Your Budget Is Getting Silently Crushed—Here's How to Fight Back

Inflation’s back at 3% and it’s not stopping. Your paycheck buys less, but most people don’t realize the real damage they’re doing to themselves.

The biggest mistakes killing your wallet right now:

You’re probably paying off the wrong debt. People crush their 3% mortgages while ignoring 20%+ credit card balances—backwards. That low-rate mortgage is actually helping you in inflation (you repay with cheaper dollars), but not if high-interest debt is compounding daily. Flip the strategy: attack variable-rate debt by interest rate, highest first.

Your discretionary spending hasn’t caught up to reality. That $800 budget from 2019 buys only ~$600 worth of stuff now. If you haven’t cut back, you’re either gutting essentials or quietly adding debt to keep up. Reality check: trim entertainment and dining by 30-40%.

The hardest pill to swallow: Stop planning for an economy that doesn’t exist. Those 3% mortgage rates and 2% inflation assumptions? Gone. Accept that 6-7% is the new baseline. The faster you rebuild your budget for today’s reality instead of yesterday’s fantasy, the faster you actually adapt. Denial doesn’t make inflation disappear—it just makes you broke.