Friends, we’ve written a lot about consumerism and buying stuff recently. From our five secrets of secondhand shopping to our epic grocery store price comparison investigation… we’ve really belabored the subject.
And who could blame us? With inflation, price-gouging, planned obsolescence, and tariffs making everything from basic necessities to tech more expensive, shopping has been a huge part of our personal finance calculations recently.
But we need to move on. The people demand a robust and variegated content schedule from your humble Bitches! So here is the master list of everything we’ve written on how to buy stuff—frugally, ethically, and with more sense than god gave a grapefruit.
Did you think I was done? Never! I’m the Saiyan warrior of personal finance writers. If a topic brings me to the brink of total annihilation, it only makes me more powerful. The positive response to that video was the senzu bean I needed to bounce back with even more cheap grocery shopping wisdom. To our new readers: welcome. To our new Patreon donors: thank you.
Many readers lamented that they live far away from the stores featured in my investigation. With them in mind, I challenged myself to come up with some really juicy, delicious advice that could apply to everyone who shops for food. And I think I’ve managed to do just that.
Today’s advice is universal. These are *cosmic truths* about grocery shopping. They will save you money on food, no matter what you buy or where you shop. If rising food prices are a source of stress in your life—as they are in mine!—I promise you’ll learn something helpful.
And while much of our advice on ethical consumption still holds true, today I’m going to be revisiting that advice. My goal is to shine a light on how we should all approach shopping during The Stupidest Trade War while still maintaining our morals and savings rates.
We really know how to have fun here, don’t we?
Let’s kick things off with a question from a follower called Blossom:
Hi Auntie Bitches! I have a question regarding an impasse of ethics and finances, so of course I figured you’d be the experts!
I live in the USA, and absolutely hate the direction things are headed in. I’m inspired by hearing that Canada and a ton of countries in Europe are boycotting absolutely everything American made. This is genius because the only way to hurt the greedy pricks at the top is to hurt their bottom lines.
I really want to join in and buy as few goods that are made in the states as possible. However, I also live here and my household budget is already pretty tight. With this ridiculous trade war going on, imported goods will become even more costly.
I’m stuck between a possibly unlivable budget if fully switching to goods that aren’t made here; or being a tad more financially sound but forced to feed the fascism machine by using American goods.
Please, I’d love some advice on how to navigate this?
– Blossom, alert citizen of Bitch Nation
Blossom is clearly paying attention. We couldn’t be more proud of them for considering activism in the face of personal hardship. We should all be more like Blossom.
But I think there’s a fundamental flaw in how they’re approaching the problem. Nevertheless, I think we can come to a solution that does the least amount of harm to Blossom’s bottom line… while still supporting the changes they want to see. Let’s unpack that!
I chose this topic because I’m worried. Terrible times are ahead. We’ve been writing a lot about politics—and we’ll keep doing so—but it can feel like scream-preaching to the void-choir. We’ve been wracking our brains to come up with nourishing, material strategies to help our followers through the lean times ahead.
Right now, all I want is to give you guys an easy win. If I could use my time and talents to help you folks save $20 a month, I’d be good with that. Groceries are something we all must buy in order to live. So I opened a small investigation comparing prices at a few local grocery stores.
My “small investigation” became the most time- and labor-intensive topic I’ve ever covered for Bitches Get Riches.
This investigation hauled me bodily to the summit of my abilities, then cast me down the mountainside of my own ambition into a boiling, stinking chasm of magmatic insanity.
Do you want to save $20 a month? I’m positive I can help you do it. But there’s a price to be paid. You’ll have to come with me on a journey. A journey from the worst grocery stores in America, all the way to the best.
Casual visitors, turn back! You don’t need to notice deceptive unit pricing at our nation’s largest budget retailers! You can spend your whole life not caring about the product-to-price ratio of frozen pizzas! Swallow the blue pill and sleep forever in ignorant bliss. I don’t judge you; I envy you.
But if you really want to save money on groceries, take a deep breath. Take my hand. Trust me.
Back when I lived in a hippie commune with approximately 9 humans and 37 dogs, I biked to the library on a regular basis. It was an easy way to keep myself in reading material without spending all of my meager paycheck on books.
As I was leaving one day, I asked one of my roommates if she wanted me to pick up anything at the library for her. Her response: “Is it free?”
Is it free? Is it free?
Let’s pretend for a minute that it’s not completely weird and unbelievable that an adult human being could grow up in LeVar Burton’s United States of America without ever having learned the first thing (literally, the very first thing) about the public library. Let’s also set aside the fact that this particular person was an English major! I’ll just state, definitively and for the record:
Yes, the library is free, you darling fool. But it might not be for much longer. Let’s get into it.
Gather ’round, ye children, and I will teach you of an essential moment in Millennial cultural history.
The year was 2012 and a white boy with an egregious undercut was topping the charts rapping about your granddad’s clothes. Not only was this chart-topping song a banger (in fact, it slapped). And not only was the music video a cultural zeitgeist that would define a generation’s visual aesthetic. But the whole moment of “Thrift Shop” was a lovingly earnest ode to what we, the post-Great Recession generation, valued.
It was tacky. It was fun. It was simultaneously both anti-consumerism and materialistic. It was juvenile and absurd and it loved a goddamn deal. Did I mention that it slapped?
Anyway that’s how I remember it and I will not be accepting alternate historical interpretations at this time!
The point is that I am still living inside of Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop.” And that makes me kind of an expert on secondhand shopping.
But there is cheap treasure yet to be found if you know where to look. It just requires a little extra time, wisdom, and elbow grease. Here are our five best secrets to secondhand shopping like you want to make an elder Millennial proud.
Have you noticed that secondhand stuff is more expensive than it used to be? Because I absolutely have!
Since I retired, I’ve been on a bit of a secondhand shopping spree. You see, I inherited almost all of my current furniture. I acquired it randomly from old roommates, friends moving across the country, my grandparents’ downsizing, and the legendary Allston Christmas. Now that work isn’t gobbling up my best hours, I finally have the bandwidth to upgrade these pieces. That rickety side table I found on the side of the road can now be transformed, Cinderella-like, into a charming antique that some sucker let go of for $50!
… Yet I’ve noticed something disturbing. The suckers have grown few and far between.
Dummies selling solid oak headboards they found in Grandma’s attic for a sawbuck are like fireflies. I remember vast clouds of them in my childhood… but now, I’m thrilled if I see a dozen in a season. Where have they gone?
Today, I’m explaining my hypothesis for why secondhand stuff is more expensive than it used to be. I see a variety of factors that have far-reaching impacts on everything we buy and sell. We love noticing inflection points when traditional personal finance wisdom shifts from the “useful” column to the “ok thanks Grandpa” column—and this is definitely one of those moments. Let’s explore the answer together!
I’m always looking for great sustainable swaps, because I love finding ways to reduce my footprint. (In an ecological sense only—been holding steady at size 7.5 for years.) I try to recycle, compost, buy less, shop local, and choose more sustainable options. But I’m just one woman! I can’t test out everything. So I asked our endlessly wise Patreon community. And boy did Bitch Nation deliver!
My only caveat was that these sustainable swaps can’t suck.
Paper straws that disintegrate into wet clumps in your mouth? Absolutely not!
Coffee pods sold to us as green because you’ll “waste less water”? Lies and pictures of also-lies!
Cloth napkins that cost—I’m sorry—$92 for a set of four?! WHAT! I’m not linking to the site because they claim to be handmade by artisans, and I’m sure those artisans are very nice people. BUT STILL!
Out of this list, ye devils! These sustainable swaps need to be as good—or gooder!—than the products they’re designed to replace. Nothing prohibitively expensive or complicated.
It’s that time again! The time of year when we gather with our fellow witches closest friends around a glowing green bonfire kitchen table to determine which village baby to steal away name-brand snacks are worth it… and witch which are not!
Last time we settled the ancient blood feud of which cheese cracker is best. There were lots of surprises in that test! And the results permanently altered the course of our cheese-cracker-buying habits.
This year we’re talking about chocolate and vanilla sandwich cookies: a thin layer of vanilla cream resting in the loving embrace of two chocolate cookies.
Yes… we’re talking about Oreos and Faux-reos.
Guided by our extremely awesome Patreon donors, it is time to answer the question: can a store brand cookie knock the Oreo from its throne and/or cast it down into the darkest pits of hell?!
Also known as “the magical six-word question that’s saved me $1,140 in the last three months.” Sounds like clickbait, right? But miraculously, this tip is 100% legit and may one day save your (financial) life.
It’s a special little secret called… the cash discount.
I’m a little wary of asking for discounts, especially from very small companies. When it’s just one or two people running the show, it means those one or two people spend an inordinate percentage of their time doing things they don’t like to do. Nobody starts their own business because they love filing quarterly taxes—they soldier through it for the 10% of the time running their business in which they’re actually doing the thing they love.
And every small business owner I’ve known has lost sleep over their pricing. (Us included!) No matter what you’re selling, there’s local and global competition for it, and consumers have tools now that didn’t exist 10 or 20 years ago that allow them to find, compare, rate, and review similar services. The world is a buyer’s market, and it’s really hard to measure what you know your work is worth against what you know people are willing to pay for it.
So asking to pay less for the same product is almost always a wearying and unwelcome question… with one very special exception.
