Are Costs Going Up?
We’re firmly into 2025 and the new presidential administration. Eggs prices are through the roof (if you can even find them), home insurance rates are crazy, and all I got was a 2% salary adjustment for this year??
If that doesn’t sound like your world, it certainly sounds like mine. Let’s go through some big household expenses and see what they’re forecasted to do in the coming months.
Gas and Energy
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts that gas prices will go down this year, but it’s subject to the impacts on tariffs. Gas is a global product so it’s price is impacted by more than American production. You may also be familiar with the concepts of summer and winter gas, where winter gas ignites more easily to help your car start better in colder conditions and summer gas has different qualities that can help maintain better air quality. Summer gas is more expensive than winter gas.
Prosperity predicts: Prices to stay flat until summer, when gas prices always increase with higher demand and the transition to summer gas.
Cars and Car Insurance
According to caredge.com, demand for used vehicles ultimately trended down in 2024 and was predicted in December to continue a downward trend. Tariffs, on materials (steel) or nations (Canada, Mexico) could impact the new car market by creating a significant cost increase. If the cost of new cars goes up, it’s likely that the cost of used cars will rise with them. When it comes to insuring your car, it doesn’t look very good right now. Bankrate shared that insurance rates were up 12% year over year from 2024 to 2025.
Prosperity predicts: Prepare to open your wallet.
Groceries
In case you missed it, there’s a bird flu spreading among the U.S.’s egg laying chicken population. It’s required farmers to put down over 40,000,000 chickens already with more to come. So your eggs are $10 a dozen because supply is significantly limited. If you’re in Colorado, your eggs are also up because on January 1, 2025 a new law went into effect that requires our eggs to be from cage free farms. Talk about poor timing. Beyond the price of eggs, you may have noticed prices creep up in 2024. If you didn’t notice, perhaps you heard Donald Trump’s campaign promise to lower grocery prices. Either way, it’s as political a topic as it’s ever been. Trump claims that he can lower grocery prices by increasing American energy production. Farmers use energy to plant, water, harvest and transport crops and his logic is that raising the energy supply will lower its cost, which will lower the cost to grow food, which farmers will be able to trickle down to prices at the grocery store. We said above that gas is a global product, so many economists question the feasibility of this plan.
Prosperity predicts: Prices unlikely to come down.
Based on these three areas, it looks like we may be in for an expensive year. If you’re feeling the strain of these high prices, Prosperity may be able to help. Please us the contact button in the website menu to reach out.
