Consumers Making Larger Changes as Inflation Persists

other areas. Veronica Dagger, personal finance reporter at the Wall Street Journal, joins us for more. Thanks for joining us, Veronica, thanks for having me. Well, we've seen record high inflation right now, and you know a lot of people are having to adjust their buying habits. Obviously, some of the big things you do right away, maybe don't buy some of those common things you're always getting. Maybe indulgences you'll you'll take away for a little bit, uh, simple changes

at the grocery store. You know, you'll buy cheaper brands of things that you're used to buying. Probably, but the inflation has tended to stick around a little bit longer than usual. Wool, and that's not enough anymore. For a lot of people, they're having to get pretty creative on

how to save money. Some are picking up new skills to supplement that, you know, start making up some some treats for yourself throughout the weak things like that, so Veronica, help us walk through what are people doing to counter inflation right now? People are making some bigger decisions to blunt the impact of these rising prices. So they're making no small cuts, like you're talking about maybe buying a

cheaper option a generic at grocery store. All that is going on, absolutely, But some people are making larger changes like scaling back their wedding or learning a new skill to save money. For example, I spoke to a guy who recently bought his first house in Florida. He paid a ton of money for it, even though it was an old house, because you know, this housing market is so hot, and he realized, you know what, we don't

have a ton of money left over. And even if I wanted to pay a contractor to do things do repairs or redo my popcorn ceilings, the prices the contracts are charging me for their labor and material loose days because of some supply chain issues and the shortages and the like is pretty astronomical. So what I need to do is I need to upskill myself. I need to learn skilled on places like YouTube or other online tutorials and learn how to make repairs on my house myself.

And this guy was, you know, he had a learning curve, but it actually ended up saving him something like three thousand dollars. And I mean, you know, if you've got popcorn ceiling, that's obviously got to go right away. But yeah, you're right, you know, he said, online tutorials and YouTube have been a blessing. And obviously that's the way a lot of people operate right now. They'll go and kind of get some of that guidance and then you just

jump in and you start making those changes. But definitely a big saver right there when you can do some of your own home improvements. You mentioned the wedding thing that was an interesting one to this couple that was getting married, was getting some quotes two years ago it was gonna be twenty grand for a hotel that they wanted to get married in. When they finally got up to it and they were gonna check the prices again, it jumped to fifty dollars. That's a big problem at

that point. It's staggering. I mean, that's like two weddings, I would call it. I mean, it's just so much money. And so this couple was smart with their money and they said, you know, listen, it would be nice to have this so called dream wedding, but not for more than double the price that we initially budgeted for um.

And so they got a little creative and they said, you know, we're still going to have the wedding, but we have this vacation rental in Sedona that is letting us have a small wedding at that venue, at that home, and we're going to be able to do our entire event for fifteen thousand dollars. And so they're not going to fork out that fifty four thousand dollars because they just don't see it at this time if something that's worth it, you know. And the guy spoke to me said,

two is this year of catch up weddings. And so everywhere you go, like a lot of the venues are booked, and if they aren't booked, you're gonna have to pay top dollar. And some people just don't want to have anything to do with that. You know, these are some of the bigger decisions that people are trying to make. Obviously that they can change things that they have control over, but there's a lot of stuff that we're seeing being affected by inflation. Prices going up for things that you

can't really substitute, medications, different things like that. You know, for a lot of people, you know, you have to make the cuts everywhere else because those prices are going up and you still need that, that's right, Yeah, something like your medication. You're you're pretty married to that. This isn't on medication, but some people are really married to their tobacco habit, and so they're gonna pay whatever they're going to be charging for that in certain people's cases.

And also things like gas prices. I mean, look, if you're commuting to work each day, Um, some people are still doing that and or need to use the car a lot, you're going to be using up a ton of gas potentially, And so some people are thinking through their travel decisions a little bit more carefully. One woman I spoke to is batching her errands so she'll only instead of doing multiple trips multiple errands, she will do everything in one shot. That way she's saving sometimes making

multiple runs with her car. She'll also just drive less in general, she'll double book family doctor's appointments. All of these things are making her think twice about how often she gets in the car because she's dealing with rising prices in other areas of her life. We're talking about the big changes that people are having to make in response to what's going on with inflation. One of the people that you spoke to, and this is a big change both in price and lifestyle. So this was a

pretty cool one that I thought. You spoke to a guy who had a big soda habit. He was deciding he's wasting a lot of money on that. He's he said that he thinks he spends about seven dollars a year on soft drinks and bottled iced ta. So what he did was, I'm gonna start making my own iced tea. I think he started losing some weight, you know, saving a ton of money in response to all this, but bettering his lifestyle too. That that was a pretty cool one.

That was a cool one. Thank you. Yeah, you know, he like he said he lost a lot of weight, he's saving money. He's actually just didn't make it into the story that he's actually taking that differential between the seven dollars he used to spend in the thirty five dollars. He thinks he's going to spend this year on things like making correct of un sweet and nice tea. He's going to take that money and put it in the stock market. So he's going to invest that money. I

thought that was really interesting, you know. And in general, he's losing weight, he's feeling less anxious, I guess because the less sugar. He's just feeling good about himself. So this is a habit that he started that has had all these other positive to it that he didn't anticipate going out there initially. Well, I mean, like I said, these are just the changes that people are making. I know everybody's case is different, and and it is a

problem the longer that inflation continues to affect us. But uh, this is how a lot of people are starting to make those cuts. Veronica Dagger, personal finance reporter at the Wall Street Journal, Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for having me. I'm Oscar Ramirez, and this has been reopening America. Don't forget that. For today's big news stories, you can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every mondy through Friday, so follow us on iHeart Radio or wherever you get your podcast