only 12.4 miles.
And I outright don't believe riding on a steep icy hill with studs is like riding on asphalt. I'm sure it's doable, I just don't believe it's easy or safe.
I haven't had a car for two years now. Well technically i had the car i use for my job, but i never use that in my free time. While public transportation is pretty good here, i still live close to nowhere and i have to get to the next bus stop. Ebikes are fantastic but they do have their limits. Gettig groceries on a nice sunday morning, i can go on a 90min trip without any roads and no cars and a view that would blow most people's mind. But a rainy Thursday evening in the cold, there are just days that i'm not in the mood for that.
For the rainy days you could get a quality rain jacket. Works pretty well. We got rainproof backpacks too.
Studded tires make this a non issue.
Does it really? I'd think they would help, but actually a non-issue? I'm skeptical.
Also getting sprayed by a passing
assholecar showering me with slush+sand+road salt doesn't sound great either.Personal experience, yes. I’ve biked trails in all conditions and only had any trouble on one of them. It had snowed a bunch, thawed, froze again, and then rained. I could still generally bike around and never fell, but didn’t have enough traction for the short steep climbs found on trails.
My commute is pretty hilly, doesn't sound like I'd have a good time on ice.
Some people in this community are nuts. They expect people to bike 15-20 miles though snowy mountains carrying a weeks worth of breakfast, lunch, and dinners.
I often choose to ride my bike in the winter on super icy (side roads, no traffic) it's fun for recreational purposes if you're into that. On a commute or something else, i really wouldn't recommend.
But it cold and I don't want to bundle up like that kid from A Christmas Story.
Physically impossible in the north outside of cities and even then not often possible. What with snow and all. And it is 6 months here.
Yeah I lived a car-free life when I lived in Seattle, working on Magnolia Hill, living on Capitol Hill. That was doable year round. The midwestern flyover states I grew up and live in, tho, no it's not workable. In the North there's snow for months, in the South we have monsoon season where it rains for weeks, in the summer heat index gets above 110 regularly and these people don't plant shade trees. Plus nearest grocery stores are miles away (I live downtown in a capital city).
Even though I work a few blocks from my home, I can't live car free here without significant ride-sharing expenses (the bus system is a joke and only runs part of the day, grocery shopping would eat an entire day of my week that way), if I did that I couldn't go on roadtrips on weekends either, unless I rented a car - and all that is more expensive than my (20k, not 40k) car.
But I do love this community and it's coastal approach to shaming people who rely on cars... take the tram or train, lmao
I do not use my car for weeks at a time, but I need one in the country especially, also in the city when there.
"I can't put my arms down!!"
Studded tires are illegal on public roads where I live (i'm pretty confident it applies to bikes too), but i do fine with fat tires. My chain slips if its actively snowing though and for some reason my bolts loosen rather quickly in winter.
I ride a bike in winter, though admittedly it’s in a city where frequent plowing and ambient heat make it less of an issue. Funny thing is, I bought my bike in December.
I wear thick winter gear, including gloves, socks, and mask. If I drove, I’d want that sort of gear as soon as I exit my car at the parking lot, so I’d rather just have that all on beforehand and be warm the whole way.
It’s also just not that snowy/icy around here anymore. You might get it for a few days but otherwise it’s just cold and dry.
90 Minutes????? Jesus christ
I do it about once a week. Plenty of time for audiobooks and podcasts!
That sucks, where I live I'm a 3 minute walk from two supermarkets, with like 4 more in a 15m radius.
I don't say this to brag, but that's why I reacted incredulously to your original comment, it just seems crazy to me.
Living in between supermarkets sonds like absolute hell to me.
why? Genuinely curious bc for me it's fine
This is also coincidentally how the math works on big box stores.
More like box store closes to cash in on real estate sale and then opens new location just a few blocks down the road on the outskirts. Rinse and repeat.
The dutch are laughing with their bikes with the massive storage box thing
Bakfiets
You guys are spending $40k on a car??
That's nuts.
The price of new cars has gone insane since covid. I regularly watch car reviews and the prices are always shocking - SKODA's costing nearly £40,000, which a few years ago would have got you a decent BMW or Merc.
You guys are buying new cars??
I'm not, but people are. There's plenty of brand new cars on the roads here.
My parents have two Toyota RAV4s one at $23000 the other at $25000 -- $31000 or something (don't remember cuz it's not my car lol), one was pre-covid, the other was post-covid.
I don't have a license, I suppose I could borrow one if I need to to somewhere (if they have a good mood, that is)
Where the fuck is this guy buying a week's groceries for $50? My kids eat more than $50 in cereal per month.
sounds unhealthy, NGL
maybe uh, maybe don't buy a bunch of overpriced cereal?
I just got diapers according to the store it was a great discount, they where from the stores own brand (not even a "premium" brand)
Anyway I paid 26 cents per diaper (for my daughter)
When my son was born 6 years ago I paid 12 cents per diaper.
Every government chart about inflation is just not accurate for your groceries. The official inflation numbers tell me it's about 25% inflation, but in reality for a lot of things it doubled.
The CPI has been changed a number of times over the past 5 decades, each change lowering the rate. By the old rate just in 2008 social security checks would be on average some 1,200 more a month.
https://harpers.org/archive/2008/05/numbers-racket/
Obviously you arent familiar with the wood and paint chip hack
Just start grinding down the foundations of your home and add the sawdust to your rice crispy treats for some extra filling
Well yeah if they eat $40 worth of sugar a month, it can get pretty expensive
Aldi is your best bet if nearby. More than 50 a week outside of rice and beans meals but you will not go through 50 a week of cereal. Admittedly their granola is lacking, but it is hard to find good granola anywhere.
Other stores here are approaching $10 (!) for a bag of granola with minimal add-ins, Aldi is a little plainer but it’s a no-brainer when the same size there is like $3.
$10? Jesus. Many of these big box or City grocery stores have always had really high prices especially on some Goods. All of the name brand cereals are especially High everywhere, Kellogg's and Post Cereal are like twice as high as the generic brands. Which for things like Raisin Bran are about the exact same cereal. Granola is the only one I have noticed a quality difference on.
I sort of quit milk for the past 18 months or so but if I get back into it, whole milk in the winter tastes really good when you work outside, I might just make my own granola. And by 50 lb bags of grain if I can find them.
Have them eat oatmeal with fresh berries and (plain) yoghurt instead of industrially processed sugary garbage.
Overnight oats are a game changer. Even if my nephew makes them super sweet, it's still only like a quarter of the sugar of cereals.
Lookin back this is irrelevant
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.
I can cycle to the next town over in 25 minutes at any time of day, less if I got an ebike. Driving during rush hour can take an hour.
Though they moved our office 50+ miles away so I am using that as my reason to never return to the office. Looking for a new job just in case though.
Sounds nice, it would be lovely to have the means to live like that.
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 [email protected]
;)
Woah you're so good with money
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.
Anon obviously has never been to Costco. No way you can leave that place without parting with $100
And no way you only save $5, long as you only buy what you need. We got a sectional for $2k that would have cost $3k elsewhere, and far less than the $5500 LoveSac we were eyeballing.
Must be nice to live where public transit works. 2h to get to and from work each way not including daycare dropoff just ain't it. Give me feasible public transit and a walkable city and I'll get rid of my car.
Only the rich or the dumb buy new. You can still get decent used cars for a fair bit cheaper.
Used car market is getting cooked. People are holding onto their cars longer. When they get into even a minor crash, they are often totalled because of how expensive parts are. Independent mechanics are being pushed out because there's nothing worth fixing.
The end result will be buy new or don't.
I hate cars and love walkable cities as much as the next guy in this community, but this comparison is just nonsense.
If the only thing you do and are comparing is 4 trips a month to the grocery store that is in walkable distance you are not spending $200 a month on gas and probably also less on maintenance and stuff. And if you are only doing that you also don't need the newest and best car.
I feel like this type of bad faith analogies just hurts the message.
It would be so much we easier if they just admitted they were in highschool. Sure. The only thing I need a car for if groceries. The only thing this person needs a car for is 45$ 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.
Many european cities also have car sharing, which is pretty cheap if you just use it for buying furniture or weekly grocery trips.
MILES (often a small edit leaves it MILFS) is everywhere in Berlin. Cars share with some vans if you truly need a big trip.
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 can easily do our shopping with a regular bike, cargo bike would carry more than my partners car can.
I'm almost 40 and that's about all I use mine for, outside of camping trips.
Then bring your backpack, or better yet, a cart. Both can be quite cheap.
ditch the gym membership, get your workout in during regular tasks. It's an investment in your own health.
depends on your priorities. Personally, i intend to live forever in spite of my disgusting american diet.
ok, well, have fun
I would walk with my backpack full of grocceries about once a week. The execise is great, walking with extra weight is called rucking and many athletes train by rucking as it builds muscle, endurance, and a bit of cardio while being easier on the joints than running.
In the army, we called it a rucksack march.
backpacks are still cheaper than cars
Im sure your physical health will thank you for that in the long run. Granted most people live farther than a 15-20 minute walk from their nearest groccer and thats the bigger problem.
You don't go to Costco to save money, you go so you have an excuse to buy a box of instant ramen.
Just one box? Look over here at Mr. Self Control!
Well, there's boxes of other things I definitely for sure 100% need to buy
Buy a 5000 lbs truck to haul less groceries than cyclists do on bikes.
You could take a bus to Costco.....
Where i live that makes a 10 minute drive 50 minutes 😭
Yeah same, if not longer. I just like Costco, that's all lol
2 hours, two trains (the first being 21 miles in the wrong direction) and 4 busses for my closest one
Ah yes, I love when my city's shitty public transit also takes me completely out of the way of my destination
buses tend to question people carrying more than a backpack full of stuff
Lol I've seen contractors and day laborers get on the bus with pressure washers, tool boxes, etc. And don't even get me started about what the fent fiends bring on the bus
Where? I've lugged 3-4 bags onto public transit without issue beyond feeling like a jackass.
@destructdisc this is pretty close to the reasoning I used to talk myself out of car ownership. The big thing for me was the realization I mostly used the car to go literally nowhere. Most of my driving was just aimless time wasting. I can waste time at home on my couch thank you very much.
Let green text guy live his own definition of an ideal life, but it would be a pretty pathetic life for me if the only place I ever had to go was the grocery store.
If you live in a place where walking to the grocery store is feasible, chances are pretty good that you can get to your job and most other important places via sidewalk, bicycle or public transport.
But I like traveling. My boyfriend is in arizona, and my two favorite beaches are in California 2 hours apart from each other. I like to drive and travel. Some people prefer car-free life for its simplicity & economy, but freedom & travel define my whole life.
For me freedom and travel is bicycling.
A month ago, I took a bus to a beach and was literally the only person at that beach. You get much greater freedom when public transit goes everywhere.
But also cars aren't the epitome of individual transport, lightweight motorbikes are. Last week I saw a mountain and was like "there's farms up there, I can probably ride to the top", and then I did.
He works there too! Eat, sleep and shit at the grocery store. The civilized dream.
I mean, it's the place everyone has to go to, barring fully independent farmers.
In urbania
Yup! It would take me a couple hours on a e-bike just to make it into town, and bit more to get to a grocery store
My house was 420k in an upper middle class single family suburban home with 2400 sq ft vs 1M for a 600 sq ft condo.
Eat my ass 🤣
Do you have two gyms and a pokéstop, though?
I'll take my 911 tyvm
this is the second time i see you and again your take is bad, why?
This guy has fewer brain cells than his country has high speed rail lines. Easier to just block him
i indeed did do that
My take is fantastic. If your only concern is cost it's clearly cheaper to live in America without public transit. It's dead simple shit.
Going to start name calling again with nothing to back up your little meme 😞?
Lmao imagine telling a new Yorker it's cheaper to live in America without the subway.
That was your take? 🤣👌👍
Why do you go to the "fuck cars" community, then? If you're so happy, there shouldn't be any need to troll.
It's one of the few communities that regularly pops up 🤷♂️
Just block the community and it won't "pop up".
how much do you spend on fuel commuting to the city? that 1M in the city is buying you a lot more than the 600 sq ft.
from your 420k suburban home, what's the average distances to your: doctor, groceries, place of worship or study or work?
Do you own a car? Whats the median distance of commutes in a typical year for you?
We also shouldn't forget time cost of your commutes. Median time spent commuting in a year you could have spent doing other things.
Sure i agree with you that suburb is better if you have public transit connecting you to the city from your home in the suburbs and you use it regularly.
About 2k miles a year. I'm my f150 I spend about $800 a year in gas. Maybe 15 minutes a day.
Ignoring every other part of cost of living, it'll never be even, it's not even close.
Oh and the time, it's 10 minutes through my neighborhood. I don't get on a road with a speed limit above 35 and I have a single stop sign along the way. My daughter is with me, we're going to daycare, and I'm going to miss it now that bus service picks her up literally in my driveway.
now imagine this same scenario where you have a choice between driving your truck vs. public transit or bicycle infrastructure. Sure you may not use it but others may no longer be required to own a car and drive it for such short distances in the first place.
the net difference of owning a car vs not needing one and hence not owning it goes beyond just monetary gains.
The argument is not one based on changing behavior at an individual level. Its about policy and urban design.