Inflation Keeping You Behind Despite Earning More? What to do

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I couldn’t help but look. On the release of the November 2022 US inflation report, the word “inflation” yielded 845 million Google search results.

After peaking at 9.1% in June 2022, inflation is still having a moment.

So it’s not surprising that you may feel hard done by.

You’ve done all the right things — wrangled your debt situation under control, and started to invest consistently in your future — and your reward is a gaping hole in your monthly budget due to a broad increase in prices.

Now what?

Is Inflation Personal?

For many of us, our overall purchasing behavior has already been affected by the current high inflation period.

Data for November 2022 retail sales revealed that discretionary goods, such as clothing, electronics, and sporting goods, fell as consumers diverted more of their budget away from these spending categories to food.

As a next step, understand my personal inflation rate is not your inflation. Each household’s experience of inflation is unique.

When you dive deep into the Consumer Price Index (CPI) figures, it’s abundantly clear — while some prices are rising a lot, others are seeing only a modest rise or even a fall.

Knowing precisely what your personal inflation triggers are will be the basis for your strategy to lessen inflation’s bite on your budget.

For example, in the most recent CPI report, we saw an actual decline in the price of eggs against continued rises for cereal and baked goods.

The implication is obvious: cold breakfast cereal is out, omelets are in. (Or make-ahead egg bakes!)

Vegetarians won’t be happy to hear this, but carnivores will rejoice; meat prices (including fish and poultry) are waning as fruit and vegetable prices continue to charge ahead.

These specific examples may seem trivial, but the general point is not: