I bet you don’t know you can get a cheaper meal with a little research. The Hamburglar does.

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I changed all my passwords to Kenny.

Now I have all Kenny Loggins.

Same burger, different price

You pull into the drive-through for the same thing you always get. The total comes up, and it’s more than you remember. Maybe more than the place by your work charged last week for the exact same meal.

You pay it. You’re hungry, there’s a car behind you, and it’s lunch, not a mortgage.

That’s why I wanted to pass this along.

You may have seen a headline last month that McDonald’s was sued over an AI tool that recommends prices. I read the whole complaint, all 31 pages, because the first question it raised for me is probably yours too.

Isn’t a Big Mac the same price everywhere?

No. And that surprises a lot of people.

About 95% of the roughly 14,000 McDonald’s in the U.S. are owned by separate business owners, franchisees, not by the company. McDonald’s says those owners set their own menu prices. Its U.S. president wrote in 2024 that “our franchisees... set menu prices for their restaurants.” So two stores ten minutes apart can charge different amounts for the same meal, and they’re supposed to be competing with each other for you.

That same year, McDonald’s own numbers showed its average menu price had gone up about 40% since 2019. A medium fries went from $2.29 to $3.29 on average. The company said rising costs for food, workers and packaging drove it.

Here’s where the lawsuit comes in. It was filed by a man in DeKalb, Illinois, who orders a Quarter Pounder with cheese, fries and a Coke, and sometimes goes for breakfast with his wife on Sunday. He says he noticed different prices for the same items at stores near his home.

His lawyers say those prices aren’t as separate as they look. They say McDonald’s runs a pricing engine that pulls in sales data from every store, including the owners’ private numbers, and recommends a price for each item at each restaurant. Citing Reuters, they say it measures “customer willingness to pay in your area” and nudges an owner to raise an item once about 30% of stores already have. And they say that since January 2026, owners have been required to work with the company’s approved pricing tools.

McDonald’s says that’s wrong. It says the owners, not AI, set prices, and that its tools “do not automate, coordinate or fix pricing in any way.” It called the lawsuit “filled with inaccuracies.” None of this has been proven. There’s no money to claim and nothing to sign up for.

But you don’t need to wait for a judge to use the part that’s already true. The price of your usual order depends on which store you pick.

Me? McDonald’s feels like it is now so expensive that I almost never go anymore. I will go out of my way to visit a chain like Cook Out here in the South where you get noticeable value and good food.

So here’s the one thing I’d try before your next run. If you use the McDonald’s app, put your usual order in, then switch the restaurant to the next closest one and look at the total again. CBC did exactly that and found different prices across one city. It takes a minute, and if one store is consistently cheaper, that’s the one on your way.

I know. It’s a burger. But a couple of dollars a few times a week is real money over a year, and the same habit works anywhere prices are set store by store.

Anyway, I wanted to make sure you knew it isn’t just you. Prices really are different from place to place.

Have you ever noticed the same order costing different amounts at two places near you? Share it in the comments so we can all learn from it. I read every comment.

If this was important to you, share it with someone you care about.

When everything costs more, it’s easy to feel like you’re bad with money. You’re not. Some of it is being decided somewhere you can’t see. Noticing that, and checking one price this week, is a good start to the week.

— Steve

Also on the site since Friday’s issue:

A longer video from me: The 6 Emotional Traps Keeping You in Debt. After thirty years of watching people try to get out of debt, I think debt is math wrapped in emotion. These are the six feelings I see keep people stuck the longest.

Got a money question of your own? Send it my way, and watch for the answer on my Facebook page.

SEE A SCAM? SAY SOMETHING. If one has landed on you or someone you love, tell me at tips@getoutofdebt.org. The ones that can warn other people may show up here. Leave out account numbers and passwords.

If this was important to you, share it with someone you care about. It’s free at yourmoneyactually.com, and I don’t sell the list. The places I actually use for my own money, and what I get out of telling you, are on one page where they’ll always be.

This is what I’m telling friends like you over coffee. But remember, you do you.

Your Money Actually

Isn’t a Big Mac the same price everywhere?