grayt46•7d agoMost Upvoted

Shoutout to my grandma's old recipe box, I found a dinner cost breakdown from 1978

I was cleaning out my mom's attic last weekend and found my grandma's recipe box. Tucked inside one of the index cards was a little note where she wrote down how much she spent on a pot roast dinner for six people. The whole meal (meat, potatoes, carrots, onions, and a can of biscuits) came to $4.87. That blew my mind because the same ingredients would set me back around $25 today at my local Kroger. It really made me think about how much grocery shopping has changed since then. Has anyone else found old receipts or notes like that from family members?

2 comments

2 Comments

matthew_baker7d ago

$4.87 for a full dinner for six people is just wild to think about. You could barely buy a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk with that now. It really shows how much wages haven't kept up with the actual cost of feeding a family.

mason.anna6d ago

And the thing that really gets me is that $4.87 in 1978 is about $24 today when you adjust for inflation, which is basically what we're paying now anyway lol. So it's not even that food is more expensive in real terms, it's that everything else like rent and utilities and gas have gone up way faster than wages have. Like my grandma probably had way more wiggle room in her budget for fun stuff or savings after buying that meal than I do after spending the same adjusted amount. It's the ratio that's all messed up, not just the absolute price.