My budgeting was a lot easier before prices on every single conceivable expense increased over the past two years. I remember how fantastic I would feel at the end of the month whenever we’d have a tiny amount of money left over to put away in our savings accounts for a later day. These afternoons I’m lucky to have enough money from my paychecks to cover my debit card plus motorcar payments. I couldn’t even imagine having enough money for savings accounts amid the new inflation rates. Gasoline shot up to $4.74 in my area for a few months before dropping below $4 again while in 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 hot 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 plus 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 would not be forced to do it again as inflation worsened. Needless to say, my electricity costs more, making heating plus cooling expenses higher than ever. It’s painful whenever I hear the cooling system or boiler turn on depending on the season, plus thinking about all of the money it costs in the short term. Because of the increased utility bills that come with running a central Heating plus A/C system, this has caused me to become increasingly stingy at the grocery store.