Move over, Grandma—one local man has officially entered the “back in my day” stage of life, and he’s barely hit his 30s. Thanks to skyrocketing inflation, he now shares the same disbelief his grandma once felt when she talked about buying a loaf of bread for a nickel. For him, it’s more like remembering when a carton of eggs didn’t cost the equivalent of a down payment.
Once amused by Grandma’s tales of getting a gallon of gas for “less than a soda,” the local man—who once scoffed at the idea of budgeting for groceries—now finds himself calculating if he can afford both gas and a bag of chips. “It’s like I’ve entered some dystopian parallel universe where a bag of Doritos costs the same as a small car,” he said, while eyeing his grocery receipt as though it were a ransom note.
Every trip to the grocery store now feels like walking into a live auction. The only prize? The chance to go home broke.
“I just paid $8 for a gallon of milk. At this rate, I’ll be telling my grandkids about the days when ‘you could still buy two Snickers bars for under a twenty.’”
It’s not just the grocery store that’s bleeding him dry—everything seems to cost a fortune. Remember when going out to dinner was a casual treat? For him, it’s now an experience reserved for the one-percent. The local man recently went out for a burger and fries and somehow ended up contemplating a 30-year fixed-rate loan to cover the bill. Forget pairing your meal with a fine wine—nowadays, you’re better off checking your credit score before ordering.
Even fast food has become a high-stakes gamble. His “value meal” cost more than the car he used to drive in college. After nervously glancing at his bank app, he seriously considered asking the cashier if they offered payment plans. Apparently, requesting to finance a McNugget order is still “frowned upon,” but he’s not ruling it out for the future.
And don’t get him started on rent. The local man swears his landlord must be using some arcane method to calculate monthly payments based on the rising value of gold. At this point, he figures his best financial move might be ditching his apartment and camping in a national park. He’s even started researching how to befriend squirrels, picturing a future where they trade nuts and stories of how inflation ruined everything.
The real kicker? He’s begun imagining how much worse things could get. Will he soon be telling his grandkids about the days when you could afford both shoes and a meal in the same week? Or will they look at him like he’s spinning some wild fairytale, where people could buy groceries without taking out a second mortgage?
If things keep going this way, he figures society will soon return to the bartering system. “You want Wi-Fi for two hours? That’ll be three chickens and a sheep,” he joked, though his laughter was tinged with mild panic. In the back of his mind, the local man has started to suspect Grandma’s compulsive hoarding of canned goods and hand-sewn quilts might not have been so crazy after all.
Now, every time he reuses a plastic bag or saves a scrap of aluminum foil, he’s forced to admit that Grandma was onto something. “It’s like we’re just one interest rate hike away from living out a Great Depression cosplay,” he mused.
But that’s not the most humbling part. The local man can already see a future where he’s the one explaining to his disinterested grandkids how cheap everything used to be. “Back in my day, you could buy gas for less than an hour’s wage!” he’ll say, while they roll their eyes and adjust their VR headsets to drown him out.
It’s gotten so bad, he’s started to seriously consider alternative investments. “Forget the stock market—I’m buying ramen noodles in bulk. At this rate, that’s where the real fortune lies.”
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