I remember some 25 years ago, going to visit my parents in Phoenix, Arizona, and we were sitting at the dinner table one night and my mom kept talking about "how expensive" life had gotten.
At the time, I definitely remember understanding the truth in that statement but I didn't pay a great deal of attention to it. Sure, life seemed expensive... but so what? My parents were "well off" so what did they really have to complain about?
To some degree, I failed to understand their predicament because I wasn't as aware of what the cost of life means to people when expenses are rising but your income is static. They were largely living off the income from their investments which was declining due to declining interest rates, meanwhile the cost of everything around them was increasing.
I found myself thinking about that particular conversation earlier today while I was at the supermarket and "just picking up a few things." Even though several of those things were "on special," I realized that it was a very small basket of goods and I was just getting ready to pay $75 for it!
When did "a few things" at the supermarket get to be $75???
Although Mrs. Denmarkguy and I are not exactly on fixed income yet, we still have to deal with ever rising prices and in recent years it has become harder and harder to make ends meet. I often see things at the store that I would like to get, but I end up putting them back because I realize that their cost would put a civil dent in our food budget.
We just about never get anything anymore that might be considered "just a special treat." Instead we stick increasingly to Absolute Essentials only.
All things considered, things are still going pretty well... and it's not the present moment that is so much of a concern as projecting out into how things will be in the future. And I think that might be a predicament that an increasingly large number of people are facing these days. We're okay now, but how will we be five years from now?
One of the things that concerns me - perhaps not so much for ourselves as for other people - is the potential for falling into the ostensible "debt trap." The moment you're starting to borrowing to make ends meet you're setting yourself up to fall into a big deep dark hole that may be impossible to dig back out of.
Sometimes I see this talk about how jobs are plentiful and how employers "can't fill" the vacant positions they have. But somehow that seems like it's not entirely true. For example, our 31-year-old daughter got laid off from her job back in March, and in spite of constant pounding on doors for almost 4 months it wasn't until very recently that she finally got a job. And here's the kicker: there were over 300 people who applied for the one position she got! How can that possibly constitute jobs being "plentiful?"
Regardless, I have a greater appreciation for what my parents were complaining about all those years ago. Life is, indeed, getting very expensive. And where was I understand that we are living in a period of inflation, when you get down to the nitty gritty of things the actual price Rises of the things we buy on a daily basis seems to be far greater than the suggested slightly less than 10% that everybody is throwing around.
Scary times, if you ask me!
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Created at 2023-06-24 01:04 PDT
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