Inflation here? gas/grocery prices just continue to climb (4 Viewers)

[zeetes]

i haven't filled up, scratch that, i haven't been to a gas station since before my last flight.. march, 2020. i'm literally sitting on the same, old, gas from probably january, 2020.

that said, my car gets 16-17 mpg on a good day. i'm happy i don't have to drive much, more like ever, because i used to commute 45-70 minutes each way m-f. that is a solid savings. side note, even though i loathed my a4, it did get great gas mileage. well, i guess anything over 17 mpg is great to me.

 

[efil4stnias]

gas was 4.19 this morning here at one station. believe last week it was 3.29 or so.

i hit costco in the morning when i need gas so theres no line.

we're starting to use costco more for chicken, ground turkey, eggs, milk because its cheaper than super 1. i dont usually watch prices but i try to keep up with some of them now.

Its now pushing $4.94 for 87 octane in St. Tammany ( close to Causeway bridge of course ) and other places around $4.54.

93 octane has now eclipsed the $5 mark.

 

[El Caliente]

 

[DaveXA]

Yep, greed is milking this for all it's worth. And people who can't afford it are the ones hurt the most. When wages are growing at roughly half the rate of inflation, real buying power continues to decrease. It's an untenable long term situation and needs to change soon.

 

[Mr. Sparkle]

its not even necessarily greed - at a certain point when you see prices rising all around you, it seems rational for sellers to raise prices to stay ahead of what looks like rising costs and rational for buyers to spend more now to avoid higher prices later. Becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I think we've just about reached escape velocity on that cycle or are pretty close to it.

 

[jayd265]

at what point does the balloon pop and everything comes crashing down?

 

[bclemms]

during storm season, how many gallons do you think you fill up with weekly? just out of curiosity.

It varies from one season to the next and one week to the next. Really hard to say on average. Last year I was part of Netflix and BBC documentaries and went all out. I put 30,000 miles on my car in 6 weeks.

I just bought a Rav4 hyrbid and it should effectively double my MPG but I really needed something bigger for my equipment so now I'm dumping about $15k into it the mod work and outfitting in order to maximize MPG and cargo space. That's about $7k more than normal. My fuel gets paid for but I want to make sure it stays that way so it's why I'm making the change.

 

[efil4stnias]

cant hear since i dont have speakers--- was he yelling this too?

 

[bclemms]

at what point does the balloon pop and everything comes crashing down?

First clue is when SUV and trucks suddenly start losing value on the used car market. You will start seeing 0% 72 months financing and SUVs start suddenly being offered below MSRP. That's usually the first sign it's having a big enough impact to change people's behavior. When it's changing behavior then it's eating into expendable income.

 

[DaveXA]

its not even necessarily greed - at a certain point when you see prices rising all around you, it seems rational for sellers to raise prices to stay ahead of what looks like rising costs and rational for buyers to spend more now to avoid higher costs later. Becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I think we've just about reached escape velocity on that cycle or are pretty close to it.

I don't disagree, yet. I hope we're at the tail end and prices start to stabilize again, but the longer this goes on, the bigger the downturn will be, and it will be painful for those getting used to these profit margins. They won't last, I don't think.

 

[Mr. Sparkle]

at what point does the balloon pop and everything comes crashing down?

If/when economic growth slows but the prices still rise, it will eventually tip us into recession and then prices are likely to drop.

Inflation -> stagflation -> recession -> reset/recovery

 

[CapitalCitySaint]

 

[bclemms]

Also, FED should have just done a .5 hike back in November so the markets didn't sit in limbo for 6 months wondering.

 

[DaveXA]

Also, FED should have just done a .5 hike back in November so the markets didn't sit in limbo for 6 months wondering.

They didn't want to upset the apple cart..but here we are. So yeah, I agree.

 

[bclemms]

They didn't want to upset the apple cart..but here we are. So yeah, I agree.

It was the most damaging thing they could have done to both inflation and the markets.