The Place Where Pop Bottles Are Still Cheap (Well, Not Anymore, At Least Not Quite)

As I've gotten older, I have gotten more attuned to how much things cost.  I guess I could have been more aware of that earlier, but maybe that ignorance is a sign of how blessed/privileged I am.  Still, inflation is a thing (though it shouldn't've been enough to throw Joe Biden out of the race), and even I am beginning to grouse about the price of things.

To wit: Pop.  It increased the past several years to the point where I reconsidered that a second reason (the first being that it's bad for you) to cut back on drinking it as much as I have.  Emphasis on the past tense: I might be a caffeine addict or have a sugar tooth, but after cutting back, the withdrawal was too much for me to take, and I have been back on my pop tip since.  But still, I notice.  And I have tried to counteract that by keeping a mental list of how much a bottle of pop is at the grocery stores and gas stations I buy them from, so that maybe I will patronize places that sell it regularly for cheaper.

There was one place that consistently sold it for cheaper: The mom-and-pop grocer not too far from here.  While a bottle was going for $2.79 and up, this place was selling them for, get this, $2.19.  Whoa!  Now I fully understood the concept of comparison shopping.  Why in the hell would I buy the same bottle of pop for sixty cents more -- sixty?!  The problem is that I did not patronize buying bottles of pop here as much as I should have.  I usually succumbed to convenience -- for example, since I was already at the gas station to get gas, I might as well buy the pop there, even if it is $2.79.

And now I feel regret about not exploiting that financial disparity.  For one thing, I went to a gas station to get gas for my car late last/Thursday night, and I noticed that they are, ugh, $2.99 there (although you can buy two for $4.50 or something, I think).  More unfortunate, however, is that the mom-and-pop grocer recently, and finally, raised the price of pop bottles they sell -- to $2.49.  Yes, it's still a pretty sizable bargain compared to what you'd get at other places around town.  But I swear a bottle was selling for $2.49 everywhere not too long ago.  And the reason I didn't hoard bottles there at $2.19 is that my parents would yell at me for indulging in such a sugary drink, and they're coming back soon, so I can't hoard at $2.49, either.

At this point, the grocery store will ratchet it up to $2.79 soon enough, and then I'd have to question how much of a difference it would be to buy there instead of anywhere else.  But for the longest time, a bottle of pop there (and it was both Coke and Pepsi products) was just $2.19.  Those were the days, man, those were the days. ...