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I'm not sure what your point is. You say yourself you're spending more in gas so it does affect you. Maybe not a lot, but it did. In our area the grocery stores do have some empty shelves at certain times and in general prices have gone up across the board. Restaurants increased their prices and so did most other businesses. Maybe it's an additional $1.00 on a certain meal, but the prices did go up. Cars and homes are insanely expensive now. So across the board prices have increased very quickly. Whether it affects someone or not is going to come down to what they do and what they buy. You're not affected as much because your car gets 41mpg, you don't buy certain items, etc.
Yes. This is a good post. I tend to buy the same items in grocery stores and haven't noticed empty shelves for those staple items.
You brought up a good point about homes going up in price. I noticed on my facebook groups people begging for a place to rent and many times they are just trying to find any place. Some don't even complain about prices anymore. A few realtors suggest buying but it is clear prices are out of reach for many people.
Gas and fast food are the biggest price increases for me. Meat and chicken seem to have come back down from their insane highs. Soft drinks are high enough that I am thinking of just cutting them out completely (which wouldn’t exactly be a bad thing). Like the OP, I refinanced my home and dropped my payment about $300 a month. Overall, I’ve paid down debt/refinanced during the pandemic and lowered my monthly bills about $1,000 a month, not counting the student loan pause. I’ve been able to use my lowered monthly expenses to do things I’ve been reluctant to do before, like buy season passes for the NFL, buy season passes for skiing, go on more vacations, increase my retirement contributions and buy my significant other some nice things for her birthday, and now Christmas. I don't deny that some things are more expensive, and that some people are struggling… especially with rent increases, but it really hasn't personally affected me much overall.
Gas and fast food are the biggest price increases for me. Meat and chicken seem to have come back down from their insane highs. Soft drinks are high enough that I am thinking of just cutting them out completely (which wouldn’t exactly be a bad thing). Like the OP, I refinanced my home and dropped my payment about $300 a month. Overall, I’ve paid down debt/refinanced during the pandemic and lowered my monthly bills about $1,000 a month, not counting the student loan pause. I’ve been able to use my lowered monthly expenses to do things I’ve been reluctant to do before, like buy season passes for the NFL, buy season passes for skiing, go on more vacations, increase my retirement contributions and buy my significant other some nice things for her birthday, and now Christmas. I don't deny that some things are more expensive, and that some people are struggling… especially with rent increases, but it really hasn't personally affected me much overall.
Of course, you are not paying your student loans for nearly two years and will not have to make up the payments. Free money from the taxpayers - you are welcome.
To say it hasn't impacted you at all cannot possibly be true. Prices are up.....you are purchasing said items thus you are spending more of your money on that purchase than you were 6 months ago. Maybe you didn't change your spending habits and maybe it's not a big deal to you financially, but it is an impact. Maybe it's $100 less a month that you would normally save, but it's an impact. My spending habits haven't changed, but I can be honest here and admit there are times when i go to buy something, say a cup of coffee from Dunkin, and am shocked that the price went up $.50 from a few months ago. I still buy it, but it still affects me. It's $.50 less than I had before.
For those that paid down debt, refinanced, etc great for you and smart things to do. However, that doesn't answer the question of whether the higher prices affect you. You lowered your monthly expenses, but some of that, albeit maybe not a lot, is getting eaten up by the increased costs.
I believe the point is, if I'm reading it correctly, we just came out of a period of historically low demand. Of course the price of everything is going to rise. As much as some would like to think one person can control the price of gas (or insert commodity here), that's just not the case.
Since the pandemic, I've worked from home. The gas price doesn't affect me. We have still taken our normal amount of vacations and have not noticed a difference in the price of airfare. We eat a varied menu at home so our grocery bill fluctuates week over week but I have not seen anything that would alarm me. I have seen our restaurant expenditures up but I chalk that up to restaurateurs raising the prices to keep the business open under lower demand in combination with my choice to tip higher to keep people working.
I'm just answering the question as posed - am I impacted by the current economic conditions? No, not more than I have been in other years. I'm not tone deaf and I won't pretend there aren't people hurting. But there's ALWAYS people hurting, so what's new? I'm mature enough to know the economy is cyclical....it always is. It always corrects itself.
I'm not sure what your point is. You say yourself you're spending more in gas so it does affect you. Maybe not a lot, but it did. In our area the grocery stores do have some empty shelves at certain times and in general prices have gone up across the board. Restaurants increased their prices and so did most other businesses. Maybe it's an additional $1.00 on a certain meal, but the prices did go up. Cars and homes are insanely expensive now. So across the board prices have increased very quickly. Whether it affects someone or not is going to come down to what they do and what they buy. You're not affected as much because your car gets 41mpg, you don't buy certain items, etc.
I thought the point was rather obvious. I'm not seeing the black cloud that many of the posters here claim exist. Clearly there's been some increases in pricing. But those increases have also been offset by many people earning more and/or being able to refinance their homes at a lower interest rate. Cars and homes being insanely higher does not impact everyone. Many of us maintain our cars and don't have to have the latest and the greatest. Most people I know hang on to their cars for 10 or more years. And home purchases tend to be a once or twice in a lifetime buy. Not to mention, there have been some fantastic windows of opportunities to buy homes over the last 10 years, so not sure what you want me to say about that. Ultimately, as you can see by many of the posts in this thread, not everyone is losing their mind over the current economic situation. And that's refreshing to hear.
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