I think you mean buying in bulk. Buying in bulk is great but often not because if it is food it might go bad before you eat it and if you are poor your limited on space... so huge packs of items don't fit well in your tiny space. Plus the up front cost is a real killer since the money is saved over time. And if you have more of something you might end up using more because it's convenient. And finally if you are splitting rent with many people they will help themselves to the bulk items.
There's a subtle difference between "buying in bulk" and "keeping a reasonable stock".
I grew up in a quite poor family and my parents are terrible with money. One thing that frustrated me to no end is that they would almost never buy something ahead of time. An item would literally have to run out before they'd consider buying its replacement, which meant I'd regularly get in the shower in the morning to find there is no soap, no toothpaste, no toilet paper.
You'd end up going to a local convenience store and paying 2x the price for the item because you need it now. Your grocery budget becomes hugely inflated, and you still end up buying the same necessities. Also when you work on a system of buying one item only to replace the previous, you really miss out on bargains because you have to pay the full price it is at the time you need it, instead of a week or two earlier when the same product was BOGOF.
At the same time, they throw away tonnes of food which has gone off because they can't plan meals and shopping consists of "we might eat that." Food which has a long expiry date (canned foods, etc) always runs out.
> You'd end up going to a local convenience store and paying 2x the price for the item because you need it now. Your grocery budget becomes hugely inflated, and you still end up buying the same necessities.
I see this at a lot at my local 7-11, many poorer people do a lot of their grocery shopping there even though an aldi is 5 minutes walk away (so it's actually closer for some of them, literally across the road) and three other supermarkets are under 15 minutes walk. I suspect there is some sort of psychological effect (possibly from advertising) that is compelling them to go to 7-11 instead of somewhere cheaper and that they aren't making a conscious financial decision.
No, I meant stocking up. If there is a sale on toilet paper, poor folks can save some money this week but cannot buy a couple of extra packages because they don’t have those discretionary funds available. It’s not space, it’s budget.
