Food prices are increasing significantly. A Kaufland customer finds a very old receipt that lets her reminisce.
Munich – Almost everyone probably knows the saying about the “good old days”. In any case, one or the other person claims that everything was better in the past. Whether this is really the case remains to be seen. At least at the prices in supermarkets and discounters a lot has changed. In the branches of rewe, Edeka, Kaufland, Aldi, Lidl and other companies, things are currently more expensive than ever.
Inflation and the Ukraine war have contributed to the price increases for many products. Customers now have to pay more money for many things than they did a few months and years ago. One likes to wallow wistfully in memories of earlier times when the expenses for shopping were even lower.
Kaufland customer finds old receipt – product prices were significantly cheaper back then
A Kaufland customer made a random discovery that took her back to a different time period. on Facebook she posted a photo of what she found and wrote, “Found a bookmark while looking for a book. 11/09/1996 receipt.” The receipt came from a time when payments in Germany were not made in euros but in Deutschmarks.
Since January 1, 2002, Germans have been paying in euro cash, the exchange rate for which was fixed in 1999 in relation to the Deutsche Mark. One euro is worth 1.95583 German marks – almost double the previous currency. If you take this conversion formula as a basis for comparison, the receipt found by the Kaufland customer sometimes makes the 1990s seem almost heavenly.
Onko brand coffee (probably the 500 gram pack) was available to Kaufland customers in 1996 for 5.55 Deutschmarks. Onko was later taken over by coffee manufacturer Jacobs, and the comparable 500-gram pack of Jacobs Auslese now costs 5.79 euros, according to kaufland.de. In addition, the user then cost 5 kilos of onions just 2.79 D-Mark. Today, the 1-kilo nets are already in a range of well over one euro, so extrapolated almost four times more expensive than in the mid-1990s.
Kaufland receipt from the 1990s: “Today the receipts are four times as big”
Some other Facebook users raved about the former German currency in the comments on the receipt find. “I want the DM back,” it said, or just “DM” with an emoji with hearts in their eyes. Another detail on the old receipt was also positively highlighted by a user compared to today’s receipts. “Today, the receipts alone are four times as big,” she wrote.
She is quite right about that. Customers keep complaining these days about huge receipts that they are given in the supermarket even for very small purchases. That was recently a Rewe customer annoyed because “more than purchases” on the receipt were. Also Penny provoked the anger of a consumer when the receipt for five items was 71.5 cm long got.
D-Mark to Euro: earlier-later comparison lags behind when it comes to pure exchange rate conversion
When it comes to the question of costs, however, the earlier/later comparison described lags behind. Simply comparing the exchange rate would correspond to more than doubling the prices at the time. However, this simple calculation is not correct. A simple conversion provides a deceptive comparison that is not meaningful. In addition, the development of inflation and purchasing power in Germany must be included in order to create a correct comparative value.
Overall, a different picture emerges. In short, purchasing power in Germany has been falling steadily from year to year since the late 1980s. However, not to the extent that an exchange rate conversion from earlier D-Mark prices to today’s Euro prices would represent. (kh)