Building wealth starts with saving all the money you can. Saving money means not spending it. Persistent inflation and its filthy cousin shrinkflation have made saving money more difficult.
But perhaps we can make inflation our friend.
Planet Fatness
I live in America, a country of unmatched abundance and a preponderance of choice. Abundance and choice most assuredly describe the foods available to us. And guess what? We eat too much. We weigh too much.
Eating more, costs more. Weighing too much brings health problems and treating those problems… costs more.
It’s obvious; we can improve our health and save money by eating less.
It is very difficult to eat less in the face of such abundance and choice. Foods are engineered to be hyperpalatable and addicting. We don’t even need to leave our houses anymore to get food. Grubhub, DoorDash, InstaCart and other meal/grocery delivery systems stand at the ready to bring us the deliciousness. It seems everything is stacked against us in the quest to eat a little less, lose a little weight.
Help Yourself!
By now, we’re all familiar with the sticker shock of familiar food items. Examples of inflation at the grocery store and fast-food franchises are ubiquitous, so I won’t go into them here. The practice of delivering less product within a similar looking and similarly sized package for the same price as before, known as shrinkflation, is also rampant. We’re getting less soda, less Ritz Crackers, less Snickers than we used to get for the same price. Spending more to get exactly what we want is certainly an option and really, that is where the anger and frustration of inflation comes in.
It is time to help ourselves. Inflation might just be the one factor that can work in our favor. Maybe you weren’t able to draw a line in the sand when you crossed that 250lb mark on the scale. But perhaps spending $20 at a Subway could be the last straw. Now might be the time to actually appreciate that we’re getting screwed on a box of Little Debbie Fudge Rounds. At a minimum, we can keep spending at the same level and buy what we always buy, value our purchases just a bit more and discover we can be satisfied with less.
Or we can take it one step further.
Psychologically, we can use inflation and shrinkflation to our advantage and change our approach to eating. Why give these companies the satisfaction? Why just bend over? Take control. Take this economic feedback as a hint and make a change. Eat out less frequently. Buy bulk amounts of dried beans, grains, carrots, onions, apples, and potatoes. Buy bunches of kale and giant bags of frozen vegetables. Get out the slow cooker and stock pot. Make meals at home. Drink water.
Watch your wallet inflate and your body shrink.