Over the past few quarters we have heard an interesting term that at first gave us a giggle, but upon repeated appearances, and a recent up close and personal experience, gave us the gumption to visit in greater detail here, and also set you guys out on the detective path in your own world as well.
Hearing the term repeated from different different sources it’s hard for us to give authorship correctly … but it’s certainly been added to our repertoire and likely yours after reading the following post … enjoy!
The Rise of ShrinkFlation
Burgers are a favorite, however the waist line does not like them as much as the taste buds.
With a favorite joint very close to our office, but not visited for well over a year, maybe closer to two, a recent startling visit brought our new aforementioned term into full view, and the experience gave us the go ahead to talk about it here.
The price was exactly the same, excellent news … but when the burger arrived it was about 2/3rds two maybe 3/4ths as big as the prior burger.
While this is likely good for our intake and good for our waist line … it’s a subtle way of inflation reaching into our pocketbooks or in this case our stomach but eventually our pocketbook anyway!
OK we get it … either the price is going up by 25% to 33% or the burger has to get smaller to accommodate rising prices. There certainly was no note of this change, which is fine but upon experiencing it was a bit eye/stomach opening.
For the record the prior burger easily kept one tied over until dinner … the new likely more healthy burger due to a smaller size needed a snack to go with it to make it to dinner, again probably better in the long term but interesting from an observation standpoint.
Long-term inflation rates as measured by the CPI – Consumer Price Index (the most blunt and popular Inflation Index) have been elevated in recent reports but likely to return to lower norms soon (a full talk for another time ….one which we have discussed in great deal….ok digressing.) The reports are certainly not garnering ShrinkFlation of 25 to 33%! Tried to get a before and after picture of the burger, but nada of course!
OK fellow detectives, we challenge you to keep an eye on any of your purchases especially ones that may have not occurred in quite some time and see if it’s just us or you may have experienced the same?
Break In – We ran across this neat chart, which is a bit dated from Wikipedia showing our ShrinkFlation has been going on for some time!
Any and all comments are welcome but we bet we’re not the only ones experiencing this!
It’s all good … but worth take a note and monitoring it for our collective long-term inflation/ShrinkFlation experiences!
Have a Great “ShrinkFlation/Inflation” all good Wonderful Day!
John A. Kvale CFA, CFP
Founder of J.K. Financial, Inc.
A Dallas Texas based fee only
Financial Planning Total Wealth
Management firm.
