Perhaps its the people who cook with a lot of home ingredients (eggs, meats, vegetables, fruits) that are feeling the most pain. My food budget has gone up 25% in the last year for the same basket of goods. I track those numbers pretty consistently.

Yes, some individuals will see higher than average inflation in their basket. Others will see lower than average. That's why we work with the averages for policy decisions rather than looking for individual anecdotes.

If I subsist entirely off the cocktail shrimp at my local Wegmans and have no other expenses, my inflation value is something like 500%. Is that a particularly useful number for the Fed? No.

Cocktail shrimp sounds extravagant; that's not what we're talking about. GP is on point. We're talking about basic staples, the real food you find on the edges of the grocery store, not the highly processed items in the middle.

You've misread my comment. The cocktail shrimp example is why "nuh uh, my personal number is higher" is not a valuable data point. Maybe you go to an expensive store, maybe you buy the fancier lettuce, maybe your basket includes some things you consider staples that aren't all that common nationally.

It's why we have a nation-wide check on the prices of a well-researched selection of staples in the average proportions they make up in an average person's budget, rather than polling random people on the Internet for anecdotes. That number is far more useful.

At some point it stop being cherry picking and becomes an actual measure.

The official BLS numbers are underreporting inflation. Overall, groceries are up roughly 35-50% since 2020, while the official numbers would have you believe the inflation was 18.17% over 3 years.

BLS does a lot of trickery to generate favorable numbers. There are "quality" adjustments, there are "core" inflation indicators, which exclude goods with high price fluctuations (e.g. eggs).

I buy a pretty diverse basket of goods (groceries too) overall, and so far, none of the official inflation figures have even come close to my observed price increases.

Lumber, tools and hardware in home improvement stores are all up 30-60%. Food, like I said, is up 30% at minimum since the start of the pandemic.

Maybe clothes and TVs kept a stable price, but who cares?

Sigh. "My personal number is higher" isn't a good way to contest a national, fairly rigorous process run by professionals. I can pick a basket of goods from my local Wegmans that's gone up 100%; I don't doubt it's higher than the CPI number for some people. That's how averages work; there'll be some people for which it's lower, too, and their anecdotes have equally little value for national policy decisions.

Lumber, incidentally, is back to normal nationally. Down 63% in 2022. If you're still seeing 60% above normal, you're either in an area with a supply issue, or you're getting hosed by the store. https://www.wxpr.org/business-economics/2023-01-04/despite-i...

You want to talk about professionals? Why not Shadowstat? The person who is doing the national calculation is not pro. They are bureaucrats subject to political adjustments. I have friends in six states everyone of them tallying their monthly expenses which increased more than 30%+ compared sametime last year. If yours didnt either you have significantly cut down your expense or oddly expensing very different to many others. The CPI is grossly not reflecting the reality.

> The person who is doing the national calculation is not pro.

It's not one person, and I can assure you the Bureau of Labor Statistics employs a wide range of professionals.

> I have friends in six states everyone of them tallying their monthly expenses

Cool. Anecdote coupled with strong selection bias.