According to reports from financial institutions, many Americans now have bulging bank accounts.  They’re the ones who were lucky enough to keep their jobs during the pandemic.  And if their household income was under $150,000, they also got thousands of dollars in stimulus money.  Problem was, there was no place to spend it.  Couldn’t travel or eat out.  No place to go, so why buy any new clothes? The savings  kept increasing, but with zero interest rates, the money is not doing much of anything while sitting in the bank.  Nevertheless, prices for everything are shooting up.  The Feds tell us that inflation is only 5%, but anyone who shops know it’s way more than that.  As a result, you may as well buy now to beat inflation.

The carpeting we bought for one room last year doubled in price this year when we decided to upgrade another room. Double.  Yes.  The cost of anything to do with home improvement is sky rocketing.  So my advice would be,  don’t wait until next year, or the year after.  Get that new roof, build a deck, screen in your porch.  Maybe even buy a hot tub, if that fits  your life style.  Do you remember when a luxury  hot tub cost about $5,000?  I do.  Now they’re selling for about $16,000,. Don’t even blink an eye when writing a check for thousands of dollars to fix up your home.  Next year, the price of all those goods and services will increase by  at least 5 or 10 percent.

Let’s move on to the supermarket.  When shopping for favorite items, have you noticed how many shelves have “holes.”  That is, empty spaces where the product you want is sold out.  And when it’s finally back on the shelf, the prices have gone way up.  As a result, the instinct is to hoard.  Instead of buying a couple cans of certain soups, we load up on maybe 6.  We’re buying anything ahead that will “keep.”  Detergent, trash bags, canned goods.  Our cupboards are stocked to the brim.

The feds keep telling us that this inflation is temporary.  Doesn’t look that way to us.  When the price of gasoline increases, transportation costs have to be added to the price of anything shipped from point A to point B. And  wage increases in a tight labor market have to be passed on to the consumer.

There’s only one way to beat inflation: buy now.