High cost of living

In the past, death and taxes were life’s two certainties.

But Benjamin Franklin did not foresee what swiping your card at the till would feel like in the 21st century.

Today, inflation or, “kak en betaal” as they say, makes certainty a threesome of life’s miseries.

This story has its roots in grocery shopping when, in March last year, a bottle of All Gold Tomato Sauce was under R25 and a loaf of sliced bread priced at a maximum of R12.

Today, trolley for trolley, you have got to dig deep to afford a basket load. Forget the trolley. A year and a bit later, a 700ml All Gold Tomato Sauce costs about R31 and a loaf of sliced white bread hovers close to R15.

But before you read on about the high cost of living, here is an important note. On Facebook, there is a group called 1 Family Stockpile.

Here, members of the group hunt for incredible specials, highlight accidental retailer pricing errors in the consumer’s favourite and list daily bargains.

Shopping and comparing prices and reading supermarket broadsheets for specials has become as commonplace as reading the news or watching Netflix.

In a combination of physical shopping and online price checking, Saturday Citizen compared the cost of some basic foodstuffs, a luxury here and there and some toiletries. Stores visited were the Blackheath Superspar and the El Ridge Checkers in Boksburg, with Pick n Pay and Woolies checked online. Specials were not considered.

So, a small batch of basics at the Blackheath Superspar cost R497.83. It comprised of 100 tagless teabags, a plain 100ml Colgate toothpaste, four house brand 2-ply toilet rolls, a bar of Lux soap, 1kg Snowflake, 2.5kg Selati white sugar, 200g Nescafe Classic, 1kg Iwisa maize meal, 1kg Tastic rice, 500g Rama, six housebrand large eggs, a lire of long-life housebrand full cream milk, a loaf of Albany sliced white bread, a tin of Koo baked beans, some loose tomatoes, a two-litre original Coke, 750ml Sunfoil sunflower oil, 700ml All Gold Tomato Sauce, 320g extra lean beef mince (at R114.99 a kilo).

Minus mince and tomatoes, the weight-dependent goods, the Blackheath Spar basket would cost R453.37. Its equivalent at Checkers was a staggering R39.96 more expensive on the Sixty Sixty app.

At Woolworths, beyond the expensive carrier bags on sale, the balance of your online priced basket, with a 2kg Tastic rice as 1kg was not available, adds up to R525.52. So, even halving the price of rice lands a R507 bill at your door. That is R53.95 pricier than Spar and R13.67 more expensive than Checkers. Pick n Pay’s did not have a litre of oil available online, so a basket with a two-litre works out to R544.75.

Divide the oil’s price in half, for the sake of argument, and it comes to R503.75. It looks like it is an in-between shop. But Blackheath Spar wins hands down in the affordability stakes. By the way, on the Spar receipt, the amount of VAT we pay on basics is scary, as R110.84 went straight out of the consumer’s pocket to the government.