Inflation is Jumping

 Inflation is bad for Plano families.  As the value of the dollar shrinks, the cost of caring for your family increases.  If you are retired, the value of your retirement savings shrinks.  The Wall Street Journal recently published, "U.S. Inflation Is Highest in 13 Years as Prices Surge 5%" by Gwynn Guilford, a page one headline on the Friday, June 11, 2021 print edition in your library.  Here is a nice graph from this article.

The gross inflation numbers to not give a truly clear picture for a number of technical reasons.  What is important to realize is that there will be products and services that will individually have costs spiking upward far above the average inflation rate.  Here is a  recent example from within Plano.  Here is the cost of an oil change for me in Plano over this last year.

The cost is 2.5 times now what it was a year ago.  Does that not look like a local inflation rate of 150%?  I think this is due to economic pressures from both competition and Covid.  First, my favorite place for oil changes went out of the oil change business, pivoting to another service.  Then my next favorite place closed its doors during Covid.  Now I have gone to a business that has survived the Covid economic recession by increasing prices.  Also, the new regime in Washington, D.C., has decided to immediately and intentionally raise our costs for gasoline by attacking the oil industry, which also has also increased unemployment in Texas.

I believe some families in Plano are already trying to protect their savings from inflation.  What is your family doing?

PS: My previous article about inflation (a very important topic) was Graphical Displays of Inflation, May 25, 2019, https://planoparents.blogspot.com/2019/05/graphical-displays-of-inflation.html