Truth. My wife and I make over $350,000 combined, and I am about to trade in my car ($80k) for something cheap ($30k), and we're talking about no longer eating out. Every time we go out to eat now it's like $150, whereas in the past we would spend 60 to 80 bucks for the same thing, we are literally going to the same places we've always gone, but it costs twice as much. Everything is so much more expensive that our bank account is always less than what I'm expecting when I checked the balance, and it's really hard to put your finger on exactly where the moneys going, because it's literally just everything. Even our fucking power bill, our electric bill was like twice as high a few months ago. We heat our pool with a heat pump, which is really efficient, and in the past our most expensive power bill if we accidentally left the heat pump on during a cold month, would be like close to $300, but we had a $500 power bill this winter.

We all spent so much effort to get to where we are in life (born and raised poor, no college degree, started working when I was 14, etc.), and now they have pulled the rug out from under us. I'm just glad we bought a house before everything skyrocketed.