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Cost Of Living

This column is called Tidbits, Comments & Oddities and I would like to make a serious comment on the figures given in the newspapers for the big jump of 1.5% in the Cost of Living Index for the month of April, which is going to seriously affect us all. I wonder on what basis these figures are calculated and which shops are visited to obtain this information.

At my local Supersol and Mega B’Ir the price of the bread I normally buy jumped from NIS 11.46 to NIS 15.99, that is not 2.6% but about 35% and whole fresh chickens went from NIS 16.99 to NIS 20.99, a rise of close to 25% and not 4.8%. However, tomatoes, apart from one week, stayed at the same price and did not go up by 94.3% and according to the index the price of cucumbers went down by 53% whereas in my Supersol they have stayed more or less static. Rice went up for two weeks by about 25% and not 16.3% but now I can find the same rice back to the previous price. Is any account taken of the fact that people often change their buying according to the price of goods. I certainly do not buy grapes when they are NIS 29 per kg.

My comment/question is, are we being led up the garden path by economists who probably do not do the shopping themselves?

Hot Water Heaters

We all make mistakes from time to time and mine was ordering a sun heater (dud shemesh) of 150 liters instead of the 200 liters we had had for many years. The family was getting smaller and my plumber said it would be a pity to buy the more expensive one unnecessarily and also we would get our hot water more quickly. Ha - is my only comment on this. What I found needs to be taken into account is whether all the members of the family have their showers at the same time. Like many people, my husband has his at night and I in the morning, so the hot water receives a supply of cold during his shower, which by the morning has cooled down even more. When the tank was bigger the hot water being used in one shower was a much smaller percentage of the total amount of water in the tank. Are you still with me?

Prices

I am constantly surprised by the huge difference in prices in various stores. A few examples: I had been looking for a garlic press. I was not ready to pay the high prices of Domo, Polgat and the special spice shops ranging from NIS 120 upwards and therefore I was delighted when I found a simple Israeli one for NIS 19 in Ace. One month later I found the identical item in Rama in Raanana at NIS 8.49!

At Super-Pharm I buy the M3-Micropore sticky-plaster which is wrapped under the name of NextCare at NIS 6.99. However at New-Pharm it is NIS 12.99 (I asked New-Pharm to double check this) i.e. it costs 100% more. I needed to purchase a natural health product – Yobsalax. At Super-Pharm the price was NIS 75.99 and at Teva Market Castel it was NIS 50, i.e. Supe-Pharm was 50% more. All I did was to check out the price by phone at Teva Castel.

Spare Buttons

Have you ever tried looking for a missing button for a beloved dress or jacket? We bought a wind jacket for my husband when we were in Barcelona and found in a pocket a small plastic envelope with spare metal press studs (tik-taks in Hebrew) of two different sizes. This made me wonder why most manufactures of medium priced products do not provide spare buttons. Marks & Spencer does with nearly all their goods.