The U.S. ended 2007 with the biggest increase in inflation since 1990. Last month the price of such staples as white bread and chicken was more than 10 percent higher than a year earlier, while eggs were up 40 percent. A gallon of reduced-fat milk, $3.25 a year ago in Baltimore, is now $4.
Little wonder free rabbit and venison look good. "I never had it before, but I can't afford" the alternatives, said Cochran, 46.
Deborah Norman, 29, can't believe $4 milk. She's had to seriously cut back on family trips to restaurants, to her two children's dismay.
"I can't afford it," said Norman, a parole officer for the state. "Everything is going up but your salary."
Eating out less
Ken Harris, managing director with Cannondale Associates, a marketing and sales management consulting firm, said Norman isn't the only one shifting her behavior. "The restaurant industry is not performing as well as it had been because people are choosing to eat in more often," he said.
Cost increases aren't limited to food. Maryland's sales tax rose 20 percent last month. BGE customers, already hit by huge rate increases in the aftermath of deregulation, face another in June; by then they will be paying nearly 85 percent more than two years earlier. The average cost of health-insurance premiums doubled between 2000 and 2007, and the price for a gallon of regular unleaded gas climbed nearly as steeply.
Income in typical households, meanwhile, rose a comparatively pokey 33 percent in the Baltimore metro area between 1999 and 2006, the most recent numbers available.
These trends might explain why, in a survey released by Fidelity Investments last week, the top concern for nearly half the people in their 30s and 40s was making ends meet. It's a concern for some retirees, too - that's why Lewis and Brown want to get jobs.
Brown's strategy for stretching his income: "Same food, but smaller quantities."
"What people see as the middle-class goods ... seem to be going up faster than inflation," said John Irons, research and policy director at the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank that focuses on issues affecting low- and moderate-income workers. "As the dollar falls, imports become more expensive, so that puts pressure on prices across the board as well."
It's to the point that Christina Tracey, 30, has stopped driving from her home in Southeast Baltimore to see friends who live in Northeast Baltimore. The Highlandtown resident wants to save on gas. "It's sad," she said.
