The current inflation rate is impacting many if not all of us. Many retirees are living on a fixed income; similar to living paycheck to paycheck. It sucks!
Millennials need to understand that this is not unique to their generation. Many of us older types have been through it before. In 1982 inflation was almost 15% (almost twice as high as current rate). Mortgages had a rate of 18%+. Gasoline prices went up 35% in the early 1980's. The price of gas in 1982, adjusted for inflation, is almost $4.25. Close to today's price. The entire decade of the 1980's was higher inflation. Yet we survived - sorta.
It is a shame that many people feel that they will never be able to retire. But the longest bull market in history from 2008 through the pandemic was a time to help build the nest egg. To not take advantage of that was a missed opportunity. But opportunities still exist. Right now Series I Savings Bonds are paying 9.62% (for the next 6 months). They have a base rate and the total rate is tied to inflation. I would of been leaping for joy if I could of gotten 9%+ on my investments. With the markets down 20%+ a return of that high and be so low risk, an opportunity not to be missed IMHO. Put a little bit in each month and start building that nest egg...
Now back to irregular but much anticipated (unfortunately) news fights...
In 1973 the US went through a gas shortage/price hike generated by OPEC so intense that gas lines to the pumps stretched for blocks, customers were limited to ten gallons, prices vaulted from fifty cents a gallon to over a dollar a gallon, and the national speed limit was reduced from 65mph to 55mph.
The primary cause of that particular shortage? President Nixon had imposed a price cap on oil barrel prices in 1971, which caused US oil producers to shut down domestic production over the next two years due to insufficient margins, doubling our demand for foreign oil, which OPEC responded to by reducing their production while raising their per barrel cost.
The situation only moderated when Nixon removed the domestic cap price and offered tax incentives to the domestic oil producers to ramp pumping back up on an accelerated basis, a move OPEC met by increasing their own production and lowering their prices, not willing to lose a drop of market share.
OPEC has been raking us over at every chance they get since they were formed in 1960. And whatever the gas pump price is each day, it does not include the 81 Billion in taxpayer dollars the US spends each year protecting our 'national interest' in oil producing countries around the world, or the American blood spilt doing so.
And what did OPEC recently do? Cut back production and raised prices just as the Russian oil embargo took hold, going right back to their 73' playbook, which has been rolled out regularly at every global opportunity, regardless of who is the US president or who holds congress at the time.
OPEC has all the leverage and will continue to do so as long as our political construct remains focused on our social divisions, instead of moving our country forward with a new model emphasizing domestic energy production that includes oil, gas, wind, solar, tidal and nuclear. Energy independence first, providing a reduction in costs to the average American while keeping our dollars at home, and then we can focus on how to make it more 'green' later.
