When I was a boy my brother came home from the Navy on leave and told me about hard times in China. I asked him what the word inflation meant when he said that new-to-me word. Inflation was a pretty big word for my young mind.

My brother has a simple way of explaining things. He said, Inflation is when you need a wheelbarrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread.

I watched inflation first hand when I was a boy. War is a great generator of inflation. Before WWII we could buy a sinker from ?Bake? Dunlop for 5?.

A sinker was what we now call a chocolate ?clair. I purchased one yesterday at my store?s bakery for 89?. It was not half the size of one of Bake?s early sinkers.

Bake Dunlop?s first sinker was about 5 x 5 inches. Bake raised the price to 10? right after the war started. The price of flour had increased and Bake had a hard time getting sugar, which was rationed. (Other things we had ration books for were gasoline and tires. My family never used those because our car was still on blocks in the garage. Dad had not been able to afford to drive his old Oldsmobile throughout the depression.)

Bake next cut the size of his sinker in half and still charged a dime. Then he cut it in half again. The price was still a dime. So we had a sinker one quarter the size at twice the price. That is inflation.

Last month I bought a new slightly-used car. It cost me twice as much as our first house.

In 1975, 230 ounces of gold would buy you an $8000.00 Cadillac. Today you could buy three (3) $35,000.00 Caddys for 230 ounces of gold and have $30,000.00 in change.

If you don?t believe me look at the price of gold at www.tinyurl.com/fmyv2 Just click on the Forex Outlook in the left column. Scroll down until you find what is going on with Gold.

Gold and silver are good inflation fighters. The United States Mint stamps bullion gold and silver coins. They are Gold Eagles and Silver Eagles. They are legal tender. I?ve started collecting a few of these coins. The reason is that I?m on a fixed income and inflation is eating away at my livelihood. I can tell you how I?m collecting coins if you email me.

You probably have noticed that our government is very concerned about inflation. They watch the indexes closely. China is very concerned. As our currency drops in value, China suffers. They have a great trade surplus that endangers the world?s monetary systems. They may be more concerned than we are. (I didn?t make this up. I take the Wall Street Journal.)

Foreign investors are concerned as the value of their U.S. instruments drop. I?m talking about securities, etc., here and not trombones. If they get overly concerned and switch to ?safer? investment, our markets will be greatly affected. I?m talking about the stock market and commodity exchanges here, etc., and not your local farmer?s market.

My brother use to tell me to borrow dollars and pay them back with pennies. That?s because the value of the money you are using to pay off long-term debt has less value than money at the time you borrowed.

Your local financial expert can help you fight inflation if you have anything left to invest. That is the problem. Many folks are so far in debt that they can?t invest. Interest eats up their entire surplus.

So what should we do to fight inflation? Well, we can use the Taylor Jones, the hack writer, plan which follows:

1. Stop spending beyond your NEEDS.

2. Pay off your debts. Take the highest one first and start making multiple payments. If the payment is $200.00 a month, see if you can cough up $400.00 a month. If not, at least increase your payment.

3. Consider taking out a lower interest loan to pay off and combine your debts. Then you will be able to make a larger payment to eliminate that debt. We use to call this combining your bills into one gigantic debt. The problem is, that people combine their bills and then start blowing the ?new? money they now have left over rather than using it to get out of debt. Don?t do that!

4. Send me money! Hey, I?m just kidding (unless you really want to)!

Okay, so the Taylor Jones, the hack writer, plan is not original. I still like it!

The End

Money, gold, silver, inflation, government, China, investment, debt, get out of debt, remove debt

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