Wow! Just ran down to the Costco to fill up on gas, the word from On High being that the state will “re-open” in two days. That is much, much too soon. It’s as if our honored governor is saying, “Please, God, give us a resurgence! Maybe it’ll kill off my political rivals.” But whatever: it is what it is. Or will be…
So I figured I’d better get gas now, before a) the endless waits in line are back and b) the prices go soaring back up.
Cruised right up to a pump — no wait, zero-point-zero zero! Hot dang…a first in the history of Costco shopping.
The car needed less than half a tankful. It was 2/3 full when the covid quarantine came crashing down on us. Over the past two months, I’ve burned less than 1/8 of a tank driving down to my son’s house and making a verboten run on AJ’s. That’s it. No drivey, no buyee gasolinee.
Price? A dollar a gallon less than I paid the last time I filled up. From $2.85 down to $1.85.
You can be sure they’ll raise the price at least back to what it was before the shut-down. Probably higher.
Have you looked at food prices in your favorite grocery stores? I’m not usually very sensitive to prices — I tend to buy what I need and not worry about what it costs. But… $22 a pound for beefsteak did get my attention.
One of the weirdnesses of being locked up for two months is that you forget routine stuff that previously was so internalized it was like breathing.
For example, I failed to recall that Costco does not take American Express anymore, no way no how. Because Costco is a membership deal, to buy gas there you have to insert your membership card in the pump before you insert your credit card. First time I went by there, a few days ago, I forgot the membership card annoyance and so, in disgust, left without pumping gas. Today I dutifully ran the card through the reader (twice…). Then stuck in a charge card.
“Get lost! We don’t take American Express,” quoth the gas pump.
This negated the transaction, so now I had to drag out the membership card and jump through that hoop…again. Then stick in a debit card.
The fill-up cost $17.
Refilling that vehicle normally costs just upwards of $30. That is, yes, about $60 a month for the privilege of driving around the crazy-making streets of Phoenix.
It occurs to me that some important penny-pinching lessons are to be learnt from the covid adventure. One is pretty obvious:
The less you drive around, the less you’ll spend on gasoline.
Okay. But there’s a corollary.
The less you drive around, the less you’ll spend on anything.
The less you spend on groceries, for example. Why? Because if you can spare only a limited number of trips, then you will plan your meals and your grocery lists more carefully. You’ll diddle away a whole lot less on impulse buys and afterthoughts at the grocery store. And you’ll spend lots less on restaurants if you have some reason not to go driving around to get a meal that can easily be prepared in your kitchen.
You’ll ask yourself things like Do I really need a haircut right this minute? Can I go for a week or two without it? Or can I wait a few days or a week before running to the [grocery store] [drugstore] [Target] [Costco] [whatEVER]? Or Why am I schlepping to a restaurant when I can get a delivery service to pick it up for me? Or Do I really need to drive to a movie theater when I have a Netflix or Amazon Prime subscription?
I suspect the shape of America’s economy will indeed be changed permanently, as some pundits speculate. And that will happen because we will have figured out or remembered truths that we have forgotten.
It’s a nice thought that some of these changes will be permanent – and for some people, they might – but what I’m seeing locally are things like my elderly neighbours making 3-4 trips a week to the grocery store. My friend, in his mid-60s, going out every couple of days to the grocery store.
People around here seem to be taking the attitude that, if the ONLY stores open are Home Depot and grocery stores, then, by golly, we’re going to go to those stores A LOT.
That being said – our county has one of the lowest rates of infection in California – so at least the social distancing/limiting gatherings has helped to flatten the curve.
Me, I get WAY too excited about my weekly trip to the grocery store on Fridays 😀
Yeah, you’re no doubt right about that.
I tended to run by AJ’s every couple of days — whenever I was in the general vicinity. But AJ’s isn’t like an American supermarket. It’s more like an English neighborhood market — or at least as they were lo! these many years ago. When we were in London, typically flats didn’t have the gigantic double-door refrigerators Americans indulged in. Our fridge was an under-the-counter affair! It just didn’t — couldn’t — hold a whole week’s worth of goods for two people. So when you got off the Underground, as you walked home you stopped at the meat market and the greengrocer and the fishmonger and the wine store and a small grocery-store like affair that sold sundries. You didn’t buy a whole week’s worth of stuff, because you couldn’t store that much. Plus carrying it home on foot would have been problematic.
Here in the USofA, I _really_ dislike grocery shopping. I dislike the the atmosphere and open hustle (a term not meant in a positive way…) of supermarkets and will avoid them as much as possible. So yeah: if I can limit my Safeway or Albertson’s or Walmart trips to once a week or once every ten days, that’s what I’ll do.
But AJ’s is less annoying to shop in. It doesn’t try to be all things to all shoppers, and it tends to carry higher-end goods. As a result, at least for me AJ’s is kinda fun to shop in, or at least it’s not endlessly annoying. I’m willing to pay more for a less annoying experience, and I do not hate going there. And the upshot of that has been I found myself running by there whenever I happened to be in the vicinity: yes, about every second or third day.
Clearly, I’m going to have to get a grip on that impulse!