I have been tracking my household expenses religiously for years. Down to how much we spend on milk each year, or how many boxes of breakfast cereal we go through. And without changing habits (I worked from home previously) or spending any differently for most of 2020 I saw a slight upward tick that was more than I would expect for previous years, about a 10% increase across the board in terms of energy, health care costs, food costs. In 2021 that upward tick turned in to way more than just a tick.
Food habits haven't changed, nor have quantities. I shop at a mixture of Food4Less, Ralphas, Gelsons and a few small items at Whole Foods, but food expenditure has increased by 30% to 40% since start of 2020. Household energy usage has remained the same, but somehow the price is 20%+ higher than at the start of 2020. Monthly health insurance costs have increased by 17.1%
A gallon of milk or a carton of eggs is about where it has been for the past three or four years, because a gallon of milk or a carton of eggs doesn't go up by 3 cents each month, it jumps by a dollar once every three years. Low-end commodities like that tend to stay artificially deflated for a while. I am expecting milk, eggs, and other basics to jump by a dollar or two in the very near future.
I am just a single data point, but something seems "off" with all officially reported statistics. Something isn't being captured somewhere.
Food habits haven't changed, nor have quantities. I shop at a mixture of Food4Less, Ralphas, Gelsons and a few small items at Whole Foods, but food expenditure has increased by 30% to 40% since start of 2020. Household energy usage has remained the same, but somehow the price is 20%+ higher than at the start of 2020. Monthly health insurance costs have increased by 17.1%
A gallon of milk or a carton of eggs is about where it has been for the past three or four years, because a gallon of milk or a carton of eggs doesn't go up by 3 cents each month, it jumps by a dollar once every three years. Low-end commodities like that tend to stay artificially deflated for a while. I am expecting milk, eggs, and other basics to jump by a dollar or two in the very near future.
I am just a single data point, but something seems "off" with all officially reported statistics. Something isn't being captured somewhere.