My budgeting was a lot easier before prices on every single conceivable expense increased over the past two years.
I remember how great I would feel at the end of the month whenever we’d have a tiny amount of currency left over to put away in our savings accounts for a later afternoon.
These days I’m blessed to have enough currency from my paychecks to cover my debit card as well as automobile payments. I couldn’t even imagine having enough currency for savings accounts amid the modern inflation rates. Gasoline shot up to $4.68 in my section for a few months before dropping below $4 again during the past week. While this might seem like progress, I doubt we’ll ever see a reversal of the price increases at the grocery store. While things like my boiling cats are still under $1, even the Dollar Store is now longer an actual dollar—they had to raise their prices to $1.25 last year as well as lots of people were hurt by it overnight. That’s a large 25% increase on prices without any warning or transitional period. It seems like a gradual increase would have been better, however it’s possible they only wanted to do one single increase so they wouldn’t be forced to do it again as inflation worsened. Needless to say, my electricity costs more, making heating as well as cooling expenses higher than ever. It’s painful whenever I hear the air conditioner or furnace turn on depending on the season, as well as thinking about all of the currency it costs in the short term. Because of the increased utility bills that come with running a central Heating & Air Conditioning system, this has caused me to become changingly stingy at the grocery store.