I got to thinking the other day. And most times, that is a dangerous thing.

The internet and local media, blogs and opinion sites are all covering this issue. How is your wallet feeling? I started thinking about this last weekend. My wife and I were talking about the price of gas and she said “Groceries are getting ridiculous, eggs alone are up over 30 cents a dozen”. I do the grocery shopping in our house, but she had went the week before after about a 6 week gap. When the price of milk goes up 75 cents a gallon over 6 months, people take it in stride. The prices rose a bit each week, numbing me to the effect.

Our family of four, ages 45, 42, 10, and 6, run a grocery tab of over $150 per week now, up from just about $100 a year ago. That increase includes places where we have cut out extravagances - less expensive salad mixes and dressings, cheaper brands in our cleaning and laundry supplies, generic brands where we didn’t use them previously, etc. This amount does not include meals out - which we used to do more often, dining out is an extra we can cut. However, it is a form of entertainment for our family - and it helps maintain domestic “bliss” - so at what cost does this “cost saving” measure come?

When the price of gas goes up 30 cents in a day - everyone notices, when it does that 3 weeks in a row - everyone whinces. When gas is nearly $4 a gallon, we all feel it - regardless of our incomes. I drive an Acura TL and it takes $53 to fill the tank - OUCH! I wish I had gotten a Civic instead.

Everything is connected, transportation costs are affected by the cost of fuel, ethanol producers are buying as much corn as they can, so corn related items increase, feed for cattle, tortillas, you get the point.

Everything is driven by the value of the dollar - because we import and export so much, foreign currency values affect our inflation rate - and the dollar is in the gutter. Economists say that increasing the value of the dollar will create greater inflation - how much greater can it be than what I describe above?

Remember - all of this is my OPINION, and I didn’t take the time to back it up from other resources.