Lisa Nguyen caught me in the driveway last week while I was unloading Aldi bags from the van, and asked the question everybody asks: "Is it just me, or is everything more?"
For twelve things, I could actually answer her. Since last fall I've written down the shelf price of the same twelve items every time I buy them, at the same stores, in the spreadsheet right next to the receipt totals. It isn't a study. It's one family in North Dallas, three stores and a lot of receipts. But it's real, and it answered Lisa's question better than my gut did.
Twelve prices, September to September
Aldi store brands unless noted, September 2025 to September 2026:
- Eggs, dozen large: $2.89 to $2.19 (down 70 cents)
- Ground beef 80/20, per pound: $5.79 to $6.29 (up 50 cents)
- Boneless chicken breast, per pound: $2.79 to $2.99 (up 20 cents)
- Bone-in chicken thighs, per pound: $1.49 to $1.59 (up 10 cents)
- Milk, gallon: $2.79 to $2.89 (up 10 cents)
- Butter, 1 pound: $3.89 to $3.49 (down 40 cents)
- Shredded cheddar, 8 ounces: $2.15 to $2.29 (up 14 cents)
- Flour tortillas, 10 count: $1.89 to $1.99 (up 10 cents)
- Ground coffee, large canister: $9.49 to $11.29 (up $1.80)
- Dried pinto beans, 2 pounds: $1.29 to $1.35 (up 6 cents)
- Chuck roast at Kroger, per pound: $6.99 to $7.99 (up $1.00)
- Rotisserie chicken at Costco: $4.99 to $4.99 (not a penny)
One of each, all twelve, cost $46.44 last September and $49.34 now. That's $2.90 more, about 6 percent.
What went up, and what came down
The biggest jumps were coffee, up 19 percent, and chuck roast, up 14. Coffee climbed in steps all year: $9.49 last September, $10.49 in January, $10.99 in May, $11.29 now. Beef took the same staircase, and ground beef is up 50 cents a pound in twelve months. Both are expensive right now, and I've stopped planning around them coming back down. We buy a chuck roast about once a month, mostly for Sunday pot roast in the Dutch oven once the weather cools, and I've started swapping in pork shoulder about half the time.
The good news is eggs. A year and a half ago, in April 2025, Aldi eggs were $4.67 a dozen and I rewrote our breakfasts around them. Now they're $2.19, and eggs are back to being the cheapest protein in the house. Butter came down 40 cents too, which I mostly noticed in December cookie season.
Costco's rotisserie chicken hasn't moved off $4.99 the entire time I've tracked it. I don't know what to make of that except gratitude.
Weighted the way we actually shop
A one-of-each basket isn't how a family of five shops. We go through two dozen eggs a week, three gallons of milk, about three pounds each of ground beef, chicken breast and chicken thighs, and only half a canister of coffee. So I multiplied each price by what we really buy in a typical week:
- Last September, those twelve items cost us about $71.62 a week.
- This September, about $74.82 a week.
- The difference: $3.20 a week, about 4.5 percent.
Eggs did a lot of the work. Two dozen a week at 70 cents less saves $1.40, which nearly covers the whole increase on ground beef ($1.50 a week). Coffee added 90 cents a week and chuck roast about 75. Everything else moved by pocket change.
And the whole grocery bill?
Our weekly average last September was $252. This September it's running at $262. That's $10 a week more, and these twelve items explain about a third of it. And last September had two Home Chef boxes in it, which cost more than my own cooking, so the real year-over-year change is a little bigger than $10.
The rest of the increase is mostly us: an eleven-year-old who eats like a teenager, thermos lunches instead of PB&J, a three-year-old who has moved on from nibbling to full plates, and the ordinary drift of everything I don't track item by item, like produce and snacks. Our weekly budget went up to $265 in January for exactly these reasons, and so far it's holding. Barely.
So the honest answer for Lisa was: yes, a little. About $3 a week of it is prices on the things I track, and most of the rest is Wyatt. Prices vary a lot by store, city and week, so these are our numbers, not a forecast for anybody else's. I'll pull the same twelve again in January.
Lisa said she'd rather not know, and then asked me to text her the egg price.
