Shrinkage!

With June drawing to a close, I can look back with a good sense of accomplishment as it has been a reasonable month. I have not crunched the final numbers yet (that will be done in time for tomorrow's Month End Report). It seems to me that the really tough part of my quest is not actually finding the money, but instead spending it in a timely fashion before the grim reaper of inflation destroys my purchasing power.

Lately all I read and hear about from the enlightened economists is that we are in a deflationary environment. All I can surmise from that is, these economists have never done the family grocery shopping. Sure it may be cheaper to buy a car, but I don't buy a car every week. Sure house prices may be cheaper, but I don't buy a house every week.

Digging through the Sidewalker groceries at the weekend, I found that I was the victim of a most heinous crime, yes SHRINKAGE! I'm not sure what the technical term for it is, but this is how I define it. Paying the same price for less product due to stealthy packaging changes. Either my hands are getting bigger, or there is something more sinister at play.

Most noticeably have been my breakfast cereal boxes getting thinner, my ice cream box getting smaller. However my favorite was the peanut butter jar. It looked the same and felt the same, it smelt the same and cost the same, all except the new massive concave bottom robbing me of 2 oz.!

So as you can see my grocery bill has not been going up, I have just been getting less and less product. This is a deterioration over time, it will only become apparent to most people when the weekly grocery shop turns into a daily event!

The most famous case of this over the years was the 5 cent Hershey chocolate bar. They kept the price at 5 cents for so long that if you compared a bar from year to year, it would give you a great visualization of inflation via shrinkage.

For further reading on the subject click this link to ehow.com

So tomorrow when I recalculate how long it's going to take me to pick up my million, I'll really be wondering how many tubs of peanut butter it will buy me when I finally get there.

-Luke Sidewalker
-Current balance $12.20