Rising Gas Prices Impacting More Than Just Prices At The Pump
MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Regina Davidson, like anyone who's gassed up recently, is shocked by how much it costs.
"I'm pulling up and like 4.54! This is America," she said.
When you couple that with other rising costs, it's a lot.
"There's been a lot of hardships, not just gas," Davidson explained. "The rent increases, inflation is, it's ridiculous. How do you expect people to survive?"
And there's another big one: food.
"I'd rather not eat," said Colleen after coming out of the grocery store. "You can't afford it."
Prices in the grocery store are soaring too.
"Prices in stores are rising daily. We used to have price changes that came across on a weekly basis, a monthly basis, some people only changed prices once a year, now you're getting daily," said Carlos Hernandez.
Hernandez is with the National Supermarket Association. He noticed prices up by about 15% since last year.
He explained as petroleum prices go up, so do costs and it's not just the gas used for delivering products to market.
"Every bottle that's plastic, every cap, every label, everything that has to do with petroleum. The shopping bags we use to put our groceries are rising, daily, because it's all made with petroleum and petroleum-based products follow the gas pumps," Hernandez said.
Now, more than ever, shoppers are looking for bargains.
"Using coupons more, looking at stores I know that have better pricing," said David Blackwell.
Luc Mongeon is looking to discount stores to save money.
"It's costing me about 100 bucks a week when it used to cost me about 75, just seeing a lot of increase in prices," he said.
Regina Davidson and her family are making changes too, finding ways to save.
"We're just going without some things, some things like leisure things, we don't get to do as much. We try to do free things. This is really effecting us," she said.
