The price increase of 7,000 items has already been decided.

The company has decided to raise prices on a total of 7152 products by April of this year. …… According to a survey by Teikoku Databank, in addition to familiar food items such as Kagome’s tomato ketchup and Lotte’s snow cones, train fares and gas prices will also be raised. Economic journalist Hiroko Ogiwara says that we will also experience an exceptional rush of price hikes early in the new year.

The yen’s depreciation peaked from mid-October to early November last year. Since the impact of import prices will begin to appear two to three months later, price hikes will hit supermarkets one after another starting in January. In addition to imports, domestically produced beef and pork will also go up. Last year, prices of grains such as soybeans and corn rose worldwide. Japanese livestock are eating those ‘high-priced feeds.’

With wages not rising as they should, what should be done to protect household finances? One method that is suddenly attracting a lot of attention is the “do not buy individually” method. The number of users of this service has been increasing since 2010.

This service allows households to purchase food for commercial use that cannot be consumed by the entire household through a joint purchase on the Internet. For example, by jointly purchasing a package of 30 individually packaged ice creams, one can sometimes buy one for half the price of the regular product.

In addition, sharing services for joint ownership of goods are also becoming more and more common. Cars, clothes, brand bags, watches, cameras, books, and all other types of goods are now available for “sharing”. The “one person, one thing” is now outdated. By making good use of sharing, we may be able to survive the rush to raise prices.

From the January 20 and 27, 2023 issues of FRIDAY