Ask Lemmy

Unless I go to WinCo, chips.

I ain't paying $7-8 for a bag of Doritos. WinCo is the only store around here where they are only ~$3 still and regularly on sale for about $2.50.

Quinoa

Canned beans. I love some bean medley but at $3 a can.... guess I can't even have beans.

I buy a lot less meat, and I consume much less too. I eat a lot more grains, pulses and vegetables instead.

I still get some meat from the supermarket, but I also try to buy direct from the farm or get free meat in exchange for services, like some sort of neopeasant.

When I use meat, I bulk it out by other means, like lentils or barley, and flavor-up with various techniques.

I don't eat pork or beef unless it's provided to me by the person that owned the animal. I still eat a lot of lamb and chicken though.

The Chinese buffet. 8.95 for lunch 12.95 dinner. Now 20 bucks at minimum.

Korean karaoke. 20 bucks an hour now 50 an hour or whatever they make up at the time.

I buy maybe one or two "full price" video games per year. And even then those are probably not exactly "AAA". Buying tons of indie stuff though!

Got rid of most of the streaming services and I'm seriously considering dropping the few that remain. (I'd need to, ugh, call the support to cancel.) The free streaming service from the national public broadcaster is pretty amazing and I have a wall of DVDs and Blu-Ray discs.

I used to be almost addicted to beef jerky, especially the smaller store types where it's made semi-local...until it got to be 29.99 per pound. I love the stuff but will never like it THAT much

Gaming subscriptions

MicroSD cards

Cigarettes. Of course, there were other more pressing reasons to quit, but saving nearly £20 a packet helped.

Most snacks. I only get them on sale because the servings get smaller and smaller

Milk, cheese and butter.

My country produces 10x more dairy products than we need. But they're sold to the highest bidder globally and that ain't me.

Fish & chips. There were other reasons when I could afford it, but now I'm on government support, it's just not a sound financial decision, even as a treat.

I haven't been to my local chippy in a good long while, but the last time I was there the price was around £10, so I wouldn't be surprised to find it at £15 now. I can eat for the better part of a week for that sort of money.

(The other reasons being that I was putting on a lot of weight, and I always seemed to end up scratching the heck out of my throat on them. And no, I wasn't swallowing them like a gannet.)

I never liked going out to eat or drink, but its gotten insane lately. Seems like everywhere is $15 or more for a simple cocktail, $10 or more for a Miller Lite. Insulting when the staff might only be making $2.13 per hour, and I need to tip and add tax so that gets close to $20 for a drink I could have ppuree myself at home for probably $1. Bars and restaurants have also started to use Kore and more tactics to make themselves less pleasant to hang out in, enoucoraging faster consumption and quicker turn times to try to get more customers. Louder music, less comfortabke chairs, etc.

I used to build a gaming PC for both myself and my wife roughly every 6 or 7 years. I never needed anything top-of-the-line: I am perfectly satisfied with 1080p 60fps and playing older games. I liked to maximize value. I built myself a PC in 2019 and my wife one in 2020, just as the pandemic was starting to hit. At this point I am starting to wonder whether those will be the last PC's I will afford in my lifetime.

I expect Streaming Services will be a common answer here. I started messing around with Jellyfin a few years ago, and my wife and I had slowly been buying DVD's and Blu-Rays, occasionally supplemented by the high seas. This year we finally canceled our HBO and Netflix subscriptions. We also decided to try to cancel Spotify, so I went ahead and ripped all our CD's, gathered our pirated collection (organized separately to make it easier to potentially decide to buy that music later), and started buying more music from artists directly. I'm good enough to cancel today, but my wife has become accustomed to the near-infinite supply of variety that Spotify has so... Yeah

I refuse to pump my car tyres from petrol stations anymore because all the ones in my local area have started charging exorbitant prices. It always used to be free with petrol, then a few years ago it became 20p, but now it's randomly shot up to £1.50. WHY??

You can buy devices that pump your car tyres up for you too. They tend not to last very long, so they're not exactly "one time" purchases, but they're far more cost effective than doing it at stations nowadays.!

Oil change services for my vehicles. Despite doing tons of my own repairs, I hate dealing with the oil. It always gets on the outside of the container and my recycling locations are always full. The service (including oil) used to be about 50% more than the oil I could buy to do myself. It was worth it to me to spend an extra dinner's worth of money ~4 times a year. But now a service costs at least twice as much as the oil alone, even at independent shops. Plus, I now get oil in slight bulk, so the service is 3x what I pay in oil. I treated myself to a nice catch pan and dedicated funnels as a compromise, still costing less than a service on my first DIY in a decade.

I've only stopped buying specific brands completely, otherwise, I'd characterize my situation as cutting back on things where the price got ridiculous.

Coffee is / was the big one. I used to stock the cheap, store brand stuff for when I needed a morning lift. That was pre-tariff $9. I'd also stock the good stuff, the brand and variety that I really like a lot, usually around $12 a bag. Tariffs kicked in, the "cheap" stuff went to $20 per lb immediately. The good stuff went to $22 (but only like 12 oz or something). So, no more name brand, and I cut way back on coffee consumption. Fucked up part, tariffs are done and the prices dropped, but nowhere near the old price. The cheap stuff is still $14, so $5 more than 1.5 years ago.

My preferred soap, shampoo, and personal care products are largely the same story. I stopped buying the products I like, switched to store brand stuff that doesn't smell good and doesn't work as good / dries my skin & hair. But I'm not paying what the name brands want for their shit.

I used to keep a lot of candy and snacks on hand for guests, as we always have someone stopping by, including adult children and relatives. The candy stockpile was super popular. But the prices on that stuff has sky rocketed, and they fill the variety bags with a bunch of unpopular (to us) shit that just sits in the candy basket and goes bad. I haven't bought any of that stuff, sans once or twice for myself in over a year.

I don't buy canned tuna at all. Technically, I cut back on that b/c of mercury concerns years ago, but every once in awhile I'd still have a can. It's gone down to 5 oz from 6 oz. The cans have changed in size so that my strainer doesn't fit anymore. The prices have gone way up. Canned fish in general I've almost completely stopped buying.

I'm trying to hold off on buying new shoes. I desperately need a new pair because the old ones I use for daily outdoor activities are falling apart and stink to high heavens. But I looked at prices recently and said oh hell no. Unfortunately I wear an odd size so even looking around from time to time at the second hand shops hasn't been successful, and even so I feel weird about second hand shoes.

Mostly alcohol, I make it instead. The tax on alcohol is insane.

Games on PSN, tho that's less for price & more out of protest against Sony

I only get wings from one bar on a deal night where they're 50c each

I haven't really bought new computer parts in forever, I just trade/sell what I have.

Soda, even from wholesellers it's too much money

Lots of video games. I wait a few years usually.

Honestly I live a simple life in general, what upsets me is housing because nobody can escape that

Coca Cola