I knew that I wasn’t imagining things. There are so many times when I am shopping for groceries that I see a product that seems like it has doubled or tripled in price over the years. I am sure that many of you have experienced the exact same thing. Well, now we have confirmation that we aren’t going crazy. When 24-year-old Zoe Dippel was browsing through old family photo albums, she discovered something incredibly shocking in an envelope…
For Zoe Dippel, a walk down memory lane looking through family photo albums became a quick lesson in inflation.
Dippel, a 24-year-old dental hygienist living near Austin, said in an interview with USA TODAY that she was flipping through her sister-in-law’s baby album when an envelope fell out.
When Dippel opened the envelope, she found a 1997 receipt for the purchase of 122 products at a grocery store known as H-E-B…
The receipt they found was for a 122-item order at H-E-B, a Texas grocer, from just after her sister-in-law was born. The large order cost $155.34 in 1997. But after Dippel posted video of the find to TikTok, she decided to find out what the same order would cost today. Her two videos about the 1997 receipt have gone viral and have a combined 3.4 million views as of Jan. 16.
She found that the same order came out to $504.11 when ordered through H-E-B’s curbside pickup.
“It’s just crazy to me,” Dippel said of the price jump.
If you multiply $155.34 by three, you get $466.02.
So the fact that those 122 items now cost a total of $504.11 at H-E-B means that the cost of the exact same order has more than tripled.
This is what our leaders have done to us.
In 1997, 150 dollars would get you a huge mountain of food.
Today, you will be very fortunate if you are able to fill up your cart a third of the way for that much money.
The cost of living has become a permanent crisis for the middle class, and one recent survey discovered that 92 percent of employed Americans have been forced to reduce their spending.
But even though most of us are trying to cut back, more Americans are being pushed over the edge with each passing day.
In fact, the number of consumer bankruptcy filings increased 12 percent in 2025…
New data shows more Americans are filing for bankruptcy, the latest indication that price pressures and an uneven economy are leaving some households strapped for cash.
Total consumer bankruptcy filings jumped 12% from 478,752 in 2024 to 533,949 in 2025, according to Epiq AACER, a platform that provides U.S. bankruptcy filing data. Epiq, which tracks Chapter 7, Chapter 11 and Chapter 13 filings, relies on data provided through the U.S. Courts’ PACER system, an electronic database that houses federal court records.
It is now being estimated that one out of ten Americans will file for bankruptcy at least once in their lives.
Foreclosures are spiking too.
In 2025, the number of foreclosures was 14 percent higher than the year before…
The past year was difficult for homeowners — but experts warn that 2026 could be even more challenging.
Foreclosures — when a bank or lender takes back a home after missed mortgage payments — rose 14 percent from a year earlier.
In total, 367,460 US properties faced foreclosure filings in 2025, meaning they were in some stage of being taken over by a lender, according to ATTOM’s data.
All of the numbers that I am sharing with you in this article indicate that the economy is getting worse.
As consumer bankruptcies and foreclosures rise, it is putting strain on our banks, and several of our largest banks just reported disappointing results…
This week, the nation’s largest banks reported a broadly disappointing set of quarterly earnings, the first stumble after a yearlong spree of rising markets and softening regulations paid off handsomely for the finance set.
Results at Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo all fell short of expectations, and their shares fell. Troubles ranged from delayed merger deals (JPMorgan) to stubborn expenses (Citi) to questions about the efficacy of artificial intelligence tools (Bank of America).
Unfortunately, it appears that conditions will continue to move in the wrong direction in the months ahead.
Mass layoffs are occurring everywhere we look, and they are even happening at some of the biggest names in the entire country…
Meta Inc. is beginning to cut 10% of employees, or more than 1,000 jobs, from its Reality Labs division as it shifts its investment away from metaverse products.
“We said last month that we were shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward Wearables,” a Meta spokesperson told FOX Business, adding that this action is part of that effort.
The reason why Reality Labs is cutting workers is because it is losing gobs of money…
The division includes Meta’s hardware and other futuristic product efforts like VR headsets, AI glasses and virtual world products.
However, that division has taken a beating, accumulating more than $70 billion in losses since 2021. Reality Labs faced a $4.4 billion operating loss during the third fiscal quarter alone.
I know that Meta has very deep pockets, but at this rate I just don’t see how Reality Labs is going to survive in the long run.
Citigroup is also facing challenges, and they continue to fire workers as they work toward their goal of eliminating 20,000 jobs by the end of this year…
The bank said when announcing the plan that it would eliminate 20,000 jobs by the end of 2026, and it still needs to eliminate several thousand more jobs to reach that target, according to the report.
“We will continue to reduce our headcount in 2026,” Citigroup told Bloomberg. “These changes reflect adjustments we’re making to ensure our staffing levels, locations and expertise align with current business needs; efficiencies we have gained through technology; and progress against our transformation work.”
Earlier this month, I published a list of 119 companies that have already announced that they will be conducting layoffs in 2026.
A lot of people out there simply do not understand just how serious things have become.
Yes, conditions are far from ideal right now.
But if we stay on the road that we are on at this moment, conditions will soon get a whole lot worse.
For the past couple of decades the U.S. economy has been steadily moving in the wrong direction, and it appears that a tremendous amount of chaos awaits us in the chapters that are ahead.
Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing. You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter. Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites. These are such troubled times, and people need hope. John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.
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