A simple picture of an average Australian grocery haul has sparked a wave of anger and gone viral when it was revealed how much it cost.
The picture, which went viral on Reddit, included items like peanut butter, cheese, bacon, chicken nuggets, nappies and assorted fruit and vegetables.
“This cost me $170. Yes, there are some non-essentials. But jeez…,” wrote the Reddit user who shared the image on Thursday.
Thousands of comments followed from Australians facing the same squeeze at the checkout.
“I feel this today,” wrote one person. “I did my groceries online, ended up with a total of $160. Decided to go back through and take out the crap I didn’t really need … there was none. It just happened to be a shop where I needed batteries, pet food, and laundry powder all in the same week.”
Others were similarly mortified by the cost of living crisis facing Australians where record inflation and skyrocketing interest rates have all but killed discretionary spending.
“Families must really be struggling right now if us single people are also feeling the pinch like this,” one person wrote.
“I can’t imagine trying to stretch my wage to include everything kids need.”
Another decried the death of the middle class.
“When they say the middle class is dead, this is how it died. One overpriced afternoon after another until we all end up not having money to spend and collapse the world economy,” they wrote.
“We only go out like once a month because everything’s expensive,” wrote another.
“We don’t have as much spending cash because groceries and utilities have gone up, and the cash we do have doesn’t go as far because restaurants and venues have gone up. My most recent raise ‘kept up’ with inflation on paper but in practice it definitely hasn’t.”
Others shared how much it was costing them at their local supermarket.
“I spent 110 dollars yesterday and that was with 15 dollars in coupons. Everything I got was super basic, no meat, no premade/frozen meals etc. Just vegetables, bananas, bread, milk, rice, cheese, veggies and a little toilet paper. Literally staples to last one person about a week and it cost over 100 dollars.”
The pain for consumers comes despite the latest statistics showing prices at the checkout actually eased last month.
Inflation has slowed down but “remains high” according to the latest ABS data on the consumer price index.
The ABS reports the monthly CPI indicator rose by 6.9 per cent in the 12 months to October, lower than the 7.3 per cent movement reported in September.
It is the sharpest fall in the CPI indicator since July 2021 when inflation was at 3.9 per cent.
The most significant contributors to the CPI in October were new homes (+20.4 per cent), petrol prices (+11.8 per cent) and fresh produce prices (+9.4 per cent) during the month of October.
Food and non-alcoholic beverage prices eased over the last month from an annual rise of 9.6 per cent in September to 8.9 per cent in October.
However, improved growing conditions and an increase in fruit and vegetable supply led to lower prices in October.
News.com.au reported in October that the price of certain foods had skyrocketed.
Some things went up awfully fast, economist Jason Murphy wrote at the tie.
“In my mind, milk still costs just a bit over a dollar a litre – but in reality, nope.
“One-dollar milk is a distant memory. A single litre of milk at Woolworths is going for anywhere between $1.60 – for home brand – up to $3.60 for A2 milk.
“At the other end of the spectrum is meat. Lamb and beef didn’t go up much in the last three months, – just a fraction of a per cent – but of course their prices rose dramatically already.”
— with NCA NewsWire