50+ Lifestyles

Just Saying…

By Q.C. Jones

Inflation: A historical perspective, kind of.

Have you ever looked down at your car’s gas gauge and realized that full tank from a couple days ago is below the half full, or half empty, line? Regardless of whether you are a “half full, or half empty” sort of person, you still wonder what happened to that comfortably full tank of gas you once enjoyed.   

Every trip to the gas station triggers a new set of inflationary tremors. Even the tiny eleven-and-a-half-gallon gas tank on my micro-mini Subaru sends quivers through my wallet.  The dollars on the gas pump seem to move at the speed of light.  My guess the founders of this publication so many years ago weren’t thinking about 50 bucks at the gas pump when they coined the term “50+ Lifestyles.” What’s worse, when your pal QC Jones steers his better half’s gigantic albatross of a vehicle into the fill-up line, the experience is gut wrenching.  The beast hungers for petroleum, usually $110 worth. That’s inflation.

Everybody is talking about inflation. And this is one of those topics that remains a mystery for many of my young friends. Because they weren’t around in the Jimmy Carter years, they can’t call on personal experience. Instead, their conversations seem to be tied more closely to the price of gasoline, groceries, and maybe a few other things in their personal lives. Allow me to provide lucidity.

For those of you who classify as Bicentennial Hippies and for some reason happen to be a bit “hazy” in your remembrance of the late 70’s, allow me to refresh. Inflation in 1976 was mostly a conversational nuisance at 4.86 percent. By 1978, the rate had accelerated to nearly 10 percent. Things got serious in 79 at 13.3 percent.

I can still recall a conversation with my dad in the mid-summer of 1979. Sharing the good news of signing a mortgage for my very first home, he asked my interest rate. When I told him I was able to get things down to 11.5 percent, he said, “Why didn’t you just put it on your credit card? The interest would have been about the same.” In those days the interest on credit cards was only 12 percent, I had to remind him that my credit card limit was 500 American dollars.

Extending our little stroll down memory lane, here are a few price points.  I picked 1976 because 1976 was beginning of the inflationary period, it was a celebratory time, and those Bicentennial Hippies were everywhere. Don’t believe me, check your family photos from the era.

Let’s start with a hearty breakfast. Bacon was $1.29 a pound, a dozen eggs were 50 cents, a half-gallon of OJ was 59 cents, and a pound of coffee weighed in at $1.69. After breakfast we could scoot over the gas station in our new $4,900 Chevy Impala and buy 10 bucks worth of gas down at the local Texaco station. At 57 cents a gallon it darn near filled up the tank. On a side note, at the gas station you might meet the 1976 model QC Jones. He was the guy who expertly filled your car and cleaned the windows. QC earned $2.00/hour and all the free Mountain Dew he could drink.  BTW, he still had mostly dark hair.

For those of you who are musical fans, I had a friend who had tickets to see Elvis at the University of Illinois. He offered to sell one of them to me for face value. It was Elvis live for $12.50. Sadly, I was saving my money to see The All-Star Frogs. Today concert tickets for someone of that caliber cost closer to a hundred bucks.

All this inflation stuff has been lurking in the back of my mind for almost a year. I find it spilling over from financial to personal and then some. Experts tell us, inflation hits those with fixed incomes. I remember a contest held which was tied to all the Bicentennial Celebrations where a guy won the grand prize of $500 a week for life and a shiny new Oldsmobile. It was a big deal. The car cost $7,000, and back then 26 grand a year was a princely salary. Supposedly, this would set you up for life. Assuming this guy is still with us today, my guess is he’s not so flush with cash anymore.

Those twisted and tormented few who take time to read my monthly 50+ Lifestyle rants probably realize I have been attempting to use the Summer of 2022 as a catch-up for summers lost to Covid.  But time is the ultimate “fixed income” sort of thing.  I have been penny-pinching my time.  I want to get the maximum benefit from every non-working minute.

The gage on summer shows we are below the half full mark.  Everything costs more time than it should.  Time inflation.  A 2022 dollar is only worth 20 cents in 1976 dollars.  An hour in today’s time is only worth 12 minutes.  Excuse me if I appear to be a penny pincher of time.

Just saying.