You’re going to make more money than you ever have in your life and somehow feel poorer than ever. Look at this. You make $65,000. You get a 3% raise every year. 5 years: $75,000. 10 years: $87,000. Sounds alright. Now look at the last 5 years: CPI: +22%. Rent: +28%. Electricity: +35%. Natural gas: +32%. Gasoline: +30%. Car insurance: +50%. Car repairs: +45%. Eating out: +29%. Ground beef: +55%. Coffee: +97%. Now just repeat the last five years twice. Your salary: $65,000 → $87,000. Your rent: $1,948 → roughly $3,200. Ground beef: $6.92 → roughly $16.60/lb. Coffee: $9.30 → roughly $36/lb. Car insurance more than doubles. Electricity up more than 80%. Maintaining the same car costs more than twice as much. And this is where it starts to hurt. You’re making almost $90,000, but maintaining the life you had on $65,000 is becoming harder. So you start compromising. Maybe you move somewhere cheaper. Maybe beef becomes chicken. You eat out less, keep the old car another few years, take fewer trips and put less into savings. Your standard of living just gets downgraded a little at a time while the number on your payslip keeps getting bigger. Like the frog in slowly heating water, each change feels small enough to tolerate until you suddenly realise the whole environment has become unlivable. You did everything you were supposed to do. You worked, got your raises and earned more money. You still got poorer. How long can this keep going before people stop asking why everything is so expensive and start asking what the hell is happening to the money?