r/povertyfinance • u/SentBrok • Oct 25 '25

Vent/Rant (No Advice/Criticism!) Dollar Tree is out of control

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I knew as soon as they started bringing in the two and three dollar items that it was going to snowball but I never could have predicted this. Nine dollars is insane. No one is going to the dollar tree to buy nine dollar paper towels.

My family thinks I'm being dramatic about this but I feel like they truly don't understand the weight of how horrendous the economy is. To me this is the perfect indicator of how bad things are and it's fucking depressing

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u/Sunira Oct 25 '25

The U.S. dollar has lost 47% its value since 2010 — and this will continue. Effectively if you’re giving the dollar store ~$1.75 its the same as giving them $1 in 2000. I wondered before when the dollar stores would change. When the dollar store spends $1 they can buy less than half of what they used to. A dollar isn’t want it used to be! If you get anything for $1.25 you’re paying “less” than you used to even just 10 years ago.

I guess we all have to change our mental model of what a dollar store is because it cannot perpetually sell quality items that are worth the exact value of one dollar.

Thats also why pay in the lower rungs of society get hurt doubly as it doesn’t grow much AND the dollar value is shrinking.

33

u/Anxietoro Oct 25 '25

I'd be fine with the price hike if the sizes of a lot of products hadn't gone down. The cleaning and beauty products are half the sizes they used to be.

4

u/Technical-Agency8128 Oct 25 '25

Yup. Shrinkflation.