What have you stopped buying because life got too expensive?
I didn’t read a list. I read a mirror.
A woman in Chicago said she used to send about 80 Christmas cards a year. She got about the same back. Now she sends a picture by text. The card and the stamp just cost too much. Eighty friends’ names on eighty envelopes, gone quiet.
A fellow in his sixties used to buy himself a good ribeye every couple of months. A little treat. A reward for a hard stretch. He hasn’t bought one in almost two years. Twenty-four dollars for one steak, or two weeks of chicken in the freezer. He picked the chicken. Most of us would.
A grandmother in Florida did the math on taking a family of four to a ballgame. Tickets, a hot dog, a soda. Close to four hundred dollars. She said the old song “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” never figured on that. She’s right. That song was written for working people. Working people can’t hear it from the stands anymore.
A woman in Texas said mailing a gift now costs more than the gift. Another lady cooks her own dog food because the cans got too dear. A man in Ohio parked his camper for good. The diesel to pull it ate the trip. Someone in Oklahoma used to snack on berries and nuts. Now a little box of berries runs eight dollars. Eating right has become a luxury.
And then there was the last one. A woman, 43, from Florida. She said, “The house my parents could afford with an hourly job is a dream of the past.” Sit with that one a minute. She isn’t asking for a mansion. She’s asking for what her folks had on an hourly wage.
Not one of these people was whining. Not one. They were doing what people have always done when times get hard. They cut their own hair. They clip their own dog. They make their own bread and their own jam. They brew their coffee at home. They figure it out.
That’s the good news. People are tough. People are clever. People don’t quit.
I see you. I see you standing in the grocery aisle putting the steak back. I see you skipping the card. I see you doing the math at the gas pump before you decide if the job is worth the drive. You’re not the only one. Not even close. Look around that aisle. Half the folks in it are doing the same math.
You see me. I see you. We’re in this together.
They give us a number every month. They call it inflation. It comes out sounding calm and measured. A few points here. A few points there. Under control, they say.
Then you walk into the store. And the store tells a different story.
That number is an average. It’s built from everything in the whole economy, the stuff you buy and the stuff you never touch. But you don’t live in an average. You live in a grocery cart and a gas tank and an electric bill. And those are the very things that keep jumping the fastest.
When the steak doubles, and the berries double, and the lunch sandwich hits twenty dollars, and the official number says a few percent, something doesn’t add up. A family can feel the gap even when nobody will name it.
Some of this isn’t inflation. Some of it is plain gouging. Companies learned during the hard years that folks would pay more and not fight back. So they kept raising the price. Not because it cost them more. Because they could.
Something stinks in the trash can. And it’s not the coffee grounds.
You don’t need a degree in economics to smell it. You need a receipt. Hold last year’s next to this year’s. Same store. Same cart. Same family. That’s your evidence. That’s the truth they can’t average away.
So what do we do?
We keep doing what we’re doing. We help each other. We share the trick that saved us twenty bucks. We tell a neighbor where the cheaper gas is. We trade a jar of jam for a haircut. We look out for the older folks on fixed incomes and the young ones who can’t get a foothold. That’s not charity. That’s community. That’s how this country got through every hard stretch it ever had.
And we keep our eyes open. We don’t take the calm number on faith when the cart says otherwise. We ask the hard question at the counter. We spend our money where it’s treated right. A dollar is a vote, every single day, not just in November.
The woman with the Christmas cards still sends a few. To her friends overseas and her older aunts. The ones who matter most. I like that. She cut back, but she didn’t cut off.
That’s us. We’ll cut back. We’ll make do. We won’t cut each other off.
I see you. You see me.
We’re in this together, keep watching.
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This post was drafted with AI governed assistance and reviewed and directed by Michael S. Faust Sr. before publication.
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