Money is like a sinking ship. All the inflationary mayhem that’s affecting all the dollars and cents in all of our bank accounts is all we need.
I want to take control. When bad circumstances happen, I lose control. And this happens.
The recent calendar years of 2022 and 2023 experienced runaway price inflation everywhere I went. 2025 may be no different to some, but with all this tariff stuff going on, I’m concerned for my financial health and well-being. In recent memory, I’ve had a hard time convincing myself to spend fifteen bucks each week just to gobble down ten pounds of chicken breasts that will probably be gone in a matter of five days. This year, a lower quantity of chickens didn’t help to nudge prices downward by much — in fact, it’s really going up. What used to be six is now four for twelve bucks. I guess it’s a daily regimen of beans and rice from now on, boring as it may be.
Hmmm, now where do I begin? Aha! Food and entertainment, two major staples of American life and prosperity that are suffering from dramatic price hikes, and this means families will have to tighten up their belts and their wallets with far more effort than keeping their pants up. It’s really about keeping your head above water, actually. There’s no escape from this financial sinkhole anytime soon. If I have to go straight into minimalism, that’s perfectly fine — in fact, I can live with living with bare walls, and while not perfectly executed, it has turned in some positive cash flow in increments.
It’s difficult to save money on everyday sustenances like groceries, despite catching the best deals or using coupons. Alas, even the budget-friendly Aldi is getting too expensive compared to A&P during its 150-year existence as a grocer. Just look at the price of old-fashioned oats, my magic food for breakfast — nearly four dollars now compared to $2.45 in 2021-22. Other stores are price gouging, too. King size Butterfinger, three bucks, maybe approaching four. Alexia sweet potato fries, six bucks or more. Fage yogurt, seven and-a-half bucks. DiGiornio stuffed crust pizza, ten bucks. And now, because of beef inflation as of this posting, Bubba Burgers will set you back a whopping seventeen bucks for only, count em, six pattys! (But you can get the chicken variety for five bucks less and have eight pattys). Some items are priced unchanged, but then you have “shrinkflation” where product weight is cut by over a third, resulting in smaller sized packaging, like chicken breasts. The list goes on.
Dark chocolate is one of the foods that I have to cut back on. I’ve seen a full dollar price increase on Moser Roth chocolates at my neighborhood Aldi this year. Once the cheapest, now victim to being more expensive. Oh, but it’s still the cheapest chocolate in town, no doubt about it! In fact, an entire bar of Lindt chocolates are about $4.50 on average by now.
And oh, yes, I was just thinking about corn. If we get a shortage of this potent vegetable used for millions of other sustenances, up goes the cost, and it won’t be a pretty sight. Corn is a precious and natural resource, you know.
What about clothing? Is the world ready for another sheep shortage? Personally, I’ll just buy some Gildan shirts on sale at Dollar General. Sweatpants made with cheap fibers are economical, too — I’m not a fashionista over denim or corduroy. I never cared about going to upper-end stores like Aeropostale, Old Navy or Nordstrom for that matter. I think those are for fashion haul buffs. Your best bet is T.J. Maxx, and unless you’re seriously doing some bargain shopping there, you’ll likely spend more on clothes than you need at the present moment.
My mobile carrier bill went up from an average of $73 monthly to $82 during 2022-23. Today, it averages to $105 per month. Rarely do I ever go out in public using all the IPhone features, but somehow I have to reach out and touch someone with my voice and texts when it comes to loved ones and the people I do yard jobs with. So, I have no other choice but to keep paying for it.
Entertainment is the Big One, and will always be discretionary no matter how hard it is to resist. Now, for all you couch potatoes with all the FOMO, you have streaming services going up in price every two years while content gets dumped into the digital wasteland — in other words, movies and TV shows keep getting delisted because of… cost-cutting! When it was launched in 2019, Apple TV Plus started at $4.99, and now it costs double that number. Every other service followed suit and consumers aren’t happy. Want to trim costs and still have your Netflix and chill? You’ll have to sit through commercials and deal with non-4K to reap the benefits. I sure don’t need to jump from one service that offers so-called exclusive content such as For All Mankind to the next one that’s got Only Murders In The Building to yet another one with Squid Game followed by using a Disney service with all the Spider-Man you need. I’d avoid streaming services as much as possible, but I think typical Americans will have a hard time doing it because entertainment is comforting pleasure food, and we all know food is essential. What’s really more tempting now is the rise of ad-supported FAST channels — read, ‘Free Ad-supported Streaming Television’ — coming from the likes of Roku, Pluto and Tubi. That’s great! More products and services to cause an impulse buying binge in tandem with binge watching! Translation: spend, spend, spend all your precious time and money.
Medical bills are no better as always. When my health care provider opened a new family medicine facility right on hospital campus grounds in 2017, I get billed twice for the same visit. Luckily, I have health insurance coverage, but not when you’ll be paying $500 for a simple ten-minute physical with Dr. Do No Harm plus lab work. Same goes for my optometrist, albeit for somewhat less. That doesn’t account for spending over an hour of playing the waiting game in the lab area while the TV is showing Let’s Make A Deal. Prescriptions, with the support of cheery TV ads selling you meds with side effects, will only add more fire to the burning money pit (see above paragraph).
My visits to the family dentist every six months went up $25 in 2024. One year later, the actual cost is now $175 after x-rays and that’s likely due to new management. I sure don’t want to get cavities or various oral-related issues, so I still need to commit to having the checkups and cleanings I need every six months until the time comes for a new dental procedure or getting dentures. That’ll cost me extra down the line.
Dollar General isn’t immune from inflationary syndrome, either. A six-pack of Hanes crew socks will now set me back eleven bucks. And holey socks, Batman, they’re not very durable after a few months by the time your toesies show up. Seriously, the prices there aren’t usually dollar friendly, but it’s a great place to shop if you live in a densely rural area.
I haven’t set foot in Walmart and Target for years, and that’s fine. I would suspect Target is much worse, as it is traditionally overpriced department store fodder — is the color red a coincidence or what?Walmart is a crowded house to run though despite its reputation for “rollback” low prices that very recently are much higher compared to ten short years ago. Woe, Nellie!
Skip the Wawa, Burger King or any other outlet with touchscreens, hot dogs and Pepsi dispensers. You’re wasting money on fast food. It’s also bad food.
Don’t forget Dollar Tree. Once reputed as a store where everything’s a dollar, it’s now officially called the Dollar Twenty-Five Tree, and even more with its frozen food and premium choices. At this point, Bixby Snyder would be out of a paying job. But I will congratulate them for conveniently selling Apple and Amazon gift cards that have not gone up in price, ‘cause e-commerce is the order of business now.
Perhaps the current production team behind The Price Is Right might want to start rethinking the idea of not going over $1.00, because the American Dream sure ain’t cheap in our modern society. Especially when you examine 53 years worth of episodes where the price may be right… if you know when the inflation hits. I’d say it was after 1976.
There is hope, if there is any. The easiest thing to do is visit a Goodwill or similar thrift store. You can still buy big things at a bargain for far less than a brand name. The only catch is that when it’s gone, it’s gone, but the deals can be one of a kind. You’re also being kind and generous to help the needy by shopping at stores like these, too, since most thrift stores are backed by charitable organizations.
The price of living is gonna continue to rise, folks. What will you do in order to keep a roof over your head? Cutting back on junk excesses is the only method to daily survival. No one wants poverty by brute force, but I guess we can’t help it. Living on lower standards is the new American Way to the dismay of kids begging for a Mickey Mouse summer vacation or meals out at Texas Roadhouse. You don’t want to land in “tent cities” where more of us are pushed into the homeless population of hard-working Americans even on the top executive ladder. Just look at California right square in the nose — once vibrant, now a ‘mouse’ trap.
And pretty soon, this current conflict going on in the Middle East could go insanely ballistic to the point where OPEC will set all-time record oil prices, and that will affect everything we do in our daily lives. I see five or six bucks a gallon in my neck of the woods pretty soon. Traveling even five miles from my home is getting very expensive! Since I don’t drive motor vehicles, I feel proud that I’m just a walker — it’s very economical! Regardless, I still have to give my younger brother ten bucks for his double round trip to my working destination five miles away. That’s twenty miles of driving a twenty-year old pickup on pavement, including all that constant stop n’ go through eleven stoplights that guzzle up even more gasoline than foot on the accelerator. Maybe I should retire, then. Oh, wait a minute, I gotta go make some money!
Backtracking to when I just stated about not driving cars. Well, that’s one less elephant in the room for me. Just like your health care, money gets spent on responsibility for the health of your car and truck, which is also getting inflated. Gasoline, yearly inspections, repair jobs, new tires, insurance costs, and fines for traffic violations — everything’s gonna add up. Oops, I almost forgot… real estate. Works the same way, only more expensive. Home Sweet Home can fall into disrepair, y’know.
And obviously, we have imported goods, no matter how cheap or broken they are, facing the tariff tax that is being passed on to Average Joe Consumer. Can’t win sometimes…
On top of everything that I’ve mentioned in this post, there’s the chance that our federal programs like Social Security will be scaled back or eliminated years down the road, creating a vulnerable situation for disabled and elderly Americans where supplemental income is essential and in short supply, Being poor is something we have no control over, and ‘control’ is the main topic of this post about inflation.
My final thoughts: I think Americans are angry. Not a single soul wants to deal with “change”, but with economic and political upheaval going on, change is being forced onto us. Our reckless spending habits are way above our means, from buying giant screen TV sets that look good in a crowded room, to purchasing hotels like the Corleones and the Trumps. You and I crave comfort over personal responsibility, and that’s human nature. We just have to plan accordingly and take the necessary steps in order to survive any major setback or existential crisis. And to learn from this experience.
Inflation is just one of a handful of real-world problems that continue unabated. Deal with it.
Alright, so this image didn’t make sense to the very few who caught my social media before deactivating it because very few took notice, but there’s still a logical explanation in this…
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