Grocery shopping used to take an entire day for me. There were 3 major grocery stores at the time. I would sit down with the flyers and make my lists based on the different sales. I'd go through all of my coupons to try to match them up with store sales. In warm months, I would use a cooler to store my perishables in the car while I went to all of the stores.
Then something really bad happened. One chain bought out the other and the third store disappeared. One company had a literal monopoly going. Because of our geographical location, it's not like we can just drive into the next town, city or county. We're a virtual island.
The company was ordered to sell some of their stores to another grocery store chain but by the time that happened, the damage was done. The prices had skyrocketed during the monopoly days and never went down.
And now I find that if I have coupons for certain items, they won't usually go on sale until after the coupon expires. So now I'm pretty much stuck shopping at one store.
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