Price Inflation in the US: My Family’s Basket of Goods from COSTCO

[Part 1: COSTCO – Part 2: AMAZON]

In summer 2018, my family and I went on a trip to the Reno-Tahoe area, mostly for vacation but also to get an idea if the greater Reno area may be a suitable one for relocating from Honolulu, after my retirement from the University of Hawaii.

During the visit, I took pictures at Reno Costco of some of the products and items we used to buy at the time in Honolulu. I wanted to compare them with Honolulu’s Costco (at Iwilei). I was expecting that the “price of paradise” would hit again, and many items would be more expensive in Hawaii. I was planning to blog about it. Much to my surprise, the prices were basically the same … nothing to write about.

Fast forward to 2024 and the “big news” is inflation and the cost of food items. Actually, most of the inflation occurred soon after the Covid pandemic was under control. The rise in prices was due to high demand and limited supply because of labor shortages and supply chain issues in the harbors, etc.

Food inflation was 3.9% in 2020, 6.3% in 2021, 10.4% in 2022 and 2.7% in 2023 for an aggregate 4-year spike of about 23%. 

An interesting development was that we actually moved to South Reno in late 2021. In summer 2024 I was able to take another set of pictures of the same products and items as in 2018, at the same Costco in Reno. Sample 2018 item photos (top row) and 2024 item photos (bottom row) are shown below.

As expected, prices have changed, and for some items the quantity or packaging has changed, as shown in my table below; click on it to see a clear version. All of the items are tabulated below with the proper adjustments, so that the comparisons are for identical quantities. If any product had temporary special pricing (on sale), the regular price was used. Out of my 24 listed products, 16 had higher prices (shown in red), but five had pretty much the same price (black), and three were cheaper (blue) in 2024!

One way to make sense of this set, at least for my family, is to develop a basket of approximately how much of each product we use per month, and then compare the 2018 and 2024 budget needed to get them. This is shown on the right side of the table above. The result is quite staggering. Costco product inflation (specific to these 24 products) is far-far lower than the cumulative 2018 to 2024 food inflation which is about 30%. Our Costco inflation over six (6) years is about 10% or only 1.5% per year!