INFLATION--It just won't go away

Yeah, thank goodness the Govt added 60,000 jobs. Glad to see it shrinking costs.

 

Headline inflation lowered to 3.0% year over year. Note CD’s are commanding 5.5%. Good times.

 

That's a really good spread, historically speaking.

 

Workers are finally ahead of inflation:

 

I read the same article you did. The report is generally positive but there are still small month on month increases and Core Inflation overall is 3.93% I think. The 3.0% number was the lowest reported.

 

If someone in the administration had taken responsibility for the 27 consecutive months of crushing our pocketbooks, we'd feel a tad better. The story here is The Damage Has Been Done

 

COLA is estimated at 3% next year, according to a forecast from The Senior Citizens League, a nonprofit seniors group.

 

Chmn Powell acknowledged we're paying $1.16 today what would have cost $1 on inauguration day 2021. 3% this yr (which won't be realized for another 6 months), 8.7% last year. Doesn't equal 16%.

My point once again is, The Damage Has Been Done. If you're younger than retirement age, it doesn't sink in. Regardless of how much cash you have on hand, you still need to budget. If you don't, and live to be 85+ you might be eating dog food then. Inflation, like HHD has stated , hurts retirees in a big way

 

H2
Have you seem the commercials for Fresh dog food?
Looks better than tuna casserole.

 

Yes, but let's be honest. Most anything this side of Listeater looks better than tuna casserole.

 

This is why hard money like the gold standard, other commodity standard, or bitcoin would be boon to retirees. With money like that your money would actually become more valuable over time. Savings would be encouraged which means capital investment would increase which means the world would become steadily richer.

With the fiat money we have now, it loses most of its value over a person's lifetime, i.e. more than half. That makes everyone poorer except central banks and the people central banks give money to directly; other banks, politicians, politically connected CEOs, NGOs, other political hustlers. The new money steals savings and makes normal people less likely to even try to save. This reduces capital investment and therefore consumes capital over time. If this goes on long enough even things we enjoy today won't exist. The mines, factories, supply chains, infrastructure will deteriorate and there will be no funds to repair and replace. Much less will be funds for new to the world technology.

 

It is all timing. 3% on top of 4-5% 12 months ago.

Crude is on the rise which means gas is on its way back up to the mid-$3 region. Our weekly grocery bill is still on the rise with the price-holding items being smaller sizes.

 

This experience should cause each of us to tell our representatives to pursue hard money, end of the Fed, reduced government spending, reducing regulations, and ending government economic intervention. We should only vote for candidates who advocate for these things. Any who talk but don't follow through should be primaried and replaced.

We should also require politicians to stop military intervention around the world too. Many times this is the justification for printing new money and the source of corruption like we are seeing with the Bidens and Ukraine. Further, if the Rs were open to reducing military budgets, they would have negotiating leverage against Ds for reducing other spending.

 

Just being honest, it seems like I'm paying more than powell's admitted 16% higher costs than Jan 2021. With no mortgage to pay off, the newly passed lege on property taxes should be a big help tho. Might offset the increase in our home insurance premiums, which I can't understand. No claims since 2018, my wife and I both have credit ratings over 800. Others I know here had the same hikes.

As Viper mentioned, grocery prices don't seem to be coming down.

 

Won't take effect for another 6 months. Kinda my point. Always behind the curve on inflation.

 

Exactly! And it still won't reflect the typical expenditures of us old geezers - we tend to spend more on medical needs than working folks (younger) do. So we will get more benihder, even with the COLA. - "the hurrier we go, the behinder we get."

 

My wife had a rather minor surgery on 3 toes in January. Received the last of many bills in May. Total Out of pocket was over $900.

We have good supplemental insurance with UHC, in addition to TRS retired , but each year out of pocket costs rise like crazy. I'm having to increase our monthly budget by $350 to cover increased health care costs and home insurance. Crazy stuff

 

Yeah, I don't buy the government's inflation numbers. I don't think they're lying, but I think they putting too much weight on things normal people don't often buy (that may not be going up) to balance down the impact of things everybody buys that have gone up wildly.

 

They are not lying. However, they are not telling the truth. If they were the financial markets would be in a tailspin.

 

Rest at ease:

 

Expect out of pocket to continue to rise due to the No Surprise Billing Act. Now providers must be in network so payers are actually cutting rates while the shortage of doctors, nurses etc has an opposite effect on costs to employee them.

 

Inflation is up 16% since January 2021. Real wages are down $0.10 per hour over the same period. But everything is sunshine and roses.

 

Indeed. Just because things have settled back down to a lowish inflation rate now, doesn’t mean the damage to average Americans' standard of living hasn’t already been done. The people as a whole are probably around 10% worse off than they were before all this inflation kicked in.

When inflation was roaring, wages didn’t keep up, for the most part. Further, the inflation rate most commonly used did not capture many things people spend a lot of their money on.

 

Remember inflation is irrelevant if you never retire.

 

The middle class probably would like to have a word with you on that

 

Good point. I am thinking about what I can do until I die.

 

All else equal, wages will rise to offset inflation. If inflation hits everything, then it hits wages too. Also, the middle class had it really good inflation-wise for the previous 20 years. How else do you explain that my mortgage is 3 and 5/8%?

 

Inflation is wreaking havoc on the American middle class and 8 out of 10 say they are spending their savings just to get by

 

Anyone who thought inflation would never go above 3% again don’t remember the 1970’s.

 

By the way, an online calculator of current inflation (with lags are removed such as housing rents) show inflation at 2%.