Smart Money Podcast: What’s Up With Eggs, and Home Projects – Miami County Republic

Welcome to NerdWallets Smart Money podcast, where we answer your real-world money questions.

This weeks episode starts with a discussion about eggs why theyre so expensive right now and how you can adjust your shopping habits.

Then we pivot to a discussion about the 2022 home improvement season.

Check out this episode on either of these platforms:

The disparate issues driving up egg prices are converging to scramble food budgets across the country. To start, the avian flu thats spreading across the country has led to more than 20 million chickens being killed this year. That means there are fewer chickens laying eggs right now.

Gas prices have made getting eggs to market more expensive, too. But you can try to cut your grocery costs in other ways.

Those hoping to take on home improvement projects this year are also facing supply chain and inflation challenges. There is a long-standing shortage of contractors that could make finding someone to do your work take a while.

The Fed rate hikes may tamper demand later in the year, but this summer is likely to be expensive and competitive for folks who want to take on projects around the house.

To still get some home improvement projects done this year without busting your budget you might need to get creative. Instead of doing a complete bathroom overhaul, for example, think about throwing a coat of paint on the walls and swapping out hardware on drawers and cabinets.

Small changes can help you feel like youre in a new space and can be much more affordable and easier to accomplish than a big project.

Dont count on remodeling getting cheaper:Demand may ease as interest rates rise, but supply chain disruptions and labor issues are likely to persist.

Interview the experts: A contractor, designer or architect may have ideas on how to get the results you want for less.

Consider smaller improvements:If you cant swing a major remodel right now, smaller fixes, such as new paint or a new countertop, could make a big difference at a fraction of the cost.

Have a money question? Text or call us at 901-730-6373. Or you can email us at podcast@nerdwallet.com. To hear previous episodes, go to the podcast homepage.

Sean Pyles: Ive got a question for all of the homeowners listening. How are your home improvement projects going this year?

If youre finding them more expensive and slower going than you expected, youve definitely got company. And in this episode, we are digging into whats going on.

Welcome to the NerdWallet Smart Money podcast, where we answer your personal finance questions and help you feel a little smarter about what you do with your money. Im Sean Pyles.

Liz Weston: And Im Liz Weston. To send the Nerds your money questions, leave us a voicemail, or text us on the Nerd hotline at 901-730-6373. Thats 901-730-NERD. You can also send your voice memos to podcast@nerdwallet.com.

Sean Pyles: And follow us wherever you get your podcast to get new episodes delivered to your devices every Monday. And if you like what you hear, please leave us a review and tell a friend.

So, as I mentioned at the top, this episode, Liz and I are talking about how to approach home improvement projects this year, and why they might be a little bit more expensive than you expected.

Liz Weston: I was really looking forward to this conversation, because I have a huge list of projects that need to get done.

So, to help us understand the challenges of taking on home improvement projects right now, and how to get your projects done, on this episode of the podcast, were talking with Annie Millerbernd, whos been writing about this subject.

But before we get into that, Sean and I want to talk about eggs. Theyre still incredible and edible, but a dozen today will cost you a ton more than it did a year ago.

Sean Pyles: Yeah. I love eggs as much as the next guy, but why are we talking about them on Smart Money? Its because the issues that are driving up egg prices show how many seemingly disparate problems can converge to drive up prices on everyday items.

Plus, we want to offer you some tips to help you manage your grocery bill. And also I just love eggs, so were going to talk about it.

So lets start by giving a little bit of context. As a lot of folks know and are experiencing painfully on a day-to-day basis, grocery prices have increased nearly 12% over the last year. Its the highest jump since 1979.

But inflation is hitting certain food items harder than others. For example, right now the price for eggs is 32% higher than it was a year ago, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And in April, the price for a dozen commercial eggs hit $3 on average, and thats not including the cost for specialty, pasture-raised or organic eggs.

Liz Weston: Yeah. If youve been to the farmers market lately, youve seen those prices go up as well. Its basically gotten more expensive.

Sean Pyles: Yeah.

Liz Weston: Why? Why is this happening, Sean?

Sean Pyles: Well, a number of different reasons. As folks can imagine, eggs have been hit by a lot of the same global supply chain issues that other goods have.

But theres also a very unique issue thats impacting egg prices right now, and that is an avian flu that folks might have heard about in the news. In December 2021, a new avian flu hit North America, and it is really devastating chickens across the country.

One thing that is kind of good about this is that the risk to humans remains low, according to the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]. But chickens, turkeys and other birds are really susceptible.

One thing to note is that avian flus happen pretty regularly, and theyre usually contained quickly. But this one has really not been contained at all.

So, a bunch of chickens have been culled, basically killed, so that they can contain the spread of this avian flu or at least try to. So far this year, over 20 million chickens have been killed to try to contain this outbreak.

Liz Weston: Oh my goodness, thats a lot.

Sean Pyles: Its pretty astonishing. Beyond the avian flu, as I mentioned before, there are supply chain issues happening around eggs. The packaging supplies for eggs have gotten more expensive.

Theres also a truck driver shortage. And, as everyone knows, fuel prices have skyrocketed. So, that means that moving eggs from the farms to the grocery store is getting more expensive, and were paying for that.

Liz Weston: Yeah, and the eggs tend to have a pretty short life cycle to begin with. So, when the eggs get laid, they need to get moved to the market. Its not something that you can just set aside or wait on. They go bad.

Sean Pyles: Right. So, this is all to say that there are a number of different things coming together, making egg prices more expensive.

And Liz, how do you think folks can maybe reshuffle their spending habits to make sure that this doesnt scramble their budget?

Liz Weston: Well, as always with spending, we recommend that you first track what you are spending, so you have some idea of what the outflow is.

And you might even want to figure out what your personal rate of inflation is, because everybodys rate is a little bit different. If you have a budget tracking device or an app like NerdWallets, you can check last year and see how much you were spending on food, for example versus this year. Then you have sort of a baseline of what your personal rate of inflation is.

I think the heart of saving money on food is doing some meal planning. And some of us are not in the habit of doing that regularly; other people are. It just depends on how tight money is.

But meal planning is great for a couple of reasons. One is that it lets you take advantage of the specials and the sales that are going on at your local supermarkets. If youre planning menus around that, youre going to save money.

Another big benefit of meal planning is that you go to your refrigerator, and you look around your house, and you see what you already have. And that helps you reduce food waste. An awful lot of the food in this country gets thrown away unused.

So, by regularly going through your refrigerator and seeing whats there and making plans to use it, you can really help cut down on your food costs and food waste in general.

Sean Pyles: Yeah. It also just makes planning your life a lot easier. We have a cookbook that we use that is based around weekly meal planning. So youll have four or so recipes per week, and they tend to use similar ingredients. So, if you need parsley for one dish, youll use it again in another, a few days later.

And itll also have some recipes where its based on pantry staples. So, youll probably have a box of pasta somewhere in your pantry. You can just pull that out and use it for this dish. So that way, you can make sure that you are using everything that youre buying at the grocery store.

And you dont have to scramble each day asking your partner or yourself, What am I doing for dinner tonight? You have it set up.

Liz Weston: Yeah. And if you need a little help in getting going with meal planning and food plans, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has monthly food plans that you can use as guidance for grocery spending.

This is interesting, but its broken down by four different spending levels. So, thrifty, low-cost, moderate-cost and liberal. I dont know why they called the most expensive one liberal, but they did. So, for example, the thrifty food plan for a family of four would be about $211 per week.

Sean Pyles: OK.

Liz Weston: So that gives you some idea. The costs go up from there.

Sean Pyles: Interesting. Im spending about that much with just my partner and I. But I do have a penchant to spend a lot on smoked salmon, because I love my lox bagels in the morning. So maybe thats one area where I can personally cut my budget.

But, speaking of meat, I know that youre a big advocate for plant-based diets. And that is a great way to save some money as well, right?

Liz Weston: Yeah. We are not anywhere near totally vegan. We still eat meat; we still eat eggs. But we try to have a couple of plant-based dinners a week, and we will slowly be expanding that.

So, moving away from meat products, animal products, is another way to really help you save money. And it doesnt just have to be beans and rice.

Sean Pyles: Yeah.

Liz Weston: Theres actually quite a bit of opportunity for really creative meal planning. I just got the book Cool Beans, which is a fabulous cookbook of bean recipes.

Sean Pyles: Interesting.

Liz Weston: But again, theres a lot more products out there now than there used to be.

Sean Pyles: Yeah.

Liz Weston: So, you can experiment a little bit with that.

Theres one other aspect of saving money on eggs that we probably should talk about, and thats the idea of raising your own chickens, because I know this is something thats been discussed in your household, right?

Sean Pyles: Yes, Garrett and I have been debating this for a little while. He would love to have some chickens running around the backyard. All I can see is my cat and my dog terrorizing them, and the mess that theyre going to make.

So Im not so keen on this. And you raised chickens growing up, so I think that youre kind of in my camp, too. Is that right?

Liz Weston: Exactly. When you said the dog and cat terrorizing the chickens, look for it to go the other way around. We had a terrifying rooster that would fly at your face with those spurs on his legs, just trying to kill you.

So yeah, that and the smell of the manure. Oh my gosh. Thats still in my nostrils all these years later.

So I mean, I know people do this for a lot of reasons. Theres exotic chickens that are kind of fun

Sean Pyles: Yeah.

Liz Weston: and all that. But yeah, definitely research it. I think you probably will spend a lot more money on your chicken coops and your chickens.

Sean Pyles: Im trying to take advantage of the whole backyard chicken thing without putting in any of the work, which is: I will occasionally buy eggs from my neighbors who have chickens, and they are beautiful and delicious.

They come in so many different colors that youve never seen before. And I like to get them every so often. But they are about five bucks a dozen, because of all the labor and the materials that have to go into making a dozen eggs from chickens that are in your backyard.

But its a nice way to kind of break things up and also connect with your neighbors, at least in my neighborhood.

Liz Weston: Yeah, and if you havent had truly fresh eggs, they are a revelation. All this being said, weve been talking about how much more expensive eggs are, but theyre still a pretty cheap source of protein.

Theres lots of different ways to save on groceries, and we have a lot of articles on NerdWallets site that can help you figure out ways to cut your food budget.

One callout: A lot of folks are struggling with food insecurity right now. So if you are in a position to do so, setting up regular donations to your local food bank is a great way to help people in your community.

Sean Pyles: Thats true. Before we get into our conversation around home improvement season, I have a quick favor to ask our listeners.

Were always working to improve Smart Money for all of you, so we put together a super short survey. Please take a few seconds to fill that out. You can find a link in the episode description. Thanks in advance.

Liz Weston: OK, now lets get into our conversation with Annie Millerbernd about home improvement projects this year. Welcome to Smart Money, Annie.

Annie Millerbernd: Happy to be here.

Sean Pyles: Annie, a lot of homeowners myself included, and Liz, and Im imagining you have a pretty long list of things they want to do to their house, but its not so easy to accomplish in todays landscape.

Can you describe the current challenges facing those who want to take on home improvement projects this year?

Annie Millerbernd: The challenges for home-improvers right now come down to supply and demand. And those are two concepts that homeowners and other consumers are very, very familiar with in 2022.

If you want to do a home improvement project this year, resources are limited, and lots of people want them.

Liz Weston: So on the supply side, whats the situation?

Annie Millerbernd: The supply side actually is two situations. The first is a shortage of labor. So, theres been a longstanding shortage of construction labor folks to actually do the home improvement projects and that issue was exacerbated by the pandemic.

For decades now, there havent been enough people to do the home improvement projects. And during the pandemic, you had people being laid off, as they were across many industries. You also had people getting sick and not being able to come to the job sites.

So, thats made it a lot harder to get a hold of contractors. Youre seeing that show up when you call six, seven, eight contractors, and maybe you only hear back from two or three and maybe one actually shows up at your door to gives you a quote.

Sean Pyles: Right. Weve had that experience with my partners place in Portland. Weve had a number of projects that weve wanted to get done. And when we have found a contractor who fit the bill for us, we often have had to wait upward of six to eight weeks to schedule a time for them to come out.

And then, even the day of, weve had folks cancel, because someone maybe got sick. Or they had another project that was actually more lucrative, and they just wanted to prioritize that instead of ours. So, its been quite a time-consuming, and at times, frustrating process to even find laborers.

Annie Millerbernd: Then when you do find a contractor, that person works with subcontractors, and those are also in short supply.

So you get your project started, and then you need someone to come in and do the plumbing. But you need to have that scheduled; that isnt something thats just going to happen seamlessly within the process. Its the same for electrical work and all of the work that you need subcontractors for.

So that makes your timeline, which already took a long time to get started, even longer.

Sean Pyles: Yeah, and you better hope that the subcontractors have all the materials that they need. We put in some new windows in our place in Portland, and that project was delayed a couple times, because the contractors didnt have the windows. They were just back-ordered for quite a long time.

Annie Millerbernd: Absolutely, and materials are the other side of the supply problem. This is a problem that was brand new during the pandemic. It happened across many different types of goods, where you would order something and you wont get it for, say, nine months.

We have a coworker who ordered a faucet for her sink. And it is May, and she will not see that faucet until July. And thats a long time to wait for a faucet.

Sean Pyles: I hope that they like it.

Annie Millerbernd: The materials shortage is kind of an unprecedented thing for the home improvement industry. One economist told me he had never seen all materials in short supply, all at the same time, which was the case during the pandemic. Thats made things a lot more expensive.

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Smart Money Podcast: What's Up With Eggs, and Home Projects - Miami County Republic